I feel like we've never really reckoned with the fact that the specific form of American Exceptionalism basically primes us, as a country, to be vulnerable to hucksters like Elon Musk and, indeed, Donald Trump.
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The thing people get wrong about American Exceptionalism is that it's not just that America is the best country ever, every country does that to one degree or another.
No, it is also the idea that America is a unique country, ungoverned by the rules and limits that restrict the rest of the world.
We do things the way we do, because we are exceptional. We beat the British with our own gumption, we crossed the country with railroads, we beat the Nazis and the commies, and we did that stuff because we are exceptional.
All of that stuff is only true if you also a bunch of caveats in front of them, but that doesn't matter, because American Exceptionalism just requires that you buy into the fact that we did it because we're America, and no one else can do it. We're Exceptional.
So along comes Trump and Musk, promising to fix all our problems with a simple wave of their hands. Jobs are gonna come back, we're gonna go to Mars, America will be Great Again, and yeah, that ties so heavily into American Exceptionalism that people buy it.
People don't buy it cause it's plausible, they are transparently not gonna fix anyone's problems and frankly, they're gonna make all of them a hell of a lot worse.
But people just want to believe it's just gonna be that easy. All we need to do is vote for this guy and it'll fix everything.
And to be clear, it's not just right wingers who are vulnerable to this thinking. I've seen a lot of leftists who just sort of yada yada the ways in which their ideas need to be implemented because we just need to Do It. Actions, not thoughts. We all swim in this cultural soup.
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No, it is also the idea that America is a unique country, ungoverned by the rules and limits that restrict the rest of the world.
But people just want to believe it's just gonna be that easy. All we need to do is vote for this guy and it'll fix everything.