CD34
Future o’pry
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As an Italian I genuinely struggle to understand a certain american kind of degeneration: this constant sense that nothing is holy anymore, nothing is untouchable, nothing deserves reverence
Even in a modern, secular Europe, there’s usually still some leftover moral hierarchy in public life. There are categories that don’t get blended. In the U.S., by contrast, you can walk through downtown and see a church wedged between glass towers like an afterthought—half-crushed by the skyline, visually drowned out by billboards that literally overshadow it. The sacred doesn’t guide the eye anymore. It’s tolerated as set dressing, like a “vibes” object in the urban feed
And then there’s the media layer, which for a European feels borderline unreal. You’re in a moment that is supposed to be institutional and solemn the address of a figure meant to embody continuity, dignity, the Republic and suddenly you get hit with the most aggressively commercial content imaginable. Not just “ads exist,” but the aesthetic of hard-sell marketing bulldozing straight through civic ritual
The clearest example of this, and the one that genuinely short-circuits my brain, is the Trump Watches thing: you can watch Trump do the political performance, the speech posture, the presidential cadence—then, basically right after (or in the next rotation of cable-news breaks), he shows up as himself in a spot pitching “Trump Watches,” doing the whole “it’s Trump time” merch-energy like he’s selling limited drops. This isn’t an exaggeration: Trump-branded watch lines have been marketed with him front-and-center, and the ads have run on pro-Trump networks like Newsmax
Now contrast that with how many Italians imagine the role of a head of state—someone like Sergio Mattarella, who is treated at home as a figure of quiet institutional gravity and moral authority, with a very “humanist” aura around him (almost a philosopher-president in the European imagination, even if his actual background is law and constitutional culture)
If Mattarella speaks, the point is that the symbolic space stays symbolic. The ritual remains a ritual. You don’t “content-ify” it. You don’t turn it into a merch funnel
In America, politics often feels like it operates on the opposite logic: nonstop spectacle, constant contamination between propaganda, entertainment, branding, celebrity, and the attention economy. Campaigns become concerts, influencer rollouts, provocation theater—polarization as format. Not because there are no real issues (there obviously are), but because the public aesthetic is hyper-commercial and deliberately excessive, like everything has to be optimized for impact, not meaning
And that’s what scares me as a European: it gives the impression of a society that has lost its sense of limits. A place where everything is flattened into equivalence—everything can be monetized, memed, packaged, sold, and re-sold. When even the “solemn” is treated like just another segment between ads—when the leader can pivot from civic symbolism to hawking a product line with his own face on it—you realize it’s not just a cultural difference
It’s a different ontology: a different way of understanding reality, value, and community. And if you grew up with even a minimal ritual respect for institutions and symbols, it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching a civilization voluntarily turn its last remaining sacred spaces into storefronts
Even in a modern, secular Europe, there’s usually still some leftover moral hierarchy in public life. There are categories that don’t get blended. In the U.S., by contrast, you can walk through downtown and see a church wedged between glass towers like an afterthought—half-crushed by the skyline, visually drowned out by billboards that literally overshadow it. The sacred doesn’t guide the eye anymore. It’s tolerated as set dressing, like a “vibes” object in the urban feed
And then there’s the media layer, which for a European feels borderline unreal. You’re in a moment that is supposed to be institutional and solemn the address of a figure meant to embody continuity, dignity, the Republic and suddenly you get hit with the most aggressively commercial content imaginable. Not just “ads exist,” but the aesthetic of hard-sell marketing bulldozing straight through civic ritual
The clearest example of this, and the one that genuinely short-circuits my brain, is the Trump Watches thing: you can watch Trump do the political performance, the speech posture, the presidential cadence—then, basically right after (or in the next rotation of cable-news breaks), he shows up as himself in a spot pitching “Trump Watches,” doing the whole “it’s Trump time” merch-energy like he’s selling limited drops. This isn’t an exaggeration: Trump-branded watch lines have been marketed with him front-and-center, and the ads have run on pro-Trump networks like Newsmax
Now contrast that with how many Italians imagine the role of a head of state—someone like Sergio Mattarella, who is treated at home as a figure of quiet institutional gravity and moral authority, with a very “humanist” aura around him (almost a philosopher-president in the European imagination, even if his actual background is law and constitutional culture)
If Mattarella speaks, the point is that the symbolic space stays symbolic. The ritual remains a ritual. You don’t “content-ify” it. You don’t turn it into a merch funnel
In America, politics often feels like it operates on the opposite logic: nonstop spectacle, constant contamination between propaganda, entertainment, branding, celebrity, and the attention economy. Campaigns become concerts, influencer rollouts, provocation theater—polarization as format. Not because there are no real issues (there obviously are), but because the public aesthetic is hyper-commercial and deliberately excessive, like everything has to be optimized for impact, not meaning
And that’s what scares me as a European: it gives the impression of a society that has lost its sense of limits. A place where everything is flattened into equivalence—everything can be monetized, memed, packaged, sold, and re-sold. When even the “solemn” is treated like just another segment between ads—when the leader can pivot from civic symbolism to hawking a product line with his own face on it—you realize it’s not just a cultural difference
It’s a different ontology: a different way of understanding reality, value, and community. And if you grew up with even a minimal ritual respect for institutions and symbols, it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching a civilization voluntarily turn its last remaining sacred spaces into storefronts
