> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://cul-de-sac-1.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Resistance - URL: https://cul-de-sac-1.ghost.io/resistance/ - Published: 2026-10-08T21:03:13.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T04:56:21.000Z - Author: Cul-De-Sac - Tags: Issue #4 By Diane George ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0f/fb/0ffb780d-0893-4716-b8e5-64f7a6ae13d8/content/images/2026/10/gbxfbxb---copia.jpeg) Subway, New York City, 2026 (Kelly Britt) I spent some years of my life as an archaeologist excavating sites in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere in New York City, where I was drawn to its revolutionary history. My work in this largely overlooked era of New York’s past has been informing my thoughts about political resistance today. In particular, I’ve been contemplating the reality of rebellion and the way that American mythology blunts the capacity of resistance to bring about justice. There is an enduring myth that underlies patriotic American nationalism. That myth insists upon an unchallengeable narrative of exceptional American historical destiny that gives the American state the unquestionable entitlement and obligation to exert global military and economic domination across historical time and space. The intensity with which this conviction is held by so many Americans and its imperviousness to challenge are tokens not of confidence and successful merit but of desperate brittleness and fragility. Most American schoolchildren are taught that the Revolutionary War was fought to liberate the United States from British domination. In other words, they are taught that unchallengeable American state power was always an inevitable historical fact and that neither this country nor order around the world could exist without it. While much teaching about the causes of the American War of Independence has become more complex, my research shows that it still includes this idea at its core. *\[W\]hat had begun as an argument over the ability and right to levy taxes expanded into a conflict over the right of self-determination and freedom *that would lead to* the Revolutionary War and American independence* (American Battlefield Trust “Causes of the War” learning module, 2026, emphasis added). But if what emerged on the other side of the war was the inevitable nation, why did Washington speak of his deep anxiety over the nation’s future and Madison worry about “the spirit of locality” destroying the national community? Why did the new state and federal governments have to send troops to put down the working-class Shay’s and Whiskey Rebellions? Why were there such passionate fights over the direction the new government would take – unity under a strong federal government or a loose confederation of states retaining the bulk of political power? The country almost fell apart over this issue in the 1800 presidential election in which Jefferson, a democratic republican, beat the Federalist John Adams but reached a stalemate against his own running mate Aaron Burr, who was supported by Federalists. The historical record does not exhibit the emergence of an organic democratic American nationalism naturally conforming to what the scholar Benedict Anderson meant by would-be citizens creating by deliberation and consent the “imagined community” of a nation state. The material culture from New York City archaeological sites dating back to post-Revolutionary War period give us an inkling of how a national identity of exceptionalism was created, whose interests it served, and what characteristics it embodied. Excavations on sites from the East River ports where ships brought commodities as well as captive Africans show us that the wealthy merchants who lived there consumed material goods that played a role in building a very particular version of a nation. Peter Schermerhorn, among the elite of the elite, owned eagle-themed wares, including expensive porcelain tea wares, representing unity, and decorative plates with a memorial to Washington after his death. The latter includes a little bit of everything: neoclassical mourning symbols, Washington as sacred, the eagle from the Great Seal, Columbia, the neoclassical goddess increasingly used to represent the US and tie her to classical civilization…. and on the horizon, a faint image that, on closer examination, can be identified as a merchant vessel— Commerce! Similarly, Cortlandt Van Beuren, a wealthy merchant who did business with the Caribbean and Europe and was active in New York politics as a democratic republican, used objects for dining and decoration that show his belief in enough unity to create sufficient stability for commerce but not so much federal control as to limit this endeavor. Overall, two significant and connected themes are evident in the iconography of this period. The first is American exceptionalism, shown through deification of the founders and the mythologizing of the nation’s origins. These objectives are achieved through Greek and Roman goddesses, angels, trumpets, heavenly light, mythical poems, associations with classical antiquity, and the choice of specific words conveying divine or transcendent qualities. The second theme is the placement of capitalism and commerce as integral to the nation. This can be seen in the plethora of merchant ships adorning these ceramics, often in conjunction with nationalistic sentiments, and slogans directly promoting commerce and trade and tying these things to the health of the nation. These slogans, including something as simple as “Success to Commerce,” also appear with the other imagery described above and the names and figures of the founders and early presidents. The most over the top illustration of this mythologizing of American history is a print based on John Jacob Barralet’s painting, “The Apotheosis of Washington.” My students instantly identify the Jesus-based theme, with the Christ-like Washington literally becoming God while women and soldiers weep at his tomb. What we see emerging from this late 18th-century iconography is much of what fuels MAGA today: entitlement, exceptionalism, devotion to capitalist narratives, and inevitably, white Christianity as pivotal and foundational. It is crucial that our resistance faces the deep roots of patriotic American intransigence to any criticism of the unbounded entitlement of the US state to use its imperial powers with impunity. ![A picture containing text, old Description automatically generated](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0f/fb/0ffb780d-0893-4716-b8e5-64f7a6ae13d8/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-6e79c1f1-6386-4cd9-a6b8-9a17ee7010a3.jpeg) **The Apotheosis of Washington*, engraving and etching by John James Barralet, 1800-1802\. Painting in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of William H. Huntington, 1883\. From https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/365795. The point is not to be shocked by the depraved illegality of the crimes committed under the protection of that impunity, but to try to understand the genealogy of the ideological sources that make it *impossible* to convince so many Americans of the enormities of the crimes being committed in their name. Resistance must incorporate, at the deepest levels, an understanding of the *impossibility of the acceptance* of our arguments by so many of our fellow citizens. What is worse it that the current iteration of American exceptionalism is an angry one that further blinds people to its constructedness and requires violent retribution. I started exploring the genealogy of American Exceptionalism during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mid-aughts, but by the time I was able to put pen to paper, the Bush era was an almost nostalgic memory in the inception of the Trump and MAGA years. The aggressive and expansionist George W. Bush version of exceptionalism had given way to the current aggrieved and angry one that carries within it the echoes of a “lost” exceptionalism (Chris McMillan, 2017). While the manifestations of these movements (America as exceptional and entitled to world hegemony and America as really pissed off over the loss of the privileges of that exceptionalism) were very different, their roots were the same. And what I eventually uncovered and documented in my research was their origins in the post-Revolutionary War period. During the last couple of decades, starting with 9-11, we have been in a period of extreme politics. We thought in 2020 that we had won, only to be gob-smacked in 2024\. And the second iteration is so much worse. It has left us exhausted. Ordinary tasks seem to take twice the effort. Being in the world takes ten times the effort. It is so tempting to resign oneself, especially after dozens of arguments with MAGA supporters. But to resign ourselves is to hollow out the world and to hasten our demise. Since my archaeological work in American history, I’ve been contemplating the reality of rebellions and resistance. I have watched the *Star Wars* spin off *Andor* with fascination. Let me add to this my appreciation of Christopher Nolan’s recent film interpretation of *The Odyssey* which explores how a literate, cultured society becomes broken by brutality. In both works there is something profound going on that speaks to recent US history. In *Andor* we are constantly reminded of how difficult rebellions are. How people have different agendas. How infighting kills a movement. Most of all, how people are so willing to believe that nothing is wrong, that life is proceeding as usual. But it takes hard work not to see the atrocities, even the small day-in, day-out indignities and cruelties. Ignorance must be actively maintained. It helps immensely to recognize that there *is* resistance. Small acts of kindness. Building community. Exposing false narratives. And, as we have tragically witnessed recently in street protests and attempts to help neighbors, people giving their lives to help others. The character Nemik in *Andor* puts it so simply and so powerfully: “Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly.” It also helps to understand how deeply rooted MAGA’s grievances are. They didn’t start with Trump. They stem from privileges deliberately woven into the very identity of the American nation and maintained throughout its history on the backs of enslaved Africans, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and the poor. We won’t be able to convince most people supporting the contemporary US turn to fascism that they are wrong not to see that its sources have been hiding just under the surface of everyday American life for decades. We must try to understand why they cannot be convinced. The idea of the United States as a unique and special nation with the right to do as it pleases (or as its white male Christian leaders please) has been with us since the nation was first constructed. City on a Hill, Manifest Destiny, American empire. The word for this, “exceptionalism,” increased exponentially in public and political discourse after 9/11\. The word was even officially incorporated into the Republican platform in 2012\. It is deeply embedded in the MAGA worldview. Exposing and understanding the constructedness of these genealogies and creating alternative narratives can be exceptionally powerful. As Orwell so presciently warned us, control of the past—of history—is power. Alternative views of history, new narratives that challenge American destiny’s inevitability promulgated by the western colonialist imagination, and that expose the genealogies of present power, *are* resistance. Yet even as I write this, I know that alternative narratives will not take root for a generation at least. In an age of *un*reason, of the loss of shared norms and rules and laws, and algorithms that feed us information that only reinforces our beliefs, the kind of knowledge I am hoping for as an alternative seems useless. Or is it? Maybe the usefulness of this knowledge is not to convince people or reveal truth to them. Maybe it’s for us to remind ourselves of the constructed nature of historical narratives and particularly of nations. And maybe it’s for the next generation to realize. We must understand that change will take time. And maybe the experiment of the United States as an exceptional empire has come to end. Everything ends. We have broken Zeus’s law and become the people from the sea, as did Odysseus and his men. But these recovered genealogies can remind us that nations or communities can always be built, and we can build a new one if we choose. In the meantime, we must resist. We must try. It would behoove us to heed the counsel of Karis Nemik, whose Manifesto plays a key role in the rebellion in *Andor*: > Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this: Try. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0f/fb/0ffb780d-0893-4716-b8e5-64f7a6ae13d8/content/images/2026/10/dfdfddfdf---copia---copia-1.jpeg) Graffitti, Sao Miguel Island, Azores, 2025 (Hugo Benavides)