The Dying Light of American Exceptionalism
The America I knew, or rather, the America I thought I knew is nearly gone.
“A person's hand holding a sparkler in front of an American Flag” by Trent Yarnell on Unsplash
The America I knew, or rather, the America I thought I knew is nearly gone.
The idealized America, the one shoved down our throats in school, in cinema, in literature… the shining city on a hill… the paragon of virtue and human rights… the caretaker of the oppressed and the dispossessed… the enforcer of order in the world… has been laid bare for the world to see what America really is.
A diseased body… tumors rendering it incapacitated with madness.
This idealized America never existed, but it was much easier to believe in it until just a few years ago when all the toxic waste that had been successfully hidden away for decades began to bubble back up to the surface. All it needed was a catalyst to unleash the pent-up and festering ugliness below the surface.
Donald Trump was that catalyst.
The shameless narcissist who swept into power by tearing at the fabric of our union emboldened the darkest elements of our society. He tore the cover from decades of repressed ugliness… and out came all the racists, xenophobes and misogynists out back into the sunlight.
That idealized version of America, the one other nations aspired to be, has been torn asunder… Other civilized nations are currently watching on in dismay, aghast at what has become of their mentor. I see it similar to watching a father you once admired decay at the hands of a debilitating addiction or the onset of dementia, or both.
The truth is, America never really recovered from the greatest sin of its past — slavery. The Civil War appeared to be a reckoning, but the aftermath never fully solved the problem. From time to time, the wounds tore upon to bring pain to new generations, but since the 1960s and culminating with the election of America’s first black president, many thought that we had conquered our demons and healed the wound once and for all… We were wrong.
This nation was built on a premise, not a tribal identity… The founders, borne of the enlightenment, envisioned a nation that was bound by its ideals, not by its heritage — a multicultural experiment. America was an idea, not a Volk…
But it had a fatal flaw… By allowing its economy to be built through slave labor, it introduced a caste system, and a misplaced belief that NOT all men were created equal, even though that ran contrary to the ethos of our founding documents.
It was a poison pill. It would haunt and ravage our nation for the entirety of its history.
This poisonous idea that some people are superior to other people on the basis of genetic inheritance, and thus, the status it affords them, has led to this sad decline in American power and influence in the world.
Perhaps we can regain our sanity before all is lost, but I don’t see it happening. We have passed too many thresholds far too quickly to turn back in time to correct everything that has been tarnished and systematically destroyed.
But in the twilight, an opportunity still remains to keep the flame of liberty alive. It will take each of this November to be those who keep that flame lit long enough for the nation to make its way back into the light.