The End of "American Exceptionalism"

Here's an op-ed in today's New York Times, by Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Free link.

We are in a worldwide battle for hearts and minds. The future of republican government in the United States, and globally, hangs in the balance. As Mr. Trump oversteps executive authority, weaponizes the Justice Department and tries to cow the media, private sector and universities, the citizens of China, Iran, Russia and other autocracies are watching America’s democratic beacon flicker. The stumbling of the American experiment, alongside the favoritism Washington is showering on far-right parties worldwide (even in a Germany haunted by its Nazi past), is blurring the ideals that long inspired repressed peoples to strain for the dignity and autonomy that only representative government can provide.

The United States is squandering its ability to bend the arc of history toward more freedom.

If Vance is elected president in 2028, I don't think he's capable of stopping this decline. He doesn't exactly seem the sharpest tool in the national shed.

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IMO, "American exceptionalism" was always a stupid and thoughtless claim. There has always been plenty wrong with this country, and there is even more now--much more. I don't feel like getting too far into it--there's our racism, homophobia, now transphobia, antipathy to unions, antipathy to universal health care, militarism, foreign meddling, unregulated or self-regulated capitalism, the Second Amendment, "money is speech," the electoral college, and on and on. I can't imagine what this country will be in 20 years.