During the recent Republican presidential debate — otherwise dull without frontrunner Donald Trump there — one exchange especially stood out.
It came when former Vice President Mike Pence took issue with Vivek Ramaswamy’s claim that America was gripped by a national identity crisis.
"We’re not looking for a new national identity," responded Pence, dismissing the notion out of hand.
To which Vivek countered: "It is not morning in America. We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war."
If the polls are any indication, Vivek has the better of the argument.
Far from being morning in America anymore, for many Americans it feels closer to midnight.
As the country they once knew is now a foreign land, one that they do not recognize any longer, and which increasingly does not recognize them.
And while Americans once knew who they were, what they stood for, and their place in the world, now the very idea of America itself and what means to be an American has come under serious question.
America has entered what the Italian writer and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci once called the "time of monsters."
That dangerous and chaotic interregnum between the old world dying, and the new world struggling to be born, when everything is in flux.
Throughout history, this has been a time of crisis when the old shibboleths and gods die, while new ones, Gramsci’s monsters, fight to emerge as the new dominant ideology.
And indeed, monsters are already rising to fill the void.
The most conspicuous perhaps being that of "wokeism"; a form of quasi-religious cultural Marxism.
Though as undoubtedly absurd as wokeism may be to many, its power and influence should not be underestimated.
For young people especially who feel confused and adrift in today’s world it holds a seductive appeal.
As it offers a sense of purpose and group belonging, the opportunity to engage in something bigger than themselves, and to be consequential, even revolutionary.
It even comes complete with a compelling and unifying mythology, including a new great war against an existential threat in the form climate change, and an animating crusade for social justice.
It also has its own burgeoning pantheon of martyrs and heroes, granting disciples the potential to become woke immortals in a New America.
Finally, it offers the opportunity for revenge against those they have been taught to most resent — the ones they blame for the fallen world bestowed to them.
By contrast, Mike Pence, and others like him on the Republican debate stage offer nothing more than slight tweaks to an operating system that many believe is already obsolete and has long since lost its resonance.
And while Pence speaks of tax cuts and other vestiges of Reagan conservatism, the other side uses any means necessary to achieve its revolutionary ends, including, as we have already seen, locking up political opponents, burning down cities, and doing away completely with democracy whenever it gets in their way.
Pence and those like him fiddle while Rome burns, and the barbarians are already inside the gates.
No, as Gramsci knew, the only way to truly slay the monster of wokeism, and those like it, is with an even stronger and more compelling monster that is put forward with the same conviction, uncompromising strength, and devotion.
This monster though must be tied not to historical grievance like that of wokeism, but to the revival of national greatness, and steeped deeply in the passions of American patriotism.
Indeed, America was once defined by its greatness and its boundless ambition with a people that in only a couple hundred years accomplished vastly more than other countries have in thousands.
And to be an American citizen was to be the very envy of the world.
Now, however, America is defined by its dysfunction and decline, by the rampant crime, filth, and drugs that infests its crumbling streets, the hatred for its own glorious past and people, and for the lunacy taught and inflicted daily upon its very own children.
In this respect, Vivek is again correct — this is a 1776 moment.
For in a very real sense America stands at a historic crossroads, and if patriotic Americans do not decide the direction and become a founding generation, their nation and future will be decided for them, as is already occurring.
In the time of monsters one either devours or is devoured.
Unlike Pence, Vivek at least knows what time it is.
Lee Steinhauer is a strategic policy and political consultant known for his book "The Art of The New Cold War: America vs China. What America Must Do to Win." Lee is a frequent guest on Fox, Fox Business, Newsmax, and a published policy and opinion writer for numerous media publications. Read Lee Steinhauer's Reports — More Here.
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