Trump and American exceptionalism

No, America Isn’t Exceptional: Zeitz

For years, US politicians have been fond of discussing “American Exceptionalism,” often to connote the “pure superiority” of the United States, suggests Joshua Zeitz in Politico Magazine. The problem? The past year has underscored that America isn’t quite as different from other nations as some would like to believe.

“Exceptionalism was for many decades a hotly contested topic among historians and social scientists. Could arbitrary borders really render an entire country exempt from broader social, economic and political forces, particularly in an age when these borders became more porous to the movement of capital and labor? Or did patterns of political development in fact create unique forms of national ‘character’? Zeitz writes.

“In more recent years, the debate cooled. While some political scientists continued to explore potential variants of American exceptionalism, most historians concluded that the idea was meaningless and the very conversation itself stale.

“Then came Trump.

“His election and the conditions that accompanied it—a growing rejection of science and evidentiary fact, extreme political tribalism, the rise of conservative nationalist movements around the world, a popular reaction to immigration and free trade—may offer final and conclusive proof that there is nothing at all exceptional about the United States. We are fully susceptible to the same forces, good and ill, that drive politics around the globe.”

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