The Ideology of Velocity |
America is beginning to speak the language of great power competition again.
Not explicitly, at least not most of the time. Few people openly invoke the Cold War anymore. Fewer still consciously argue that communities should be sacrificed in pursuit of geopolitical dominance. Yet the ontology of great power competition — the assumptions, incentives, and moral logic that defined the twentieth century — appears to be quietly returning beneath the surface of American life.
What is striking is not that anyone announced this transition. It is that it increasingly arrives as self-evident reality.
A recent opinion piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer urging support for Ohio’s expanding data center industry framed the issue almost entirely through the language of strategic necessity. AI growth is inevitable. Energy demand will rise. Ohio must compete. Misconceptions and resistance threaten economic progress. The article, written jointly by business and labor leaders, presents acceleration itself as civic responsibility.
None of this language is unusual anymore.
That may be the most important fact.
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek often argued that the strongest ideologies are not the ones loudly proclaimed, but the ones that disappear into the background assumptions of society. Mature ideologies do not present themselves as ideology at all. They present themselves as practicality, inevitability,........