American Exceptionalism?

Among the many wrong directions this country is going is the continuing sense in some quarters that the United States is its own planet, unrelated to the rest of the unenlightened world.  In Texas, the power mad governor with the connivance of the Supreme Court of Shame executed a foreign citizen (a Mexican, so maybe that doesn't count) without the opportunity to seek help from his own government since his arrest, in violation of international agreements that in turn protects Americans charged with crimes on foreign soil.  It opens the wounds of torture under Bush that also violated international law.

America is exceptional in many ways, but not all of those ways are good.  For example, in the civilized world the United States has the biggest gap between the rich few and the non-rich many and the highest percentage of men in prison.  It is virtually alone in not providing guaranteed health care, and in all states but one, permitting concealed guns in public.  These are not unrelated.

It is among the world's top polluters and propagators of greenhouse gases, and virtually alone in not seriously acknowledging the climate crisis.   How backward we are is made painfully obvious by the action of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in announcing a greenhouse gas pollution tax.  Most European nations have one.

Yet in these trying days in America, reactionary voices are louder than ever, taken more seriously, and seem more powerful than ever.  They want to make America even more exceptional--a conservative Christian xenophobic and racist nation, the world capital of denial, run by stupid slogans that would end up comitting national economic and social suicide, while bringing down environmental wrath on the world far beyond our exceptional shores. 

It is a pivotal moment, and the hope is that this is the last hurrah of a dying self-righteous barbarism.  Josh Marshall opines:

  " I think we will look back at this moment as the chaotic time that the old order turned to the new. In my opinion, we are seeing the remants of the soon-to-be old power structure see their grip on power slip with the predictable response of ever greater efforts to hold power through cohesion, projections of power, and inflexibility. I would change the term pollsters use here from enthusiasm to desperation or fear. The end is coming. The demographics are clear. Majority minority is marching closer every day. Their team is the long-term loser, the horse and buggy to the Model T. We are now in the Battle of the Bulge phase of this transition. I don't think the transition will be smooth nor do I think that Democrats can't lose elections, but the behavior seems to fit to me. Democrats will compromise because the future is theirs while Republicans have to hold on to every vestige of their order remaining as though their lives depend on it...because it does. Tomorrow is not bright for them."