American exceptionalism’ (the greatest country in the world) is an unhealthy way for citizens to view their country, and especially unhealthy for the citizens of nations in which America has peddled ‘democracy’. No doubt American power is exceptional; however not its agenda nor its morality. Unless you’re inside the bubble, of course
American exceptionalism may be dead to people on planet earth, but it lives on as a habit of mind, measured now not in the supremacy of its democracy but in the unprecedented horror the coastal elites imagine thenselves to be experiencing. These thoughts are, in a way, a tribute to the power Trump has over our imagination. If he had a sense of irony, he might draw a perverse pleasure from the fact that he has provoked otherwise pacific people into dreaming of violence – and dreaming that violence is their only resort against him.
Americans who think suicide bombs are shocking, or are evidence of cultural backwardness or a Muslim disposition towards violence, might do well to reflect on the fragile psychology of political violence, as we feel the fantasy, even the temptation of violence, rise up in ourselves.
American exceptionalism may be dead to people on planet earth, but it lives on as a habit of mind, measured now not in the supremacy of its democracy but in the unprecedented horror the coastal elites imagine thenselves to be experiencing. These thoughts are, in a way, a tribute to the power Trump has over our imagination. If he had a sense of irony, he might draw a perverse pleasure from the fact that he has provoked otherwise pacific people into dreaming of violence – and dreaming that violence is their only resort against him.
Americans who think suicide bombs are shocking, or are evidence of cultural backwardness or a Muslim disposition towards violence, might do well to reflect on the fragile psychology of political violence, as we feel the fantasy, even the temptation of violence, rise up in ourselves.
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