Americanization and the Existential Antinomy

Many sense the deep inanity undergirding the modern West, though few sense its source. The West is now the utmost expression of the international world order established in 1945. It is a crass materialism spurred by a wellspring of revolutionary revenge — a far cry from the cultural font that led to its global ascent. The post-1945 world order was founded by the liberal-Marxist States: Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and, their dynamic leader, the United States. This Americanization of the West means all we see around us is infused with a sense of materialistic revenge: this is the source of the pervasive drive toward all things I-me-mine and you-do-you. Underlying this profound self-interest is a piercing drive to self-destruction. Traditional and harmonious lifeways must be overturned for the welcomed, rebellious self; and the self, in turn, must be supplanted by the devastation alienation introduces. If such crass and revolutionary materiality is the basis of globalism in its relentless pursuit of selfish growth — both within and without the individual — then globalism is only the manifestation of the absurdity. What is the absurdity? It is the fervent pursuit of the abandonment of self, or the preparation for the revolution over spirit, which ensures the replacement of humanity (as spirit, not as biological mass). The absurdity means that to achieve victory is to win defeat; and this is modernity’s fundament.

To understand the inanity is to study the United States, which, in its victory over the postwar world, has overwritten Europe (and the globe) with its imperial (and not cultural¹) drive; familiarly, this is Americanization. Americanization is the materialization or even commodification of organic lifeways, which is globalization. The United States articulates its unwavering plan with every new presidential administration in a document called the National Security Strategy, which is the basis for all governmental and derivative action. This document feeds both domestic and foreign policy creation and interpretation. And despite personnel changes in American government, the national-security strategy, as a principle, remains largely intact. The principle is to overwrite the world, to Americanize it: Another State is free to live as it wishes — so long as it lives according to America’s wishes. This is the revolutionary fervor of Marxian socialism. America and the Soviet Union were not allied in their fight against anti-globalists for expediency so much as they were each inheritors of the revolutionary spirit that requires humanity’s (i.e., spirit’s) extermination. This fervor pervades all modern governments, regardless of their veneer; and this fervor is the will that stands as the source of the absurdity.

The absurdity is the existential antinomy: existential because it defines the future to be or not to be; antinomy because paradox is the fundament of all reality. Man wills his own destruction, which is why we witness the world we do. The world we see is neither a series of accidental instances nor contingent properties; it is absolutely necessary and could not be otherwise. We don’t just want this — will demands it.² Metaphysicality aside, antinomy sits as the basis of Americanization: it is a madness induced to combat madness. Antinomy is expressed in every National Security Strategy, which, in turn, inspires all covert and overt, classified and unclassified action. For instance, when we see a country threatened because it acts to defend its existence on its own terms harassed until it can only act to defend its existence, we witness the antinomy: the task is to preclude X; but if X is precluded, conditions are set that necessitate X, thereby precluding the accomplishment of the task and furthering the harassment of the State in search of X; the cycle then continues.³ Existential antinomy is a special kind of paradox characterized by the catch-22.

The catch-22 is a self-defeating logic defined as “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.”⁴ Any hierarchical system wishing to indefinitely perpetuate its power will naturally coalesce on a foundation that is predicated by its own existence: to live is to be eternal; or, in the rule of the catch-22, to die is to be eternal. That is, while the system embodying the rule is perpetuated, those subject to it cease to exist in any meaningful, human sense: the system feeds on its participants. Such parasiticality is reminiscent of Trotsky’s interpretation of the Marxian concept of permanent revolution, wherein “every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in complete liquidation.”⁵ Joseph Heller, who coined catch-22 in his book of the same name, colorfully describes the incremental liquidation of spirit in an exchange between Yossarian and an old woman recounting martial violence:

‘Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. ‘How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?’

‘The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. “Did we do anything wrong?” they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. “Then why are you chasing us out?” the girls said. “Catch-22,” the men said. All they kept saying was “Catch-22, Catch-22.” What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?’

‘Didn’t they show it to you?’ Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. ‘Didn’t you even make them read it?’

‘They don’t have to show us Catch-22,’ the old woman answered. ‘The law says they don’t have to.’

‘What law says they don’t have to?’

‘Catch-22.’⁶

The articulations of catch-22 peppering Heller’s novel share a common, inscrutable thread: every individual is attendant to a system that is impossible to overcome. Some have observed that the West, via America, has adopted this confounding basis, which is natural given its revolutionary liberal-Marxist impetus. The West presents its position as “democratic,” which, in light of the existential antinomy, is the necessary doublespeak to mask the rule of permanent fiat.

This bogus democracy that can be overruled by arbitrary fiat is perhaps a citizen’s first encounter with organizations that may profess ‘open’ and libertarian values, but in fact are closed and hierarchical systems. Catch-22 is an organizational assumption, an unwritten law of informal power that exempts the organization from responsibility and accountability, and puts the individual in the absurd position of being excepted for the convenience or unknown purposes of the organization.⁷

However, we do know — quite well — America’s (and therefore the West’s) purpose: to consume the world for temporary, parasitical benefit through a permanent revolution of crass materialism (no-culture). Before we condemn such purpose as any final indictment of Western imperialism, we would do well to note that humanity (as biological mass) has presented this expression to itself; that is, it incurs the expression because it is the expression.⁸ Nevertheless, such purpose is outlined in America’s principal strategic text, the National Security Strategy (NSS), of which an examination proves revelatory.

Notably, the NSS “highlights the criticality of a vibrant Defense Industrial Base for the United States and its allies and partners.” Such a base is necessary “to defend against adversary aggression.”⁹ Also of note: the United States is never the aggressor in any relationship — such a thought is apparently impossible. Any healthy human relationship will see both sides err and agree on a better path forward. No such dynamic exists, however, among contemporary States or in the context of modern statecraft — there is only “us and them,” and admitting fault is imponderable anathema. From the start, then, one can see the disease underlying “defense” and “diplomacy.” Moreover, the revolving door between the corporate defense industry and senior levels of defense and government¹⁰ itself ensures the “criticality of a vibrant Defense Industrial Base.” And despite the presumed general integrity¹¹ among those who have served, a condition inevitably arises wherein one’s livelihood depends upon a need to use the skills one develops over a career of training and war fighting: defense (conflict) is necessary in an adversarial environment; for the work of defense to be necessary, adversaries are also necessary. Work, then, must be manufactured for work. In the face of such brazen and ostensible profiteering, Catch-22’s supremely enterprising Milo Minderbinder asks a dismayed Yossarian, “Don’t you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract?” From a human perspective, Yossarian rejects Milo’s concern; but the existential antinomy demands our acceptance of it. Indeed, adversaries exist because we exist.

The State adversaries identified in the NSS are four: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.¹² A strategic approach to countering the four is contingent upon “[avoiding] the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and [instead continuing] to engage countries on their own terms.”¹³ Engaging countries on their own terms, however, is a nonstarter. The program of the NSS — and therefore all subordinate governmental action on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels — is “to shape the future of international order.”¹⁴ This can only be done through building a coalition of “those partners who most closely share [American] interests.”¹⁵ Thus, if a country does not share American interests, then that country cannot help shape the future international order and will not be engaged on their own terms. America acknowledges that it operates “in an increasingly confrontational world”¹⁶; but this acknowledgement is absent the awareness that such confrontation indicates a failure of Americanism, generally. The antinomy suggests, however, that the confrontation is itself necessary, regardless (or perhaps because) of awareness of it. Ultimately, the adversary is created; the Defense Industrial Base is perpetuated — and all is reflection of the antinomy.

“The American military is the strongest fighting force the world has ever known,” the NSS asserts — and indeed it is. It is the utmost expression of State-sponsored violence of the utmost expression of the liberal-Marxist will-to-subvert the human spirit for the ascension of the electric will.¹⁷ In support of this will,

America will not hesitate to use force when necessary to defend our national interests. But we will do so as the last resort and only when the objectives and mission are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, alongside non-military tools, and the mission is undertaken with the informed consent of the American people.¹⁸

In light of the many recent, meandering expeditionary “failures”¹⁹ of the American military, the “clear and achievable” objectives are only comprehensible in the context of the antinomy. Success is not battlefield victory so much as it is the exercise and expansion of Americanization across the globe, which is the end of human spirit. All States are party to this exercise and expansion, regardless of their intent, if only for their being cast as ally or adversary of the utmost expression. One cannot but participate in the existential antinomy. This is markedly true if consent is manufactured (in-formed) among the passive majority content to wallow in the myriad distractions that a crass and permanent materialistic revolution has to offer.

Compulsorily, the NSS goes on to condemn the seemingly pervasive “racism and hate” lurking around every corner of the liberal-Marxist international order America has fashioned; not to be outdone, the “climate crisis,” too, is omnipresent. The American strategic approach promises to

engage constructively [with adversaries] whenever we can, not as a favor to us … but because it’s directly in our interest. No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues like the climate crisis because of bilateral differences…. Racism and hate have no place in a nation built by generations of immigrants…²⁰

Obligatory mentions of racial and climate crises are a clear indication the NSS could only have been written by members the burgeoning educated-unintelligent class who populate government and administration across the Americanized West.²¹ Such mentions would be seen as non sequiturs if it weren’t for the antinomic power-through-crisis approach manifest in the dialectic of liberal-Marxist life. Interesting, too, is the juxtaposition of the phrases “not as a favor to us” and “it’s directly in our interest.” Aside from the apparent contradiction, establishing a favorable international order is precisely the goal of not just the NSS but also all of government. When one reads comments, for instance, from the US Secretary of State and the Secretary General of NATO on the desperate situation in Ukraine, one can see that favor is curried and requisitioned from the American sphere. Standing side by side in 2024, Secretaries Blinken and Rutte offer their sage-like opinion that 18- to 25-year-old males really should be conscripted to serve as drone fodder for Americanized elites.²² One might find their position repulsive if it weren’t for its absolute necessity in a dehumanized world order. Then again, the Secretaries’ hobnobbing sentiment is obviously contrary to the NSS pronouncement that “[u]sing human beings as pawns is antithetical to American values and to the global order to which we aspire.”²³ Perhaps what Secretaries Blinken and Rutte truly mean is, “using human beings as pawns is acceptable when it perpetuates the global order to which we aspire.” The aspiration, of course, is the end of the system that perpetuates itself, which is the inescapable catch-22.

Laurence Goldstein summarizes the enormity of the most sinister of all catches: No mere dilemmatic catch, “Catch-22 is worse — a welter of words that amounts to nothing; it is without content, it conveys no information at all.”²⁴ Indeed, how can information be conveyed when the point is to avoid meaningful information altogether; the NSS continues: “This [strategic approach] is not about a struggle between the West and Russia. It is about the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, which Russia is a party to, particularly respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the prohibition against acquiring territory through war.”²⁵ The UN Charter was drafted by a committee of liberal-Marxists saturated in a globalistic euphoria nascent in the bosom of the victorious Allies — the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China, which comprise the UN Security Council. Mention of the UN Charter hearkens back to the document’s earlier statement that American actions are not done “as a favor to us” — since not only the drafting of political documents, but also their interpretation are always done with a sense of victory and partisan maneuvering, i.e., “as a favor to us.” Respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the acquisition of territory through war are all open to interpretation, and it is more than a little hypocritical that one world power can lecture another on their execution. Any consumer of Western propaganda would be shocked to find anything but pure perfection from their parent State and pure evil (i.e., rejection of “global norms” or the “international order”) from those who stand in supposed opposition to it. Yes, Russia annexed the Crimea — is it right to do so? The United States annexed most of Europe (if not the body, then certainly the soul) through NATO and various diplomatic, information, military, and economic incentives — is it right to do so? Who can say but the victors — i.e., the establishers of “global norms”? Clausewitz said that politics was simply war by other means; he was and remains correct. So how does one interpret “acquisition of territory through war”? It depends on the position of the speaker and listener, or producer and consumer, naturally. War is the flexing of political heft through all elements of State power. The United States knows this, but it would prefer the consumer think only of a physical battlefield — and certainly not of diplomatic, informational, and economic influence. This is what it means to manufacture consent, which is the basis of the aforementioned Americanized “informed consent.”

The foundation of liberal-Marxism is smoke and mirrors — a real catch-22 — meant to disarm the assailed for the benefit of the assailer. The wielder of liberal-Marxism — which is to say, any politician or flunky living today — cares only about increasing the specter of material power to perpetuate the enslaving system to which he too is subject.

The NSS is nonsensical divorced from its liberal-Marxist context. “In an ideal world,” it offers, “governments would compete responsibly where their interests diverge and cooperate where they converge…”²⁶ This statement echoes the tenor of the entire document and is nothing short of “a welter of words that amounts to nothing, … is without content [and] conveys no information at all.” Within the liberal-Marxist context, what does it mean to “compete responsibly”? From the American perspective it means competing in such a way that allows for the continuation of the status quo, which is the post-1945 (and especially post-1991) international order; and this is to say, to compete in such a way that “I win” — i.e., America wins. But this approach well defines all other political approaches, for the whole liberal-Marxist world. In this Kali Yuga it has become impossible to escape the absurdity of the existential antinomy, the catch-22. In the end, existential antinomy is the condition of the self — manifest in individual and collective forms — to subvert and, ultimately, destroy itself. Victory for the self in modernity is its soulless destruction. To achieve victory is to preclude victory; for no one in this liberal-Marxist world — which the world is, finally and for everyone — is anymore a sovereign. Sovereignty itself has become the means for existential thralldom.

Such welters of words that amount to nothing pervade the NSS, notably in the boast that “we ended America’s longest war, in Afghanistan.”²⁷ The government that began the war in Afghanistan brags about stopping it. Leave it to liberal-Marxist nonsensicality to prize its existential antinomy. Elsewhere we read of the United States’ efforts to counter corruption: “When government officials abuse public power for private gain, it degrades the business environment, subverts economic opportunity, and exacerbates inequality”²⁸ — perhaps, then, it is inappropriate for politicians to continually pardon known criminals, particularly when they are family or friends.²⁹ But this subversion of the “rule of law” will not stop — because “rule of law” means nothing beyond what those in power want it to mean. It is an empty phrase brandished by those who mean to maintain perceived power. The NSS mess continues:

We will not use our military to change regimes or remake societies, but instead limit the use of force to circumstances where it is necessary to protect our national security interests and consistent with international law…³⁰

What can one make of this statement? America is known — as are all States with the ability to project global power — for its consistent toppling of governments it finds disagreeable. Power is projected and regimes are overthrown with more than just military power — color revolutions are a fine example, sanctions are another. And international law — what is this but another meaningless concept? It bears all the meaning the violence of the espouser is able to put behind it. It is the attempt to find a material solution to a spiritual problem: pursuit of material power is meant to patch a soulless abyss that itself pursues its own dissolution. More welters of words: the NSS mentions Russia’s “invasion” or “war” nearly 30 times in 48 pages — but no other modern State has invaded or warred against other States/non-State actors more than the United States. All is smoke and mirrors — diversion and delusion.

The delusion continues: climate crisis is mentioned as “the existential challenge of our time.”³¹ It would seem, however, that the existential challenge of our time is the dissolution of self-as-spirit. No one will survive the Kali Yuga, and statements divorced from all reality such as “climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time” prove it. The global elite could — right now — take profoundly impactful steps toward curbing supposed manmade climate change: cease all production of fast food, junk food, and processed food; cease travel associated with sport, media, and filmmaking; halt all efforts to globalize societies (through diplomacy, information, military, and economy); cease mining and extracting fossil fuels; stop all mundane landscaping (e.g., the inane practice of watering lawns to make them grow so as to mow them down with gas-guzzling machines); stop all use of recreational vehicles, etc. The list could go on, but the point is made. None of these steps will ever be taken, however, because the liberal-Marxist world — through the loss of self — cares not a whit about supposed “climate change.” To stop any of the things listed would mean a grave disruption of the bread-and-circus assembly line that keeps the masses and their governments distracted from their very real enslavement to that which is beyond the self.³² When someone says, “I care about climate change” but does nothing to stop its supposed encroachment, what she is really saying is, “I embody the sovereignty of self-destruction.” This loss of self comes at the height of liberal-Marxist power pervading every government and society in the Kali Yuga.

Despite supreme liberal-Marxist power — though likely because of it — climate change, pandemics, and migration issues are seen as cross-border “challenges.”³³ This is to say that these issues are transnational or global; far be it from the global elite, however, to highlight that such problems arise from the very globalization that benefits the elite. Problems are problems when they are problematic for us — this is modernity’s mantra; more than this, however, it is the mantra of consciousness itself. Existence is predicated on the existential antinomy: we are here to usher in our replacement — i.e., we are here to end our selves.³⁴ This is why reality is so incredibly preposterous: our entire being is a catch-22.

“We will encourage economic and political reforms that help unlock [a] region’s potential,” the Americanizing strategy states.³⁵ This means that strict globalization will be enforced to benefit the investing power; dividends are sought in the form of monetary and human capital: globalization is a system meant to eliminate itself by eliminating the human spirit preceding it. This is to say that the problems globalization generates are the incentives to pursue further globalization to mitigate the problems future globalization generates. It is a cycle that will not end — no matter the manifestation of the liberal-Marxist idea — until man is replaced by that which he exists to create.

Conclusion

Every new American presidential administration publishes its National Security Strategy. Personnel change, but the task remains the same: embody the antinomy that sits as the foundation for the end of the human spirit. Americanization is the utmost manifestation of the utmost manifestation of the will on earth; this is why it engulfs the globe and will continue to do so until what is left of humanity finally submits to its deadening norms. Americanization is the death of the soul, which is precisely what the inhuman will destined to overtake us demands. Perhaps one day prevailing self-interest can make room for the self-awareness needed to sense nonsensicality, or at least hypocrisy. But this would mean the end of the existential antinomy, which is being itself.

Footnotes

1. Unless we say that America’s culture is no-culture.
2. Sommer, The Electric Will (soon to be published).
3. Iran, for instance, is hounded for establishing a government that shed its colonial past and for existing in the vicinity of Israel. A country that has been surrounded by hostile American power (Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east), Iran acts to preserve its interests. Doing so, however, ensures further hostility. National Security Strategy (2022), 42: “[The United States] will continue to work with allies and partners to enhance their capabilities to deter and counter Iran’s destabilizing activities. We will pursue diplomacy to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, while remaining postured and prepared to use other means should diplomacy fail.”
4. Merriam-Webster’s definition.
5. Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (1929), “Introduction.”
6. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 1961), 398.
7. James Combs & Dan Nimmo, The Comedy of Democracy (Praeger, 1996), 152.
8. Sommer, The New Colossus (Arktos, 2024) and The Electric Will (soon to be published).
9. National Security Strategy (2022), 21; all subsequent NSS citations are from the 2022 version.
10. Hartung and Fisher, “When 80 percent of US generals go to work for arms makers” (2023), Responsible Statecraft; Summers, “The Pentagon’s Revolving Door Keeps Spinning: 2021 in Review” (2022), POGO.
11. Kostro and White, “Is there a ‘revolving door’ between private companies and the Pentagon?” (2023), Federal News Network.
12. NSS, 11-12.
13. NSS, 12.
14. NSS, 13; also peppered throughout the document.
15. NSS, 16.
16. NSS, 17.
17. Sommer, The New Colossus and The Electric Will.
18. NSS, 20.
19. When victory is never defined it is difficult to appraise defeat. Given the “criticality of a vibrant Defense Industrial Base,” victory might well have less to do with battlefield gains and more to do with war profiteering. One of America’s few soldiers to win the Medal of Honor twice, Major General (ret.) Smedley Butler, incisively examined war profiteering in his War is a Racket (1935).
20. NSS, 25.
21. Sommer, The New Colossus.
22. Pamuk, “Blinken says Ukraine needs to get younger people fighting Russia” (2024), Reuters.
23. NSS, 30.
24. Laurence Goldstein, “The Barber, Russell’s Paradox, Catch-22, God, Contradiction and More: A Defence of a Wittgensteinian Conception of Contradiction,” from The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays (Oxford University, 2004), 300.
25. NSS, 25-26.
26. NSS, 27.
27. NSS, 30.
28. NSS, 36.
29. Kochi, “Who did Donald Trump pardon? What to know about Charles Kushner, Steve Bannon, other top allies” (2024), USA Today; Miller, “Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges not to” (2024), Associated Press.
30. NSS, 43.
31. NSS, 27.
32. Sommer, The Electric Will.
33. NSS, 35.
34. Sommer, The Electric Will.
35. NSS, 43.