Before you pull out your flags, your guns, your American flag bandanas, your Regan posters, or whatever other objects that line your house, carefully placed for when your quasi nationalism strikes you and you have to prove something, or when Facebook tells you that another holiday has come around, even though it is a twisted vestige of its origin (See: Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick’s Day or See: How Independence day morphed into buy everything American and sky phosphorus day) know that I am not saying every American is a villain. Or am I? No, I’m not, but I’m not far from the truth. For you see, we are a nation that idolizes villains.

Trust me, I know.

I’m Italian.

I can’t breath one word about the boot before someone is saying, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” I get it. I am not disillusioned about my interest in my people’s felonious history, I can’t hear the word “wacked” without shoving capicola down my throat, throwing a fedora on my head, and gesturing wildly with my hands while fanculo and minga streams from my mouth like immigrants pouring out of the boot at the turn of the 20th century. Forget that we came over here and built New York city, or how we shared our cuisine (See: Pizza, yeah, you’re welcome) or how we worked our fingers to the bone being treated like third class citizens because of a vowel clinging to the end of our names, round like targets or upside down exclamation marks as if to say: Here’s the bad guy!

Yet these figures stand out, they appeal to us, they stand against a system that we all can butt heads against from time to time, we tell ourselves—they are doing what I am afraid to do. That is what this country was founded on, the written heroes that fought the noble fight against unjust actions of the motherland, even as Thomas Jefferson wrote about all men being equal as Sally Hemmings slept outside the main house, men never freed their slaves until the day they died. We cheer them and our modern rebels on as we ingest enough Scorsese to develope a mean coke habit, Gangs of New York burned into our television sets, we dress like Bonnie and Clyde at Halloween, Guy Richie movies in every American home.

It is the same with the so-called “gangster rapper” movement sweeping the nation right now. Only, they aren’t gangsters. They weave these tales of past exploits and things they would do; they suffer from anti-Rooseveltian rhetoric—dudes talk loud and carry a gold plated desert eagle, which has only been fired by the manufacturer. I get it, it’s an image thing (See: A real gangster doesn’t need to brag about his deeds) and it doesn’t bother me. The music is atrocious, but that is another story, one you might not agree with, but a tirade on my people’s false public image and the River of Stereotypes where we are weighed down with cement shoes isn’t the point of my article, rather, the stepping stone to my point.

A new figure has entered the ring in the past couple years, that is to say into the ring of legends, he’s been in the limelight for a while, a tidal wave beginning with a single drop, rising to a level enough to consume America. Many people are feeling the power of this potential suffocation, many others pray for this foreshadowed cleansing, a return to a perceived former greatness as well as simultaneously advancing into a new era, a paradoxical movement so grandiose it grasps onto the fears of many, stoked in turn by their mashia like some infernal machine, the modern day Prometheus: America’s Monster. A real force to be reckoned with, this man has generated so much power that he battles facts with conviction, and has in effect created a parallel universe where events and figures don’t exist as they do in the opposite, where people become monsters and heroes at a word, a proverbial Earth B.

Much as Victor jammed energy and electricity into the monster, just as we have, America’s monster’s energy is so great it overflows into the people who follow him through their televisions (See: New World Religion), alighting the bits of monster in them, the ones that strikes out in fear of the unknown, a preemptive self-defense. Because this figure has been on television, he is a star. Because he is a star, if he says something it is ok for his acolytes to repeat it, make it their war cry—for he is on television, certainly he knows what he is talking about. When he levels racist stereotypical ideologies that border on stark-mad lunatic foaming at the mouth it becomes ok for you to use them in your own life: to your new neighbors, to the slow guy at the checkout stand, or even that asshole driving slow on the way back from work. What has been cured through sociological evolution (See: curtesy) has been undone by this second coming, this third true contender, ushering in a 4th.... something. I don’t know. He promises it will be pleasant at least.

America is the cliche love struck girl portrayed in Hollywood or real life women as perceived in Earth B: gaga over the bad boy; hung up on the power to thumb his nose at the man, America has fallen head over heels with him. The shadow of the crest of this typhoon is upon us, there is a very real possibility that we will be getting wet. We need to grow up as a species, it’s only been 102,000 years being homosapien. I’m sure any day we will be having a revolution to rival the neolithic. The ignorance devolution may expire and the compassion revolution can take hold. Any day now.

There is, of course, this to account for as well: those I mentioned above aren’t as “bad” as the figure preceding them: with the former you know where you stand, the score was made clear, but a being that can alter reality with a mere utterance, almost like God himself, is more snake than human among my list: among killers and criminals. This figure is hungry for power, and if history has taught us anything, nothing is more dangerous than someone desperate for power. Many people are afraid we will soon wake from a dream and find ourselves in a reality created by a man, like some Stephen King novel manifested—where we will have to live in fear of our own brains and coward hearts, fears spoon fed to us through our portals to a world viewed through other people’s eyes, fears that, like all of King’s horrors, aren’t real—lest we allow a writing of what could be one of the darkest chapters of modern history.

I'm not saying our founding fathers were nothing more than greedy men who thought the prospects of creating the first nationwide business would net them money beyond imagination, creating a country on a gilded foundation replete with holes and pitfalls for its people to fall through.

I'm not saying that Christopher Columbus or the pilgrims engulfed a country in bioterrorism as a means of conquest, with opening nights to rival even bubonic plagues, thoughts and ideologies we would never support in this civilized era.

I'm not saying the south rallies under a confederate flag made in the late 60's for the express purpose of racial division claiming to under the guise of clinging to a "rich southern heritage."

I'm not saying we put a people isolated from their country in internment camps out of fear for national safety.

I'm not even saying Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, MK Ultra or all the other things your high school history book forgot to mention.

All I'm saying is: History is written by the victor.