Chapter 5, Section IV. The Great Abstraction: Other Countries as Myths
- john raymond
- Jul 15
- 4 min read
The modern American does not live in the world. He lives in a highly edited story about the world, a curated narrative in which other countries exist mostly as metaphors, costumes, or jokes. Technically, Americans know that other nations are real. But culturally, they do not believe in their realness. They do not imagine those nations as complex strategic actors with evolving intentions, histories, and tools. To most, Canada is a sitcom. Mexico is a punchline. England is an upstairs-downstairs fantasy. China is a logo on a box, and Russia—despite everything—is still, somehow, either a vague Cold War memory or a cartoon villain from a bad thriller. These places don’t feel present. They feel like backdrops.
This is not just a cultural quirk. It is a fatal vulnerability in a world defined by asymmetric warfare. Americans are now actively losing a war they cannot see because they cannot grant reality to the people waging it.
We are a people deeply fluent in pop culture and emotionally illiterate in geopolitics. When Americans talk about foreign countries, they often do so not to understand them, but to use them symbolically in domestic debates. Sweden becomes a utopian foil. Venezuela becomes a failed state allegory. Israel is collapsed into an American identity crisis. These countries are not encountered on their own terms. They are harvested for meaning in America’s internal dramas.
This flattening of foreign reality leads to abstraction in the most dangerous sense: a condition in which other countries are viewed as thematic, not strategic. And once a people stop seeing other nations as real, they stop preparing for those nations to act.
This is especially true in the case of Russia—a country that has not just “expanded influence” but launched a strategic, coordinated, and ongoing campaign of psychological, cyber, and institutional warfare against the United States. Russia didn’t just meddle. It attacked our elections. It didn’t just spy. It infiltrated our systems, probed our divides, and empowered a compromised figure who continues to serve its interests: Donald Trump.
Trump is not a question mark. He is not a riddle to be solved. His pattern is known. Again and again, he advances Putin’s goals: undermining NATO, casting doubt on U.S. intelligence, echoing Kremlin talking points, and fracturing the Western alliance.
Whether you call it collaboration, alignment, or active compromise, the effect is the same. Russia has a voice in American leadership. And yet to say this aloud, clearly and unambiguously, still feels too bold for most of the American press and political class. Why? Because doing so would require Americans to see Russia not as a leftover cliché—but as a real, present-tense adversary with strategic depth.
This blindness is not limited to Russia. China has long moved with precision across economic, legal, and digital terrain—but is still imagined primarily as a factory or a boogeyman. Iran, a deeply sophisticated regional actor with a powerful influence web stretching across the Middle East and into Africa, is often reduced to religious caricatures.
The idea that Iran and Russia could be coordinating with China in response to U.S. weakness? That’s not how Americans think. Not because it's wrong, but because it’s unimaginable within the myth-world they live in.
And so when these countries act with coherence and intent—when Russia tightens its grip on African mineral corridors; when China surrounds Taiwan; when Iran arms militias from Yemen to the West Bank—Americans are stunned. We fumble to interpret it. We default to confusion or to the assumption that it’s not really about us. But it is about us. These are acts of global position, soft encirclement, asymmetric pressure. This is strategy. We just don’t see it, because we have stopped seeing other nations as having strategy at all.
Our entertainment culture is partly to blame. Foreign countries appear in films and TV shows not as entities but as vibes. Russia is snow, vodka, and bad accents. China is martial arts or corporate dystopia. Africa is either a safari or a charity case. The result is a subconscious association: foreign nations are not living spaces full of people with plans and agency. They are sets. Aesthetic elements. When these “sets” suddenly start talking back, moving troops, sabotaging systems, or buying influence—it doesn’t compute. We gasp. We change the channel. We accuse our enemies of “coming out of nowhere.”
But they didn’t. We just weren’t looking.
This perceptual failure extends to the press. American media, even at its best, rarely invests in real international coverage. Foreign news is treated as a luxury, or as seasoning for domestic conflict. Most coverage of global issues is either sensational (crises, coups, and catastrophes) or decorative (royals, fashion, travel). Few outlets explain foreign policy as a system. Fewer still portray foreign leaders as long-range thinkers who outmaneuver the U.S. on soft power, regional alliances, or technological leverage. Instead, we’re left with scattered glimpses—too fragmented to form strategy, too superficial to build vigilance.
And adversaries know this. They exploit it. They craft propaganda that flatters our mythologies or exploits our ignorance. They disguise psychological operations as cultural moments. They speak in terms that reinforce our fiction. They appear absurd or contradictory—on purpose—because they understand that when the American mind is confused, it retreats into what it already “knows”: stereotypes, jokes, and cinematic tropes. This is asymmetric advantage. And they have it.
The deeper truth is that Americans suffer from a form of cultural solipsism. We unconsciously assume that agency belongs to us—that other countries react, rather than act. When they resist, we are shocked. When they plan, we are dismissive. When they win, we claim victimhood. This is not just arrogance. It is dangerous self-deception. If we cannot see the other players on the board, we will never understand why we are losing.
To survive the 21st century, Americans must regain the ability to see other nations not as tropes, but as realities. Not as metaphors, but as strategists. We must learn to read intention, not just headlines. We must be able to interpret strategy, not just conflict. Because if we continue to treat other countries as myths, we will miss the fact that they are moving, reacting, surrounding, and advancing.
And we will stand confused, wondering why the world slipped out from under us—again.
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