Trump Has Unravelled the Myth of American Exceptionalism

During the turmoil and precarity following the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Thomas Paine said, “These are times that try men’s souls.” Two and a half centuries later, US President Donald Trump has evoked the same sense of fear and unease among Americans. 

But Trumpism – essentially racist, neo-fascist nationalism – has gone far beyond and roiled the entire world. The US is now seen as a rogue state run by a convicted felon where the rule of law is breached with impunity. As a society, Americans are living the truth of entrenched white supremacy and its ramifications.

“This is not who we are!” is the constant refrain of political sages who grieve for the US that was – the putative beacon of justice, freedom and equality in the world. Proponents of the idea of American exceptionalism argue that the values, political system and historical development of the US are so distinctive that they entitle that nation to play the leading role in world affairs. 

Masters of self-promotion, Americans have variously described their country with glowing epithets such as ‘the Empire of Liberty’, ‘The Land of the Free’, The Melting Pot’ and ‘The City on a Hill’ – in other words, the foremost enabler of liberty, individualism and democracy. 

Trump’s authoritarian exertions have unwittingly exposed these national illusions. Anybody acquainted with American history knows that Trump is not so much a dysfunctional aberration as a bumbling hyper-ventilated version of the US that the world has learnt to fear and hate. 

American exceptionalism has been a con job all along. We were taught in school that the US is the world’s oldest democracy, which in 1776, righteously proclaimed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness….”

A gullible world took the US at its word. However, the appalling reality is that the grandiose declaration of a democracy did little to stamp out deep-rooted social and racial hierarchies within that country. 

Decades after that stirring declaration of democratic intent, there were neither equal rights nor the equal right to vote. Women got the vote only in 1920. Even more shameful, only in 1964 did the Civil Rights Act finally outlaw discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin.

A central tenet of Christianity is the concept of original sin – the congenital state of sinfulness and moral corruption that all humans are saddled with at birth. In like vein, the US at its inception, was burdened with two such cardinal crimes that it is yet to live down. 

The first was the genocide of the indigenous Native American Indian population and the second deadly sin was the enslavement of a huge chunk of its people. Tragically, even today, American society is dealing with the hypocrisies and racial prejudice of white Christian nationalism. Trump is the archetype of this cultural perversity.

America has a deeply flawed and undemocratic political structure. It is the only democracy in the world where the presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. The Electoral College system has, through gerrymandering, skewed the entire system. A country with a 58% White population has put in place electoral procedures that are designed to extend White supremacy.

All manner of skulduggery continues to be used to ensure white dominance in racial hierarchy. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required the different states and counties to submit changes to voting procedures to the Federal Justice System before going into effect. The calculated elimination of such oversight has vitiated the entire electoral system.

In a deeply polarized country where the colour of one’s skin normally determines one’s voting preference, voter suppression is happening through reducing the early voting period, imposing the most racially biased voter ID laws, eliminating same-day registration, refusing extension of voting hours even in the event of long lines, barring felons from voting even after they have served their time – in effect, any ruse to discourage lower-income minority groups from exercising their franchise. 

The American justice system is a cruel travesty of justice, structurally designed to deliver justice blinkered by partisan considerations. With the party in power deciding the candidate for filling any vacancy in the Supreme Court and other federal courts, every judge appointed to the country’s top court feels bound to arbitrate in favour of the party that nominated him, even at the cost of true justice.

To give a most egregious example – the US Supreme Court in July 2024 upheld Trump’s claim of immunity from federal criminal charges, ruling that Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president. In effect, the court ruled that the president was above the law – a verdict that would shame a banana republic! 

No less scandalous is the Supreme Court’s weak response to the outrageously unjust deportation of Abrego Garcia who was ‘mistakenly’, unlawfully and in violation of a court order, packed off to El Salvador’s prison. Instead of a peremptory order to bring him back, the court has meekly asked the government to ‘facilitate’ his return, a submission that has been contemptuously ignored.

A bemused world does not know whether to laugh or cry at Trump’s crazed imperialistic designs on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, but those clued into US’s murky past realize that it is the most ruthless exemplar of realpolitik – unmisted by considerations of right and wrong. Predatory acquisition of others’ territory has always been par for the course.

Trump is merely conforming to a well-worn script. In the 19th century, the US instigated a war with Mexico and impounded almost half its territory including Texas, California, Nevada and chunks of Arizona and New Mexico. Former US President BaraCk Obama may not have been a US citizen but for the annexation of Hawaii in 1898. Besides, The US has muscled its way into 70 countries, where it has set up around 800 military bases. 

In its cynical pursuit of world dominance, it has attempted and largely succeeded in overthrowing more than 50 foreign governments, most of them democratically elected. Not for nothing is The US known as the Big Satan! 

Then take Palestine. Trump’s heartless suggestion that the two million Palestinians in Gaza vacate the land which could then be transformed into a resort akin to the French Riviera has caused outrage even as the killing of innocents continues apace and the world looks on. Here again, the systematic evisceration of Palestine – its people, its land, its culture has been actively abetted by America.  

Trump’s economic policy has sent the world into a tailspin. His tariff spree is bound to be short-lived, but the enduring elements – his oligarchic concerns – have resonated right through American history. 

James Madison, the architect of the American Constitution, felt that a major concern of any decent society must be to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Which is what successive governments have done to ensure elite domination and control. Who can forget the so-called ‘socialist’ Obama’s massive bailout of “fat-cat bankers” following the 2008 financial crash even as ordinary Americans lost their jobs, homes and life savings? Why crib about Trump?

Trump’s governance style has been variously described as conservative, right-wing, neo-nationalist and authoritarian. Curiously, despite the craziest man in the US gutting the economy, dividing society, hurting the middle class, wrecking jobs across the board, he still has the unstinted support of 42% of his people, more than the Bharatiya Janata Party’s popularity at its height. That’s because Trump has promised white redemption. 

Let’s call it out for what it is: the US is a deeply divided and fragile democracy where white Christian nationalism nee racism is still the major force.

Mathew John is a former civil servant. The views are personal.

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