America and the World

America has long been much more inclined than other Western democracies to defy norms of diplomacy, international law, and human rights deemed against its interests, although these stances have at times profoundly divided the U.S. public. Americans were bitterly divided over the Bush administration’s use of torture, its aim to detain alleged terrorists forever without trial at Guantanamo, and its catastrophic invasion of Iraq on grounds later revealed to be false. The Obama administration’s rather different approach to foreign policy proved divisive too. The chapter explores why Americans are far more polarized than Europeans over fundamental issues like war, diplomacy, the United Nations, and human rights. From the ideal of Manifest Destiny to America’s relative geographic isolation, superpower status, and the idea that God chose it to lead the world, Mugambi Jouet’s original analysis explains the interrelationship between the different aspects of American exceptionalism shaping U.S. foreign policy.

From the American Enlightenment to Anti-Intellectualism

Millions of Americans are extraordinarily uninformed. This problem is often blamed on the poor quality of public schools, yet it largely stems from a peculiar conception of education rooted in America’s exceptional history. The birth of modern democracy in America fostered a populist mindset equating education with elitism. Although the Founding Fathers were learned men of the American Enlightenment, many 18th and 19th century Americans became convinced that common sense and folk wisdom were sufficient to succeed. Anti-intellectualism became particularly influential in the South, the nation’s poorest region. Conversely, education has been less associated with elitism in France and other European countries. This helps explain why modern America is sharply polarized, as the U.S. political debate reached astonishing levels of demagogy, propaganda, and disinformation well before Trump’s rise. Spurred by the Tea Party, Republicans routinely made ludicrous claims about Obama’s fake birth certificate and Islamism, “socialized medicine,” “death panels,” the “hoax” of climate change, the federal government’s “tyranny,” and other conspiracy theories. Such political extremism thrives on the ignorance, irrationality, and gullibility promoted by anti-intellectualism. Extremism in contemporary Europe is far less mainstream and more focused on immigration, the main concern of nativist far-right European parties.

Introduction

Jouet begins his book by describing his work as a human rights lawyer representing poor prisoners in New York at the time of mass incarceration on a scale unprecedented in global history. He goes on to describe how the degeneration of American justice embodies troubling dimensions of American exceptionalism, including acute wealth inequality, systemic racism, anti-intellectualism, Christian fundamentalism, and chronic human rights abuses. While the word “exceptional” can imply greatness or superiority, American exceptionalism historically referred to how America is “exceptional” in the sense of “unique,” “different,” “unusual,” “extraordinary” or “peculiar.” Ironically, scores of Americans equate “exceptionalism” with their nation’s superiority when it might be its Achilles Heel—a self-destructive vicious circle threatening admirable dimensions of American society.

The Culture Wars of Faith, Sex, and Gender

In virtually no other developed country are issues like abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and sexual education as controversial as in America. People in almost all other Western nations tend to share the liberal-moderate view of these questions. Few share the Christian fundamentalist position that represents a major side of America’s culture wars. Even though the vast majority of Americans are devout Christians, religion ironically divides them far more than Europeans. America is exceptionally polarized by rival understandings of faith, secularism, family values, gender roles, and sexuality. According to conventional wisdom, religious polarization in America reflects a clash between believers and non-believers. In reality, the divide is mainly among people of faith, as atheists or agnostics remain a limited proportion of the U.S. population. While nearly three-quarters of Americans identify as Christian, their churches are often at odds on basic issues like whether the Bible should be interpreted literally. The chapter particularly analyzes the ultra-traditionalist values prevalent in conservative America and demonstrates how unusual they are in the developed world.

Millions Standing against Their Own Economic Interest

Millions of white working-class and middle-class Americans vote against their own economic interest by defending policies that hurt them while profiting the rich, including the 1% wealthiest Americans. Several factors help explain this peculiar dimension of U.S. politics: myopia fostered by anti-intellectualism; the relationship between religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism; blind faith in the American Dream; and how racism hinders economic solidarity.

Between Democracy and Plutocracy

Wealth inequality is much sharper in America than all other industrialized countries. The income of the richest 1% Americans has soared while the income of ordinary people either decreased or stagnated in recent decades. However, America used to be a rather middle-class society. It was not before the 1980s that the G.O.P.’s far-right branch grew more influential in challenging the oppression of “big government.” New Deal era policies were gradually abandoned and wealth inequality soared. Ronald Reagan claimed that “fascism was really the basis for the New Deal,” and his heirs followed suit in denouncing the federal government’s “tyranny.” Overall, the center of the U.S. political debate on economic issues is drastically more to the right than in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Democratic Party is far less devoted to the interests of the poor, the working-class, and the middle-class than other left-wing parties in the West. The G.O.P. tends to cater only to the richest of the rich, unlike virtually no other major conservative party in the modern Western world.

Mass Incarceration, Executions, and Gun Violence in “the Land of the Free”

Mass incarceration exists in America on a scale unmatched in global history. America is also the only Western democracy that has not abolished the death penalty; and one of the nations that execute the most prisoners alongside abusive dictatorships like China, North Korea, and Iran. American justice is further characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, the peculiar “War on Drugs,” the dehumanizing treatment of juveniles, and routine use of harmful solitary confinement. Modern America has thus become a systematic human rights violator in criminal law and punishment. It was not always so, as foreigners once saw American justice as enlightened. Harsh justice has not made America particularly safe. It has the highest murder rate and the most gun violence in the West due to extraordinarily lax gun control shaped by die-hard partisans of the Second Amendment and lobbying by the NRA. Criminal justice reform gained more attention after shootings of unarmed black men in Ferguson and beyond led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, historical root causes behind this dimension of American exceptionalism have been widely overlooked, including systemic racism, populism, anti-intellectualism, market fundamentalism, and religious fundamentalism.

The Exceptional Influence of Christian Fundamentalism

Religion remains exceptionally influential in America but frequently inspires indifference, skepticism or suspicion in other developed nations. Moreover, a huge minority of Americans lean towards Christian fundamentalism—a radical faith rooted in Biblical literalism and ultra-traditionalism. Due to the relative separation of church and state since the United States’ founding, Americans have not experienced the long history of religious oppression that Europeans once endured. Americans thus became far less suspicious towards organized religions, which many see as benign means of worship, not as social institutions. This is a paradox, as prominent Founding Fathers were skeptical of organized religions and Christian dogma. Jouet illustrates the weight of religion in the Bible Belt by describing his experiences as a Frenchman in Texas, where he visited evangelical churches and observed a very different kind of faith from the “soft” Catholicism he was accustomed to in France. This culture shock leads him to explore the fascinating historical and social factors behind the evolution of faith in American society.

One Nation, Divisible

The misconception that “exceptionalism” means American superiority stems from how Republicans turned this longstanding concept into a rhetorical weapon against Obama by accusing him of unpatriotically lacking faith in “American exceptionalism” given his “socialist” and “un-American” agenda. These accusations paralleled conspiracy theories claiming that Obama is not really American due to his fake U.S. birth certificate and Islamism. Meanwhile, intense polarization became a major dimension of American exceptionalism’s true meaning. The huge rift between conservatives and liberals under George W. Bush worsened under Obama. It may grow worse following the Clinton-Trump presidential election. Intriguingly, America and other Western nations are moving apart and closer at the same time. While liberal America is mainly evolving in the same direction as the rest of the West, conservative America is an outlier in light of its peculiar ideology, including profound anti-intellectualism, anti-governmentalism, and Christian fundamentalism. Liberal America’s worldview is not simply different from the worldview in conservative America, but also closer to the dominant worldview elsewhere in the West: Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Tellingly, universal health care is broadly supported by both liberals and conservatives in all Western nations except America, where Republicans relentlessly denounce the evils of “socialized medicine.”

Conclusion

The Republican Party’s shift towards the far-right since the 1980s paved the way for Trump’s neo-fascist campaign. Trump’s agenda and rhetoric were not drastically different from the Republican establishment, which largely embraced winner-take-all economics, anti-intellectualism, disinformation, conspiracy-mongering, authoritarianism, racist dog-whistle messages, and torturing Muslims suspected of terrorism. Trumpism was an intensification of this ideology, not a departure from it. But America’s decline after little more than a century as a superpower still seems far from inevitable. It remains the world’s strongest economy. It is a leader in technology and many other fields. Its universities are widely recognized as the best in the world. It has great thinkers and innovators. In sum, there is much to admire about contemporary America and it is not too late to address the aspects of American exceptionalism that may precipitate its decline.