Both the identity of the powerful, even hegemonic nation known as “the United States of America” has, since the nation’s origins, been fraught with an underlying ambiguity. As a political entity, a people and a culture, how can it be defined? How do we even talk about it?

A simple linguistic reason may explain why the US and its inhabitants have always struggled to define their nation’s unique essence. In France everything is French, in Spain Spanish, in England English, in China Chinese and so on. But few people are tempted to describe everything in the United States as United Statesian. Other nations with more than one word in their title have managed to produce an adjective to describe what is theirs. Everything in the Soviet Union (actually four words making up the acronym USSR) was Soviet.

Before declaring its independence in 1776, people referred to the society established on the east coast of North America as England’s American colonies or New England. With independence, people did begin using the adjective American to talk about themselves, their land and their culture. When, just a few years later, they drafted their constitution, they nevertheless understood that the land could not be called America. The name was already taken. It belonged to the entire continent.

The founders conceived of the new entity not necessarily as a new nation state but as a rather loose federation of largely independent states. This created a level of ambiguity about political authority that was resolved only at the end of the Civil War in 1865. In that conflict, the “Unionists” defeated the “Confederates” and imposed a new idea of national identity that, at least theoretically, gave priority to homogeneity over heterogeneity.

The nation, never totally sure of itself, has nevertheless continued to struggle to define its essence. Leaders and commentators have offered their vision of the nation’s essence, which they see as distinct from its government.

• “Let me tell you, it’s also great to leave Washington once in awhile and see what the real America is up to.” (President Ronald Reagan)
• “ …what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” (Sarah Palin)
• “The Real America is a physical presence that we’ll actually achieve if we want it.” (Glenn Beck)

The expression “the real America” clearly appeals to Republicans and conservatives more than to Democrats and liberals. Republican President Donald Trump has taken the mission one step further. Instead of invoking real America like Reagan, Bush or even Nixon’s “silent majority,” Trump embodies it. Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone notes Trump’s success in transmitting his vision in the AI-generated video he produced to promote his campaign to invest in a Trumpian “Riviera” in Gaza. Here is how Johnstone describes the video:

“That one video, all by itself,” Johnstone explains, “tells you more about what the US empire really is than every movie its PR agents in Hollywood have ever produced. This is the real America. This is the real Israel. This is the real empire.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

The real America:

A hyperreal construct that floats in the brains of every US citizen and exists in a wide variety of forms, all of which are hyper and none of which is real.

Contextual note

Johnstone pulls no punches in her description of Trump’s AI-assisted creation. “This video is simultaneously the most American thing that has ever happened and the most Israeli thing that has ever happened. Fake. Gaudy. Sociopathic. Genocidal. Emblematic of all the ugliest values that both dystopian civilizations have come to embody.” What she’s signaling is not only that the “real America” is now hyperreal America, but that Trump’s version has entered a new dimension. It is positively surreal.

The notions of “hyperreal” and “surreal,” though related, are distinct. Hyperreality implies the creation of a simulacrum that becomes the dominant reference within a culture. That means people are more likely to take their bearings and frame their understanding of the world from the various forms of hyperreality they are exposed to than from the world itself. Advertising, television news, movies, political slogans, fads, influencers, ideology created a powerful layer of interpretation that obscures our direct perception of phenomena in the world. For example, governments are real. They are structures of discourse and organization that exist as an active feature of every society. There is a reality of politics. But as soon as we begin to focus on that reality, we find forms of hyperreality: parties and patterns of discourse that we “believe in” despite the fact that they contradict what we can see. If you look closely at the government in a “democracy” like the US, you will discover multiple levels of manipulation and corruption that prove, as some studies have shown, the existence of a different reality: that the US political system functions as an oligarchy.

When a politician like former President Joe Biden talks about rivalry with Russia or China, he doesn’t call it a combat between oligarchy and autocracy. He insists on calling it a battle between democracy and autocracy. How much traction might he get for imposing sanctions and supporting wars against autocracies if he identified the combat as one that in reality is designed to promote our sacred commitment to oligarchy?

Historical note

As noted above, during the 19th century, US citizens’ perception of their nation’s identity shifted, even in terms of their understanding of the two words that compose the country’s name. From an image grounded initially in the plural noun “States,” the essence focused on the notion of being “United,” as if “e pluribus unum” (“out of many one”) described not a fixed relationship but a dynamic process unfolding over a century.

In the process, a new inclusive image of everyone’s idea of ”real America” emerged. In the aftermath of the Civil War, patriotism took on a new definition at the same time as industrial capitalism began to dominate a formerly agricultural economy. The trauma of a fragmented nation during the Civil War led to the drafting of the now hallowed “Pledge of Allegiance,” an incantation expressing loyalty to the flag designed to condition successive generations of schoolchildren to think of themselves as members of the “exceptional nation,” the same that politicians would one day ritualistically invoke as “the greatest nation in the history of the world.”

With the second coming of Donald Trump, the question of what the “real America” may mean has moved on to acquire a dimension that can only be described as surreal. This is what Johnstone sees represented in Trump’s Gaza Riviera video.

Trump’s first term consolidated the hyperreality associated with the “greatest nation in history” meme. In his second term, the hyperreal has become surreal. Just like the projected image of Trump’s Gaza Rivera, his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America signaled that we have now entered a new age, in which the very idea of “real America” has taken on a surreal dimension. This at a time when Trump has transformed the formerly modest hyperreal Elon Musk into a surreal cartoon character managing the government of the world’s richest country.

When I interrogated ChatGPT about the historical emergence of the now obligatory catch phrase, “the greatest nation in the history of the world,” it confirmed my own observations. The use of this phrase is a very recent phenomenon. “By the 1990s and especially after 9/11, the phrase became a near-mandatory conclusion in political speeches, alongside ‘God bless America.’ The competitive nature of political campaigns now makes it risky for politicians not to assert U.S. supremacy.”

Ever since the first election of Trump, his opponents have attempted to bridle his power to transform reality with “reality checks.” It’s a vain effort in a society that has become fundamentally hyperreal. What we may need now is something new: a surreality check.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.