American Primeval: The World Watches Uncle Sam Relive His Violent Birth in Real Time

The American Primeval Reboot: A Global Audience Watches Uncle Sam Re-Enact His Own Horror Movie

By the time the term “American primeval” began trending in seven languages, it was no longer clear whether the United States was staging a historical reenactment or simply filming a live-action prequel to The Purge. From Berlin to Bangkok, the spectacle has become appointment viewing: a superpower that once lectured the planet on civility now cosplaying its 19th-century birth trauma—complete with cosplayers in buffalo hats and a Supreme Court apparently powered by whale oil.

Europe, ever the older sibling who hides the liquor when Dad starts ranting, is responding with a cocktail of schadenfreude and genuine alarm. German tabloids run side-by-side covers: “US Supreme Court Sends Women Back to 1860” adjacent to “Heat Wave Hits 40°C—Again.” The message is unmissable: while Americans rehearse the Civil War, the rest of us are trying to survive the sequel to the Holocene. Emmanuel Macron—who can spot a nationalist power-grab the way sommeliers detect cork taint—has already invited American reproductive-tourism startups to relocate to Brittany. Nothing says “liberté” like a discount ferry ticket for uterine refugees.

Across the Pacific, China’s state media is positively purring. CGTN’s nightly English broadcast features a split screen: one panel shows Idaho legislators banning books by day and AR-15 marksmanship by night, the other showcases Shenzhen’s newest maglev line. The anchor’s eyebrow does the heavy lifting. In private, Beijing strategists toast the spectacle; every minute the U.S. spends re-litigating the 1800s is a minute they’re not building semiconductor alliances. Meanwhile, Chinese social media users joke that America is finally embracing “common prosperity”—just with more ammunition than redistribution.

The Global South watches with darker humor still. Kenyan Twitter wags note that America’s rolling back of abortion rights makes it, statistically, more conservative than Catholic Kenya. Brazilian favelas circulate memes comparing U.S. school-shooting drills to their own police raids, asking which nation is actually the “shithole.” Even El Salvador, once scolded for authoritarianism, now offers travel warnings about “civil unrest in U.S. metropolitan areas.” It’s a neat inversion: the empire that spent decades exporting democracy via drone is now exporting cautionary tales via TikTok.

Financial markets, those cold-blooded reptiles, are already pricing in the chaos. European pharma giants quietly shift contraceptive-pill production lines from Ohio to County Cork. Cryptocurrency exchanges—always eager to monetize panic—launch “MAGAcoin” and “RoeWadeCommemorativeNFT” within hours of each Supreme Court leak. BlackRock issues a white paper titled “Frontier Markets: U.S. Red States,” noting that forced-birth economies tend to underperform on female labor-force participation but excel in privately run prisons. Investors nod solemnly, then buy more stock in ankle-monitor manufacturers.

All this, of course, is watched by a planet that remembers the last time America had a “national divorce.” The rest of us still live with the luggage from that split: borders drawn by bleeding Kansas rhetoric, coups scripted in Monroe Doctrine prose, environmental treaties shredded because one senator from a state with more cattle than people threw a tantrum. So when Washington’s pundits insist this is merely a domestic culture war, the global audience rolls its eyes so hard tectonic plates shift. America’s psychodrama has always been a planetary production; the cameras simply stayed hidden behind the phrase “manifest destiny.”

And yet, beneath the gallows humor lies a sobering realization. If the U.S. truly reverts to its founding myth—land theft, bodily control, minority rule—it won’t be contained by two oceans. Climate refugees will still head north; arms dealers will still export AR-15s to cartels; Silicon Valley will still code the algorithms that decide what your children watch. The American primeval isn’t a costume drama; it’s an open-source template any aspiring autocrat can fork.

So we watch, popcorn in hand, as the republic eats its own tail. The international consensus is clear: keep the livestream running, archive every tweet, and maybe—just maybe—learn something before the next empire decides reruns are better than renewal. Until then, as the French say, bon courage. You’ll need it more than Netflix needs the next season.