All Americans Need To Watch This
And all crisis communicators should learn from it
A video by Holy Koolaid has amassed nearly two million views on YouTube in just three months, for pointing out harsh realities which suggest that all Americans are brainwashed.
While that video is fascinating, I think it is even more revealing to watch ‘a typical average American’ (Tyler Rumple) visibly and audibly have his whole worldview collapse in front of his eyes, as he digests Holy Koolaid’s words.
So please watch the video above to witness that.
This is all important through my own, non-American eyes, because I’m concerned about how we communicate the climate and nature crises to general populations.
Videos like this make you realise that every new method communicators come up with are mere strategies - but getting important messages to land requires an understanding of how people actually see the world around them.
And I don’t think most environmental communication comes close to connecting on that level. Which requires an honest appraisal of where we are, and where we go from here.
What The Video Shows
The original Holy Koolaid video argues that many Americans are raised inside a system of national propaganda that shapes how they see history, freedom, politics, religion, and their own country’s place in the world.
There is no claim that America is uniquely evil, merely that Americans are often not taught enough to question the country’s myths and contradictions.
The video claims the following:
US education is heavily America-centred. The video argues that school history and geography often present the US as the centre of the world, while leaving out a lot of global context and uncomfortable parts of American history.
Cold War thinking still shapes politics. It says Americans were taught a simple “capitalism good, communism bad” binary that erased nuance and helped justify US interventions abroad.
“Land of the free” is a myth. The video argues that the US is not the freest country by many measures, pointing to press freedom, incarceration, and broader freedom rankings.
The military is glorified too much. It claims Americans are taught to treat huge military spending as patriotic, even when domestic needs like healthcare, education, and infrastructure go underfunded.
The pledge of allegiance is framed as propaganda. The video treats daily school recitation as a loyalty ritual that conditions children before they can even understand what they are saying. By the way, this does seem pretty bizarre for those of us outside the US…
America is not a Christian nation in the founding sense. It argues that Christian language was added later as Cold War messaging, not because the country was originally founded on Christianity.
American exceptionalism is the master myth. The video says Americans are taught that the US is inherently superior, and that this makes criticism feel like betrayal rather than civic responsibility.
Read On: The Problem With Patriotism, The Communication Crisis, How Patriotism Affects Climate Messaging
“Climate campaigners are not just arguing against fossil fuel interests or bad policy. They are often trying to get their message across to people whose understanding of the world has been shaped by patriotic myths, consumer ideology, political media, and a deeply broken educational culture.”