A Delirium Tremens of Manifest Destiny (in the vein of Burroughs, Deleuze & Lacan)
The American Dream curdles into a nightmare of self-inflicted wounds. This ain’t no Eurotrash fascism, this is homegrown psychosis. Racism, a cancer burrowing deep, birthed on stolen soil, a symphony of genocide conducted by the pale hand. Militarism, a chrome-plated phallus thrusting for empire, a ravenous beast with an insatiable hunger for blood and oil. Prisons, concrete wombs birthing generations of the ostracized, the melanin-rich, the different – a grotesque control freak’s wet dream writ large in steel and bars.
No need for fancy foreign labels, no need for the comfort of a distant “other.” This is our pathology, festering beneath the shiny veneer of freedom. We are the architects of this madhouse, the wardens and the inmates locked in a grotesque, self-perpetuating tango. This history isn’t some bogeyman from across the sea. It’s the repressed that erupts, the id unleashed in a riot of violence and control.
Look closer, America. See the reflection staring back – the distorted image of a nation built on fractured ideals. The Real, the unacknowledged truth, bleeds through the cracks in the facade. We cannot distance ourselves with borrowed terms. This is the American Id, laid bare and screaming. Can we wake from this collective fever dream, or are we doomed to repeat the cycle of violence, forever trapped in the prison we’ve built for ourselves?
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We swim in a fetid sea of American dreams, a hallucinatory Disneyland where the Frontier myth masks the carrion stink of genocide. This isn’t some fascist import, no, it’s homegrown, baby, a twisted weave in the fabric of the Self. These bars, these electrified fences, these reservations – they’re not aberrations, they’re the logical conclusion of the American Dream’s shadow. Minorities, you say? Just another binary, another way to fragment the Real. The incarceration isn’t just theirs, it’s ours too, a psychic prison built on the foundation of stolen land and broken treaties. We project our own repressed violence, our insatiable hunger for control, onto the Other, the darker reflection in the funhouse mirror of American identity.
This isn’t some foreign label, “fascism,” a comforting term that lets us distance ourselves. No, it’s a virus woven into the American code, a cancerous growth fueled by the death drive. The cowboy boots and apple pie – a grotesque pantomime that masks the raw, pulsating id beneath. We are the architects of this nightmare, not some bogeyman from across the sea. The militaristic madness, the insatiable hunger for conquest – these are the warped desires of a nation perpetually at war with itself, a war projected outwards onto the global stage.
Look not for the fascist Other, for he resides within. The bars of the prison are the bars of our own perception, the limitations we impose on ourselves and those we deem different. Only by delving into this psychic sewer, by confronting the shadow cast by the American Dream, can we hope to break free from this cycle of violence, this self-inflicted nightmare.
A Delirium Tremens of American Carnage (in the style of Burroughs, Deleuze & Lacan)
The American Dream curdles into a nightmare, a grotesque carnival of self-inflicted wounds. Forget fascism, some foreign import. This, this ravenous hunger for annihilation, for caging the “Other,” it slithers out from the very heartland. A cancerous growth, nurtured by generations steeped in the white noise of supremacy.
Burroughs: A shotgun blast to the face of history. Genocide, a twisted cowboy hoedown on the bleeding plains. Armies, chrome phalluses thrust across the globe, spewing napalm and Agent Orange, a toxic baptism for the “inferior.” Prisons bulge with the melanin-rich, a grotesque human cattle drive orchestrated by wardens with dollar-sign eyes. This ain’t no movie, man. This is the American meat grinder, baby, churning out generations of the hollow-eyed and the broken.
Deleuze: A rhizome of violence, burrowing deep into the American psyche. Racism, a cancerous web of power, constricting, suffocating. Incarceration, a factory churning out despair, producing a docile, compliant underclass. No grand narrative here, just a chaotic sprawl of power dynamics, the stench of blood and fear clinging to the national fabric. We are all implicated, caught in the tangled web, even as we scream for a way out.
Lacan: The Real, the unnameable horror, stares back from the mirror of American history. The symbolic order, a flimsy facade built on whitewashed lies, cracks under the pressure. The Imaginary, the self-image of the noble American, crumbles as the repressed violence erupts. No need for a foreign label – “fascism” – to mask the truth. This is the return of the repressed, the monstrous id unleashed, a land haunted by the ghosts of its own brutality.
This, this is the true American carnage. And to deny it, to seek solace in imported labels, is to remain forever trapped in the house of horrors we ourselves have built. We must confront the spectral violence within, tear down the flimsy walls, and rebuild from the smoldering ashes.