American Exceptionalism: Unexceptionally False

Every election is about something, every election has a theme.  Not unlike a story.  

The theme for Election 2012 will almost assuredly be something called American exceptionalism.  

American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other countries. In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation," and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840. Historian Gordon Wood has argued, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."

"...qualitatively different from other countries."  

In other words, to believe in the concept of American exceptionalism is to believe we're better than everyone else on the globe. 

You go ahead and watch this piece from '60 Minutes' and you tell me if we're better than everyone else.

Exceptional?  

Those kids Scott Pelley is interviewing are exceptional despite a broken system that allows them to sleeep in a step van. 

We're the country that can allow this...

and this:

image: Michael Egger/Tampa Tribune

...to exist in the very same state.

One is an eight year-old who spent three weeks living in her car.  The other is the testament to self-indulgence embodied in a house a baseball player built for himself on Davis Island near Tampa.  

I'm not much interested in hearing how uniquely great our country is when we can produce a ball player who builds a 30,875 square-foot house (slightly smaller than a Best Buy, ironically where the parking lots of which homeless families living in cars can sleep), but the very best we can do for a homeless eight year-old girl is take up a community collection, put her up in a friggin' hotel room, and then have her whole family paint all the rooms so she can stay there.

Are we an exceptional country because Derek Jeter can take a dump in one of nine bathrooms in his own home?  It must, because I can't imagine it says much for us as a society that nearly one in four children are homeless, having to do the same thing in a gas station bathroom day in and day out.

So that's what we're going to hear about this time around.  America, fuck yeah!  We're awesome and you suck.  We can build this unimaginable wealth and we can build great personal fortunes and we can kick asses around the world.  

I don't know which deficient bozo the Republicans will nominate.  I really don't.  But that'll be the mantra of whoever we have the misfortune of listening to for another eleven months or so: we're great, and Obama hates us.  

Now I'm going to get the inevitable Ben hates America crap, which just isn't the case.  In fact, I think it is, in a weird sort of way, worse to say that America is exceptional and can do no wrong -- closing your eyes to the wrong -- than to say we can do better than this.

Well, we can do better than this.  We have to.  We're America.  And I won't believe we're exceptional until we can prevent children from sleeping in a goddam car in a hospital parking lot.

We are not exceptional -- and until you see the plan to help homeless kids from the Republican nominee (don't hold your breath), don't you believe it.  And if you do see it, well, it'd certainly be the exception to the rule.

Comments

[Rationalrevo]

Ironically, those who constantly tout American Exceptionalism fail to understand it. It is true that America WAS an exceptional country when it was founded, due entirely to the fact that it never had an aristocracy and the feudal system had never been practiced here (with the obvious exception of slavery, but we are only talking about white people right?...)

Since land ownership in America was the most widespread of any nation in the history of the world, due to the fact that it was a huge country with plenty of it (after they killed off the natives) and no established aristocracy, and America was a farming nation, this made America far and away one of the most egalitarian countries in the history of the world (for white citizens).

Indeed egalitarianism was at the core of American Exceptionalism. But what made America exceptional was EGALITARIANISM (among whites), not MAGIC. To be more specific, what made America exceptional was the widespread egalitarian ownership of property, the fact that virtually every family owned their own property, unlike virtually any other nation in world history, certainly unlike any place in Europe or Asia at the time.

Now what we have are conservatives who claim claim that America is simply a de facto exceptional country, regardless of conditions. But what's happening is property ownership is being consolidated and America is moving rapidly toward the feudal conditions that existed in Europe at the time of America's founding. Today America is becoming exactly like what the early American immigrants fled Europe to escape.

America is NO LONGER exceptional. America was exceptional, and has become exactly what its founders fought to overthrow.

America was exceptionally egalitarian (for whites) when it was founded. It no longer is, in fact it is now exceptionally unequal (for everyone).