Our Deracinated State

Identity, Consumerism, and the LARP

There has been much discussion as of late over the subject of American identity, and what the future may hold as America slides further into a cosmopolitan arena of ethnic spoils systems, consultants with subsidies for DEI, and gross negligence as well as destruction of the actual history of the American Nation. At the Old Glory Club we tend to make it an unofficial editorial policy to stay positive, but I am obliged today to write about our deracinated state as Americans and perhaps to look towards solutions to this ongoing crisis of identity.

What prompted this was a pair of dialogues hosted at IM-1776 over the future of American identity, the possibilities for an ethnogenesis, and potential solutions. The first discussion was between Lafayette Lee and Darryl Cooper. The second was inspired by Scott Greer’s response to this initial dialogue, and here Greer was joined by Benjamin Roberts along with Lee and Cooper. In the renewed debate and discussion over the future of American identity, Greer (with whom I don’t always agree) made the following point:

There isn’t an ethnic or a particularist identity at this level. Texas’s identity, for many of its residents, is more about Buc-ee’s than the Alamo. Anyone can assimilate to that shallow identity. A lot of leaders in small towns care more about business interests than preserving some sense of cultural homogeneity.

While I’ve covered the business model and high-trust simulation machine that is Buc-ee’s, it is certainly no substitute for truly rooted identity. However, as I noted in that very recent article, Americans have been so thoroughly brought into the consumer identitarianism that comes with regional brands and franchises. The panelists in this IM-1776 discussion do all come to the same conclusion, though: that White Americans are the most deracinated people in the Western world. It is important to take stock of this, something even Alexis de Tocqueville identified in his visits to America nearly two hundred years ago.