The death knell for myth of American Exceptionalism

With Donald Trump in the White House, America is in free fall.

Have you lost count of the number of times your jaw has dropped in the last few days thanks to Donald Trump? I know I have.

Trump’s upending of policy, both foreign and domestic, is, by turns, wildly entertaining and often unstable and dangerous (via REUTERS)

It doesn’t matter if you are a fan or a critic of the US president. For a moment, let’s set aside the oft-discussed crisis of liberal politics globally or why Right-wing populism has risen on the back of tone-deaf elitism.

What is evident from Trump’s last few weeks in office is this: The myth of American Exceptionalism is done and dusted.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines American Exceptionalism as the “idea that the US is a unique and even morally superior country for historical, ideological or religious reasons”.

We have seen this manifestation of supercilious superiority in everything, from ill-thought-through military interventions, regime-change plots, and even ponderous op-eds. The worn-out trope of a “values-based order” was cited non-stop during the Russia-Ukraine war, to poke at India’s cautious navigation. Right up until the unimaginable happened! The Americans voted with Russia, and India abstained at a United Nations vote.

Trump’s upending of policy, both foreign and domestic, is, by turns, wildly entertaining and often unstable and dangerous.

But there is a conclusive busting of the myth that American values, American democracy, American media, or American oligarchy are somehow institutionally freer, healthier, or deeper than other parts of the world.

I might giggle, if not altogether guffaw, the next time an American think-tank does a condescending dipstick test of Indian democracy. Or if another report is published by the US administration on the state of human rights in India.

You don’t get to lecture India on human rights if you feel the need to chain and shackle illegal Indian immigrants on a 40-hour journey home and then videograph the thick metal restraints to set the images to music.

You don’t get to wring your hands about the nexus between media and business empires in India after the long line of corporate titans at the Trump inauguration. Heck, one of them, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, seems to be pretty much running the US government at the moment. But at least Musk bet on Trump before it was certain that he would win. Perhaps the most audacious turnaround was that of Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook who essentially reversed years of policy (on fact-checking, politics et al) to cozy up to the new Washington elite.

Or, take what’s happening at the Washington Post, the once-venerated newspaper, where I have written a column for several years. The paper, which has been lurching from one crisis to another and has seen a series of abrupt changes in its editorial leadership, has been thrown into uncertainty after its owner, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, declared a confusing shift in direction. Its opinion pages editor, David Shipley, quit in protest.

This is not schadenfreude, but as a columnist who has, in recent years, struggled and battled to explain her perspective as an Indian to an insular, orientalist, Western gaze at the other end, there is something ironic about this moment. Shipley, to my mind, presided over the wreckage of the paper’s op-ed pages, till even he could take it no more.

But Bezos’s diktat on how the paper has to follow the motto of ‘free markets and personal liberty’, announced publicly on X (presumably for Musk and Trump’s approval), smashes the illusion of a wall between promoter and editor.

Add to this the White House replacing established journalists with social media influencers partial to their side at press conferences, and the knockout punch is dealt to media freedom.

The overweening power of oligarchs, the challenges to a free press, the lack of assured access to the institutions we report on — these are all serious issues. To be sure, we in India, like everywhere else in the world, wrestle with them — often imperfectly. But, surely the next time a US newspaper editorial laments the dying lights of India’s media, we might point the finger back in the direction it came from.

This week in America has been capped with the return of the Tate brothers to the US from Romania. Andrew and Tristan Tate have been accused of rape and sexual trafficking charges.

A cursory search online will take you to the horrific statements by Andrew Tate, including his declaration that all women are sex workers and it is women who bear the responsibility for sexual assault. His videos are gross, violent and nauseating. The brothers are avid fans of Trump, and the Financial Times reported that the US administration spoke to Romanian officials to let them come home. Even the American far right is apoplectic, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, saying they were not welcome.

America is in free fall. Maybe Trump’s political fortunes will soar. But American Exceptionalism — which I would argue never really existed — has been well and truly exposed for its shambolic claims.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal