The Drift: Demons, Nationalism, and the Erasure of a People

“Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.” Amos 7:8

I've been reading Demons. 

If you've followed this blog, you know Dostoevsky is someone I return to often. But something about this reading is hitting differently. The deeper I get into the novel, the more I recognize the presence of something darker at work. Subtle influences that pull people, slowly and consistently, away from God. What's unsettling is not that it exists, but how easily it goes unnoticed.

I don't think many people see it for what it is. But the more I engage with people, especially on social media, the more aware I've become of how real this spiritual undertow is. And nothing made that more visible to me this week than two things: a YouTube short that turned my stomach, and the State of the Union address.

Let me start with the video.

Three white individuals were asked a question that should never need asking: how are American Blacks American citizens? Two of them argued that more white Americans have fought in wars throughout this country's history than Black Americans, as if citizenship is a ledger and contribution is measured in body counts. The third, to their credit, pointed out that Black people have fought in every war since this nation's founding.

Here's what was visceral to me. Not one of the three, not a single one, mentioned the fact that we were brought to this country in chains. That we built this nation with our hands bound behind our backs and our feet shackled to keep us from running. That the blood of our ancestors is in the very fabric of the soil of this land.

That silence was not accidental. It was the point.

Those three individuals were not an anomaly. They are part of a much larger and more organized movement. We see it in the rise of voices like Nick Fuentes, who openly champions white identity politics. We see it in Joel Webbon and the growing strain of Christian nationalism that wraps racial hierarchy in scripture. We hear echoes of it in commentators like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who frame Western civilization and its preservation in terms that conveniently exclude the people who built it with their bare hands. This is not ignorance. This is not algorithmic rage-bait. This is ideology, and it has a name.

This is what white nationalism does. It doesn't just elevate one story. It erases another. It rewrites the American narrative as a story belonging solely to one people, and in doing so, it forgets that God made man in His image. All of us. Including those of us who survived the Middle Passage. Including those who built this nation with whips on their backs and chains on their feet. Including every generation since that has contributed, bled, fought, and died for a country that still debates whether we belong. And our contribution didn't end with slavery. We contribute with our taxes like most other Americans. We contribute with our work, with what we put in every single day to keep this engine called America running. We show up. We build. We sustain. And still, our place at the table is treated as something that needs to be earned rather than something that was paid for long ago in blood and labor and centuries of sacrifice.

That impulse to erase, to claim the whole of America as a white inheritance, is a sickness. And it's the same sickness Dostoevsky was writing about.

In Demons, the forces that tear a society apart don't announce themselves with horns and fire. They come dressed in ideology. They come with conviction. They come with the absolute certainty that their vision is the right one, and that anyone who stands in the way must be moved, silenced, or forgotten.

That's what I saw playing out during the State of the Union.

On one side, collectivist or system-driven ideas. On the other, nationalism. We reduce these to left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, but that simplification hides something far deeper. What we witnessed at the State of the Union were two different sides of a very evil coin. And at the center of it all was a question that shouldn't require asking but demands an answer: who is American, and what does it mean to be American?

Now, many will make the point that what's happening in this country right now is about good vs. evil, not left or right. And there is truth in that. But there is also a kind of self-righteousness in that framing, because the very notion erases something essential. If there is only good and there is only evil, then there is no center. There is no standard by which we measure either one. And without that standard, both sides simply become mirrors of the other, each convinced they are righteous, each certain the other is the enemy.

There is a center. There is good. There is evil. And there is justice.

Jesus was justice. Jesus is Justice. He didn't come representing one side of a political argument. He came as the standard itself, the plumb line against which all things are measured. And when we lose sight of that, we lose more than the argument. We lose the ability to even recognize what justice looks like.


So we are left with the harder question: which ideology bends toward justice?

I don't believe every person is a white nationalist. I want to be clear about that. Scattered among those who cling to the pride of the color of their skin, there are those of us who understand that God created us in His image and in His likeness. There are people on every side of this divide who still carry that truth. But the question remains: which set of ideas, practices, and beliefs aligns more closely with how God has always dealt with His own?

Consider the idea that American citizens should be considered above all others. Many will recoil at that. But is it not justice? Let me be clear: I am not making an argument for ethnic supremacy. I am making an argument for ordered covenant responsibility, the same kind of responsibility God modeled with Israel. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He didn't tell them to serve the nations around them. He set them on a path to destroy anything that threatened the theocracy. He led them as Commander-in-Chief of an army. He judged those who stood in the path of their progress. That was the line of the Messiah. God prioritized His people, not because He was exclusionary by nature, but because He was purposeful in His design. There was a covenant, and that covenant came with protection. A nation that does not prioritize its own people, that does not fulfill its responsibility to those within its covenant, is a nation that has abandoned the very model God established.

Now, we as Christians understand that God has opened the gate to allow in the Gentiles, those of us who believe that Jesus Christ came to save our souls. The covenant has expanded. The family has grown. But even in that expansion, there is order. There is structure. There is the expectation that we align ourselves with what God has established, not with what man has invented.


This is where the two sides reveal themselves for what they truly are.

On one side, there is a party that puts its faith in the system itself. It worships its own idea of what you are and condemns the Creator for His creation. But we are the clay, and He is the Potter. He shaped us. He formed us. And we don't get to ask questions about His design. Yet this side tells us it's acceptable to destroy life and call it something it is not, to rename what God has already named in order to justify an ideology. It tells us to look to man for healthcare, for food, for shelter, for clothing. It places the government where God should be: the provider, the protector, the source. And that is the very definition of worshipping the system as opposed to the Creator.

This is what kept Israel in bondage. The physical chains of Egypt, yes, but also the spiritual ones, the temptation to rely on systems rather than God. To trust in what you can see rather than in the One who sees all. That's what one side asks of us. Come to the system. Trust the system. Let the system define you, care for you, save you.

On the other side, there are those who attempt to keep God to themselves, as if He doesn't have the power to raise all that are dead to His glory. They wrap faith in the flag and confuse patriotism with piety. They build walls not just at the border but around the throne of God, as if His grace has limits, as if His image is only reflected in certain faces. They forget that the same God who led Israel also made covenant with Rahab the Canaanite, with Ruth the Moabite, with every outsider who turned toward Him and of course Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman.

It's between these two sides that we find ourselves, fighting for justice, fighting for truth, in a world where self-righteousness reigns supreme.


What always gets overlooked is who bears the cost. The ideologues at the center of the debate never pay it. The ordinary people caught in between do, the ones forced to live with the consequences of conflicts they didn't create. People like us. People like me. American Blacks whose citizenship is still questioned, whose history is still erased, whose blood is in the soil of a country that still can't decide if we belong.

The danger is in losing the center entirely. And the center I'm talking about is not political. It is spiritual.

When we replace God at the center, whether with nationalism or systems, with ideology or identity, we don't eliminate the struggle between good and evil. We simply redefine it in our own image. We become the authors of our own morality, and history has shown us, over and over again, how that ends.

Dostoevsky understood this. He wrote Demons as a warning about what happens to the human soul when it cuts itself off from the divine. When people stop seeing each other as made in the image of God, they stop seeing each other at all.

That's what I saw in that YouTube video. Three people standing in a country built on the backs of enslaved Africans, debating whether those people's descendants are truly American. If that's not a demon at work, quietly whispering that some of God's children are less than, I don't know what is.


I'll be honest with you.

There are some nights when I am alone, completely alone, and I cry out to God in tears. Real tears. Because it feels as though He isn't hearing my prayers. It feels as though the wicked and the evil have the strongest voice, as though their megaphone reaches further than my whisper ever could. Those are the nights when the weight of everything, the erasure, the arrogance, the lies dressed up as patriotism, presses down so hard that I can barely breathe.

In those moments, God scoops in. He reminds me that He is truth. He is justice. He tells me to focus on His Word and not on any man, because they are liars. Every one of them. He reminds me that even though an entire nation set out to keep a race of people in bondage, that their so-called superior thinking cast an entire people as inferior, He is far more superior than anything imaginable. He has guided us through some of the most inconceivable storms in human history, and He will guide us again. He always does.

That's the thing about God. He doesn't operate on our timeline or our volume level. The wicked may shout, but God moves. And when He moves, no system, no ideology, no nation built on lies can stand.


But let me show you what the other side of that coin looks like, what happens when God is removed from the equation entirely. Because everything I've described so far, the nationalism, the system worship, the drift from center, all of it creates a world where power answers to nothing. And if you want to see what that world produces when it reaches its highest levels, look no further than what was revealed in the Epstein letters.

In those letters, there is a reference to something called Bottle Girls. If you don't know what Bottle Girls are, let me paint the picture. These were young women whose job it was to attract rich, powerful men into clubs and bars, to lure them in with the promise of excess. They encouraged them to order the most expensive drinks, to spend lavishly, to draw in the crowd. And in return, they were elevated. Taken up to the highest parts of the club, the VIP sections, the balconies, where they could look down over the people crowded below, swimming in drink and lust and greed.

From up there, they got to pick them out like fruit from a tree. Have their way. Sell their souls. Sacrifice their very beings.

Nobody saw it for what it was. Or maybe they did, and they just didn't care.

That is the architecture of evil. It doesn't drag you down into the pit screaming. It lifts you up. It gives you a view. It makes you feel chosen. And by the time you realize what you've traded for that elevation, it's already too late.

This is not a metaphor. This is what was happening in plain sight, at the highest levels of wealth and power and influence in this country. The same country that debates whether Black people are citizens. The same country that watched two political parties posture at the State of the Union while the rot beneath them grows deeper by the day.

Dostoevsky saw it. He wrote about it. The demons don't come for the people at the bottom. They come for the ones who think they're at the top.


We are drifting. Left and right, the pull is real. But the answer is in returning to the center, to the standard that no system, no ideology, and no nation can replace.

God made man in His image. Every one of us. And any vision of America, or of justice, that forgets that is not just incomplete. It is dangerous.

It's exactly what Dostoevsky warned us about.

Yet, on those nights when I cry out and feel like no one is listening, He answers. Not always with thunder. Sometimes with a whisper. Sometimes just with the reminder that I am still here. That we are still here. That the people who survived the Middle Passage, who built this nation in chains, who have endured every attempt at erasure, we are still here.
 

That, in itself, is the evidence of God.

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

Jacqueline Session is the founder and CEO of DAHTRUTH, LLC, a poet, and an urban fiction author. She writes on faith, culture, and identity at [DahTruth.com](https://dahtruth.com).*