“The anti-Russian campaign has given the FBI and the CIA a public relations facelift.”

July 23, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - American exceptionalism is not merely an ideology that presumes the United States to be the beacon of (white) civilization, progress, and humanity. While this is the overarching definition, its function and form are not always visibly draped in the symbolism of American racist folklore so deeply embedded in the cultural life of the Empire. In my co-authored book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the myths of American exceptionalism are debunked, critiqued, and revised from an anti-imperialist perspective. However, a major focus of the critique is the devastating impact of innocence and exceptionalism on the left in the United States. Here are five myths of American exceptionalism subtly killing the left.

Myth One: Trump is the most dangerous force in American politics today

For many on the left, Trump is the anti-thesis of liberal enlightenment. Trump is a racist, a misogynist, and a corrupt billionaire. All of this is true, which is why many Black Americans, liberals, and progressives despise Donald Trump. That’s fair. Where the confusion lies is in the dangerous path that the response, or “resistance,” to Donald Trump has taken the left. The capitalist oligarchy has been successful in driving fear of Trump into a project of reforming and revitalizing the so-called “exceptional” values and institutions of the U.S. nation-state. 

The “resistance” has mainly focused on the Russia-gate conspiracy to render the orange billionaire a dangerous foreign agent whose sponsor, Russia, must be disposed of with as much vigilance as Trump. This narrative ignores the very real continuity between Trump and U.S. imperialism through a psychopathic vilification of Russia. Neither Trump nor Russia created this system. Trump has merely benefitted from systemic stagnation and crisis, first by becoming rich from exploiting workers (as all capitalists do) and then by taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the bipartisan consensus of endless war and austerity—a consensus much of the population of the U.S. and the world at large no longer sees as legitimate. Without an alternative to the Democratic Party, the left was unable to muster any challenge to the political crisis engendered by the two-party duopoly. The danger then is not just Trump but rather the entire political establishment which enabled his rise. Viewing Trump as the singular danger of U.S. imperialism is more likely to take the world into nuclear war with Russia than neutralize the orange menace in the White House.