the choosing debate: the facial tic of a nation
Someone let your peoples forget it was the only thing of importance, choosing. So completely forgetting that when I say choose to you you make expressions with your face such as “Herrrrrre we are going.”
Context
The ironic reflex named as a facial tic and a national symptom. When Marathe speaks in earnest, the American answer is not a counter-argument but a groan — "Herrrrrre we are going," the eye-roll that greets any straight statement of value, later echoed as "Anything is going." Marathe's point is that this reflex is not harmless style: it's the outward sign that someone let a people "forget how to choose," irony functioning as the anesthetic that keeps the culture from noticing it has stopped valuing anything enough to choose it. The needle and the disease are the same gesture — the reflexive sneer is the forgetting.