We are exceptional because we are the freest people on earth. That’s how the bombastic claim goes that nowadays causes America’s European allies to roll their eyes. As we wrote in Salon in April 2011, the trope of American exceptionalism is an artificial and superficial claim to infallibility. It grew over the decades as America grew in land and population. It was fed by aggressive westward expansion in the mid-19th-century (privileging white American freedom over Indians’ freedom); it hardened after the drama of World War II and the ensuing Cold War when we were anointed the leader of the Free World. The luster of exceptionalism should have dimmed when the Bush-Cheney crowd squandered the goodwill of the world after 9/11 by invading Iraq under false pretenses. But it hasn’t. Today, the question of exceptionalism is embedded in the useless, incendiary: “What is a real American?” The implied answer is: someone who uncritically embraces American exceptionalism.
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