It’s no secret that Americans have been raised to think of themselves as exceptional. Practically from birth we are saturated with tales of American greatness—the planting of the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima, the bravery of the Colonists in repulsing the British assault at Bunker Hill, the bloody sacrifices at Gettysburg and Normandy.
This is all part of our American DNA, instilled into us from a young age. The fact that we championed the practice of human slavery well into the 19th Century after more enlightened European countries had already outlawed it, the fact that we annihilated whole populations of Native Americans through a concerted policy of genocide, are viewed, at least in the popular imagination, as regrettable, even tragic consequences of our national development. Viewed in this comforting, almost fatalistic way those travesties themselves become woven into the American story—with the Civil War exemplifying the struggle within our nation’s conscience, and the long and sordid history of Jim Crow dethroned, however imperfectly, by the Civil Rights movement. These are the core mythologies that sustain our national identity.
Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times, recognizes that no matter how intrinsically flawed our national myths may be, and though we have often fallen short of our values as a nation, there still remains, after all is said and done, a strong and enduring undercurrent of pride at what we have managed to accomplish, particularly on the world stage during the last century:
America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself — for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles.
Whether you ascribe the notion of America as operating as a force for the benefit of humankind or as a cynical self-dealer in realpolitik, it is clear that for decades at least, other nations more or less took us at our word:
But what does American goodness — all too often honored in the breach, but still real — have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust.
Again, Krugman doesn’t argue that we haven’t acted with callous and often brutal self-interest in our leadership of the world since World War II. He cites our meddling in Iran, and he might have cited Chile and Vietnam, to name a few countries where we disregarded any pretense of American ideals in favor of cold, calculated and (usually disastrous) military-inspired indifference to humanity. But at the same time America emerged from World War II, not as a belligerent bully on the world stage, dictating its control under the implicit threat of violence, but with something called the Marshall Plan, which set the stage for a conquered and debilitated Europe to get back on its own feet, through its own systems of governance.
The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force.
Even our trade agreements, while certainly designed to benefit American capitalism, were viewed as a means to keep the peace among nations.
In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that “prosperous trade among nations” was an essential element in building an “enduring peace.” So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.
So Trump’s recent attacks on our historical allies, his repudiation of treaties that we painstakingly negotiated and signed, all serve to destroy the trust, good will and reputation that we had cultivated for over half a century, from President to President, political party notwithstanding. Krugman sees this as incredibly damaging to the fabric of our nation and to our sense of purpose. With his crude, reflexive and thoughtless animosity toward nations that had grown to respect us, Trump is intent on leaving us a scorched-earth world where there is nothing for Americans to believe in, and leaving nothing for other nations to admire, respect, or aspire to:
... Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations.
And rejecting our ideals won’t make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we’re throwing all that away.
To the bitter, spoiled and self-absorbed Americans that voted for him and still attend his rallies, Trump is “Making America Great Again” by inflicting his endless need for adoration on whole populations they have been carefully trained to despise. The target du jour is dirt-poor Latin Americans and their families fleeing drug-fueled gang violence that America’s “War on Drugs” helped to spawn. Before that it was people of color who those same folks believe shouldn’t have the right to vote. Or women who foolishly believed they should have a right to control their own biology. Now it looks like his next target is middle-class Americans with pre-existing medical conditions trying to pay their increasing health care bills in the face of an epidemic of state-sanctioned corporate greed.
This is the Trump voters’ myopic vision of “Making America Great Again,” and we all still have the power to challenge that vision with our votes this November. When the impact of his pointless trade war begins to be felt throughout this country, and the ginning up of racial hatred stops solving his problems for him, and the economy that his predecessor generously left for him begins to collapse under the weight of his mismanagement, Trump may even enjoy the fate of other dictators and blowhards of the past century, forced out of office in ignominy, disgrace, or worse.
But at that point something even more valuable to the fate of humanity may have already been lost.