Writing · 2025/04/21
America’s Interior and the Turn to Populism
What happens when a country forgets the interior that still belongs to it?
America spent too much time hanging out with countries that don’t have any interior—because it was convenient and easy, and because it saw Russia, India, and China as competitors or enemies—that it forgot it still has an interior of its own. What fertile ground for populism.
But what is left of American culture except the coastal and globalized ones? There are so many problems that are either real or portrayed to be real in Middle America. But where does it go after solving these problems? There isn’t a positive model for the future.
So populism has to look to the past. Although U.S. history is short, it is still rich—and even richer when it includes historical perceptions that weren’t true. Then it becomes a fight for originality and fundamentalism, and it never ends: people calling each other revisionists.