I like that Armstrong earned the reputation of "THE American" character, even though there's lots of Americans in the metal gear series. It's kind of ironic, because his whole speech is about "America is diseased, rotten to the core… there's no saving it.". His objective was to reconstruct America into being more like a wild west type of nation

Yeah, but we sort of idolize that. While it was a harsh time for the frontiersman, they were undeniably free. There was no government overreach, arguably there wasn't enough government, but there was basically no other time in our history when some random guy and his family could show up, set down on a plot of land and make a go of it. Self-sufficiency wasn't a luxury, it was a necessity, but a day's travel down the road, you could still join your friends and neighbors in town at the saloon for a good time. No quotas, no schedules, no bosses. Pay your taxes and you're basically left alone. As long as some greedy asshole didn't muscle in of course, but how is that any different from today? The biggest issues at the time were the frankly racist social policies involving people of color and the native Americans, but we've come a long way since that.

Armstrong was radical and more than a little crazy but I guarantee you a lot of people, myself included, have at least had passing thoughts that hey, maybe the country collapsing would be good for the long term. Maybe he's right.