There’s one thing I really hate about holidays. All holidays, including Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Labor Day, even Thanksgiving and April Fool’s Day which, otherwise, I generally like. It’s that all newspaper columnists, and bloggers such as myself, feel absolutely compelled to write about them. Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean I want to read 20 articles about “What Christmas Really Means” and ditto with the 4th of July. Shut up and eat your hot dog.
However, since I do spend a disproportionate amount of time writing about American politics, and since being “an American living in Prague” is rather a large element of my individual identity, I feel compelled to share. If you are bored already, go back to your hot dog. I will understand.
What is the U.S.A.? First of all, it’s a place and, as such, a pretty nice one. European tourists who visit New York or Los Angeles sometimes come back with a look of stunned disillusionment in their eyes. People who camp out at Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are almost never disappointed. It’s got plenty of friendly and hospitable people in it. Sometimes the food is pretty good, and you certainly get plenty of it.
But is it exceptional? No, not really. It was. From the early settlements in the 1600s up until about the middle of the 19th century, it was a place anybody in the world could go to, and that was pretty exceptional. Then there was the revolution, and that was really exceptional. Freedom, Democracy, no more Monarchy. Truly, they were exciting times and it’s not wrong for Americans to feel proud about that, even though almost none of us had ancestors who were actually there.
Then there was the war of 1812, which would be kind of embarrassing except they kind of gloss over the details in American history books. A couple of unprovoked invasions of Mexico. Slavery continued until 1863, long after it had been abolished in Europe. The slaughter of the Indians.
America was still a beacon of hope for the tired and huddled masses on teeming foreign shores, but the glass on the lamp was getting a bit smoky. We were still exceptional, but it was becoming clear we weren’t actually better than anyone else.
Then came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and suddenly we weren’t exceptional any more. We didn’t allow everybody to come and try and make a better life for themselves.
Of course, no other nation does, either. I’m just saying, the U.S. is not exceptional.
There will be some who say that the U.S.A. is exceptional because we invented Rock and Roll, or because we love our big, powerful cars, or have the greatest military the world has ever seen, but that stuff’s not exceptional.
The promise of a new world, the freedom of an unclaimed land, the noble aspirations of 1776 are what made America exceptional. And they do not exist any more.
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