An Unpopular Opinion on Pragmatic Patriotism

Reading Ray Dalio’s Changing World Order solidified my thoughts about America’s future trajectory. While I don’t necessarily believe that China has a guaranteed spot as the next world power, America the great’s time is coming to an end. Holding a spot as the most influential country in the world is a precarious position. With enough turbulence a downfall is certain. The last 8 years in American Politics have been extremely tumultuous and likely aren’t getting better. Furthermore, they have been arguably ineffectual in in making progress in societal issues such as the impending climate crisis, pervasive systematic racism, endless gun violence, an ineffective health care system, and so on. Any small progress made in one area can be swiftly undone due to the swing of the political pendulum. With the big election year coming up, what is the best way to make the most of your vote?

The freedom of being able to ponder the state of your country, then cast a vote to choose its direction has quite some appeal to it. This was the whole idea of the American experiment, the greatest democracy in the world. A country led by the people. Now, my life only spans a few decades, so I won’t claim that democracy in America never worked. In fact, I would like to think that in the past, America was quite a great country. The infrastructure allowed immigrants to move from lacking countries, and if they were willing to work hard, they could change the future of their descendants for generations. But the golden days have come and gone.

So what is the state of the democracy now? It’s just a war waged with information, not a path to a better future. The information age is driving rapid changes in society, with every state headed in a different direction (or multiple). The federal government has the impossible task of choosing a unified direction for the country. A country that is just to big and moves too slow to keep up with the times. Your vote goes up but nothing will come back down. Like I said earlier, it is hard to progress past a net cancellation effect, as the pendulum swings to and fro. I could be accused of being overly cynical, but I see myself as more of a pragmatist. I don’t look at the situation through rose colored glasses and see things as I would like them to be. I look at actual facts, then choose the best course of action from there. So here is what I came up with.

Before casting your vote, my first suggestion is to throw out your political ideologies. Your mind is probably not as free as you think. America is getting killed by the information age. With the rise of social media, most citizens live in some kind of informational echo chamber. Depending on what information you click, your data is collected. Based on this data, you are subsequently fed more and more polarized information. The rate at which information is fed to us is faster than ever before. There is simply not time to sort through it and decide which is true. So the easiest path is to accept it at face value. However, the ones feeding you the information are not incentivized by your best interest, but by money. And objective truth isn’t the most profitable. Otherwise pure scientists would be rich. Combine this phenomenon with American value of self-autonomy, creating ones own destiny and ideals and you have a perfect storm. A whole society with their heads so far up their asses that they destroy the one thing that makes a society a society, relationships. Furthermore, societal problems are so complex that it is highly unlikely that one of the completely opposing viewpoints of the two parties could provide an optimal solution. Your political ideologies are probably not just far from being correct, but also toxic. They tear apart your family, raise your blood pressure, and lower your life expectancy. So just throw them out.

My second suggestion, which is the main premise of this post, is to vote for the most polarizing destructive candidate. Yes, you heard me correctly. Prioritize voting in the most destructive candidate, especially if they upend our constitution and our countries political foundations. Left, right, it doesn’t matter. America won’t be able to make meaningful progress until our foundations are restructured. And new governments don’t come so easily. Despite many Americans thinking they can win an armed conflict against the government, they don’t realize there is predator drone aimed right up their butthole at all times. Anyone these days can be simply eliminated with a press of a button. So the The best course of action would be to let the government just destroy itself. Inflame the extremists and stir the pot. Push the inevitable toward completion and await the rebirth of the phoenix. The most patriotic stance one can take is to do all that is in their power to push towards a better America.

In conclusion, the most patriotic act we can take in this chaotic and polarized time is to embrace the destruction that seems inevitable. By voting for the most divisive and destructive candidate, we are not surrendering to chaos but rather hastening the necessary collapse of a system that no longer serves its people. It is only through this dismantling that a new, more resilient America can emerge—one that is better equipped to tackle the challenges of the future. In the meantime, we can laugh at all this mess and chaos we have gotten ourselves into. Not only will it lower your blood pressure and increase your life expectancy, it will also help you take the political situation less seriously, which will improve your relationships with those around you. After all, it is through these connections that we will ultimately rebuild the nation.