VIDEO: YOU BECOME WHAT YOU PRETEND TO BE

Episode 429 of 455 · · 7:12

Propaganda-style poster of three determined faces under a waving flag: "The Chris Abraham Show Video."

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“You become what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

In The Great Patriotic Heist, I argued that the American Left has begun performing patriotism — not feeling it, performing it. The same institutions that once mocked the flag now wrap themselves in it, speaking solemnly about “our Republic” and “the unfinished promise of 1776.” It’s not rediscovered affection — it’s narrative survival. The populist Right took the flag hostage, so the only way to reclaim it was to start waving their own. My warning then was simple: performance has a half-life. It either collapses or becomes real.

This episode is about what happens if it becomes real — if people pretending to love America start actually loving it. Here, pretending isn’t lying — it’s creation. We perform ideals until they exist. We said “all men are created equal” long before we believed it, and through repetition made it partly true. America evolves not through honesty but rehearsal.

Sartre called it “bad faith.” Not hypocrisy, but self-entrapment — when you play a role so long you forget it’s a choice. America’s moral managers — experts, editors, educators — now perform patriotism because they know you can’t govern people who think you hate their country. But repetition changes people. Roles have gravity. Pretending shapes the pretender.

What happens when actors start believing their own script? When “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the Republic” stop being props and start being convictions again? Maybe the costume fuses to the skin. Maybe the same Left that once saw America as villain becomes its strictest guardian. That fusion could create something new — not the populist Right’s raw nationalism nor the technocratic Left’s therapy-state, but a hybrid: moral nationalism wrapped in empathy, managed through control.

That’s the Hegelian rhythm — thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was neoliberal order: global, expert, moralized. The antithesis was populism — Left and Right fusing in rebellion. For a moment, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke the same language of revolt: different grammar, same fury. That was synthesis one — populism as authenticity, revolt against curated virtue.

But populism became self-aware. Its anger turned ritual, its authenticity cosplay. MAGA became fandom. Once authenticity becomes aesthetic, the establishment knows how to sell it back. Enter synthesis two: Progressive Patriotism — focus-grouped, diverse, emotionally ergonomic. Patriotism as lifestyle brand.

It looks real, sounds real, even feels real — but it’s patriotic the way a corporate mission statement is heartfelt. Still, America’s hunger for sincerity is so deep even simulation can work. If enough people perform belief, it becomes belief.

Picture 2026 — the 250th anniversary. “America 250” events: diverse, polished, professional. Fireworks with spoken-word poetry. Speeches about freedom delivered like mindfulness apps. It’ll be immaculate — and in some way, it might succeed. Millions will feel pride, gratitude, even tears. The performance may cross into faith.

And when belief hardens, rebellion returns. Every orthodoxy breeds heresy. Somewhere, a younger generation is already rolling its eyes at both MAGA’s nostalgia and the Left’s choreography. They’ll want danger, not safety; truth, not optics. Their patriotism, if it exists, will be quiet, personal, unbranded.

That’s the American cycle: imitation becomes belief, belief institution, and institutions rebellion’s target. Each generation pretends until the mask becomes its face — then rips it off.

Maybe progressive patriotism sticks. Maybe the country becomes gentler, managerial, moralistic — a nation of caretakers with flags. But someone will always stand up, roll their eyes, and say “enough.”

Because America’s soul belongs to the unmanageable — the ones who stop pretending.

And that, in the end, was Sartre’s warning: the danger isn’t pretending. It’s when the pretending works.

Transcript

Read the full transcript (1,293 words, machine made)

So today we're going to dig into this really fascinating and kind of weird political shift that's happening in America. We're seeing national symbols get fought over, reclaimed and maybe maybe even reinvented right before our eyes. Let's get into it. And, you know, this whole idea is perfectly framed by this powerful thought from the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. He's basically warning us that a performance, if you keep it up long enough, can become your reality. Seriously, keep this quote in your back pocket because it is the key to everything we're about to unpack. So what is this strange thing that's happening? Well, all of a sudden, the American left seems to be embracing patriotic symbols that it's treated with suspicion for a long time.

You know, the flag quotes from the founders talk about our Republic. The analysis we're exploring today offers two really powerful and competing theories for why this is going on, and we are going to break them both down. All right, So First things first, let's talk about the idea that connects both of these theories. Performance. Is this a genuine change of heart, or is it a calculated political act, you know, a role being played on a national stage?

Now, the analysis we're looking at says this goes way deeper than just, you know, hypocrisy. The idea is that an entire class of people, the moral managers, are trying on a patriotic costume, and the performance is so convincing, it might just become real. Think of it this way. It's like an atheist who memorizes all the church hymns just to fit in, but then one day he's singing and realizes he actually feels something. The performance becomes the belief. And what's really interesting here is how this plugs right into Sartre's concept of bad faith. And get this, it's not about lying to other people. It's about lying to yourself.

It's that moment when you play a role, a waiter, a patriot, whatever, so completely that you forget you ever chose to play it in the first place. And the argument is, America has a long history of doing this, pretending to be a nation of equals, and in doing so imperfectly becoming one. Pretending isn't just a lie, it's a creative act. OK, so let's get into our first theory, which the source calls the Great Patriotic Heist. The argument here is that the left isn't rediscovering patriotism because it feels all warm and fuzzy. Nope.

Instead, it's a strategic theft born from a sheer panic over losing control of the national story. To really get this theory, we got to do a quick Philosophy 101 with a guy named Hegel. He had this idea called the dialectic. It's a pattern of change. You start with a big dominant idea.

That's the thesis. That idea then creates an opposing force, the antithesis, and the conflict between those two resolves into something totally new, a synthesis, which then becomes the new thesis. And on and on it goes. In this slide, it lays out exactly how that heist theory uses this pattern. The thesis was that kind of technocratic moral order of the 20 tens, the antithesis.

Well, that was the populist revolt against it. And so the new synthesis, according to this theory, is the left trying to absorb all that populist energy by stealing its patriotic symbols. So what's the end result here? Well, according to this theory, it's something called synthetic patriotism. This isn't your messy, spontaneous love of country. This is a managed corporate brand of national pride. The source even calls it the United States of HR, where freedom basically means having a safe space to perform all the correct virtues.

And here's the big warning that comes with this whole heist idea. The danger isn't that the performance fails. No, the real danger is that it actually works, that it becomes a kind of patriotism that's bureaucratic, that demands compliance and is enforced from the top down. A patriotism of policy, not of passion. OK, so let's switch gears and look at the second theory. This one offers a totally different take, the reinvention. This perspective argues that what looks like a cynical performance is actually something much more hopeful, the awkward but totally necessary first step of civic renewal. The big idea here is that sometimes belief follows the ritual, right?

Like we learned the songs before we actually feel the lyrics. This theory says America has to act patriotic to remember how to be patriotic. So what one side calls mimicry, this side calls developing civic muscle memory. And this timeline, it really puts this whole moment into historical context. It shows that, hey, the meaning of patriotism, it's never been set in stone.

It's been a form of rebellion, a kind of collectivist duty, a target of counter cultural revolt. And now what they're calling a reclamation project. The flag has always been contested, ground redefined by every single generation. So why might this be a real reinvention and not just a ploy? Well, this theory gives a few key reasons. For one, it's an admission that guilt alone can't hold a country together.

It's an attempt to expand the American story to include more voices. And crucially, it recognizes that politics is about emotion and narrative. I mean, you can't govern a story you refuse to even tell. All right, So now we've got 2 very different ways of looking at the exact same thing. One sees a cynical heist, the other sees a sincere reinvention.

Let's put them side by side and see the two, well, really different futures they predict for America. This chart just lays it all out. The fundamental divide. Is the motivation a panic to control the story or is it actual moral growth? Is the whole process just a branding exercise or is it a form of civic education?

And look at the potential dangers. The heist theory fears a world of sincerity by decree, while the reinvention theory warns of a preachy, know it all kind of patriotism. So look, this whole debate, it's about way more than just political strategy. This is about the fundamental question of how America tells its own story and who gets to be the author of that story. And this might be the most profound take away of all.

The goal might not be to find the one true meaning of American patriotism. Instead, maybe the story of America is this endless cycle of argument, performance, and redefinition, the exhaustion we all feel from the constant debate. Maybe that isn't a sign of failure. Maybe it's a sign that the system is actually working. And think about it, this process has been going for almost 250 years.

The central argument here is that the flag and the Republic itself have only survived precisely because they remain contested ground, meaning different things to different people. This really gets to the heart of the more optimistic Take the reinvention theory, the fact that even the critics can eventually reclaim national symbols and find a way to love the country in their own language. That's not a weakness. The argument is that's the nation's greatest, most resilient strength. So in the end, we're left to wrestle with this one last really provocative question.

Is this new patriotism a performance or a genuine reinvention? And that forces us to choose which is worse, a slightly artificial performed unity that papers over our divisions, or facing the terrifying truth of just how deep those divisions really run. The answer, whatever it is, is probably going to define the next chapter of the American story.