The Death of American Exceptionalism

One thing Trump has killed off is the idea of American exceptionalism — the idea that “sure GERMANY might engage in a holocaust, and RWANDA might engage in ethnic cleansing, but that could *never* happen in America”.

Right.

Have I mentioned that the United States is a country of slow learners and quick forgetters?

True. But in our defense, we are also poorly educated.

 

Every morning, as school children, we pledged allegiance to the idea of “liberty and justice for all.”

It was all poppycock, of course. 

Our schools never taught us the truth, which is that, for most of US history, most Americans could not vote.

For most of US history, most Americans could not vote. 

Say it again.

Women could not vote, blacks could not vote, and Native Americans could not vote. 

First generation Asian Americans were prohibited from naturalization, and therefore prohibited from voting, until passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Many hispanic Americans could not vote until the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act, which ended discrimination against language minorities.

Did they teach us that in grade school?  High school? College?  Grad school?

They did not.

Not teaching is Job One if your goal is to keep people easily manipulated and easily recruited to war, brutality, and drudgery.

Do you think police are recruited from the top 5 percent of a high school class?  They are not.

If you want an easy-to-recruit cadre of slave-catchers, grunt soldiers, beat cops, and prison guards, you need a  thick-witted crowd of brutalists at the bottom of a slippery US economic ladder.  No geniuses need apply.

Trump has bragged that “the poorly educated” love him.  This is his base — the police, dog catchers, and young white thugs that always swarm to any recruitment station that promises them “three hots and a cot”, a uniform, and the ability to exert authority and brutality.

Today we know something we only suspected a year ago — that there is no American exceptionalism.  

Much of America is as brutal and dim-witted as any machete-wielding Rwandan Hutu or cane-wielding British colonial.

Trump knows this, and he applauds it.  

I assure you that the $45 billion now being funneled into creating a new massive ICE detention system is not being built for “criminal illegal aliens”.

These facilities are being built to incarcerate “enemies of the state,” which is to say anyone who stands up and speaks out.

Protest will be called insurrection, and citizens will be deported or disappeared.

It has already started. 

Donald Trump and Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Tom Homan are not going to stop.  

Kristi Noem shot her dog in the head rather than train it?  

That wasn’t a recruitment bar for the Trump administration, it was a feature.  

Anyone who would brag about shooting her dog in the face would not blink at doing the same to an illegal alien, or even a blonde, blue-eyed Christian mom from Minneapolis.

And so now the dim-witted and ham-fisted are rolling out their rationales for murder. 

“She should have stayed home.”

“She egged him on.”

“She was asking for it.”

“She should have just complied.”

Right.  

That’s the language of abuse, and it’s coming from hundreds of abusers at the top of our government, and from millions of Fox News-watching sycophants.

But, the tide may be turning.  

We may be passing a milestone.

Trump and his cadre of wanna-be slave-catchers are no longer fighting immigrants, legal or illegal.  

Now they are fighting a vast swath of America, and we can see that with our own eyes, and in real time.

The National Guard has been turned against citizens, and so too have ICE agents.  

But the courts have now sent the National Guard back.

Dog-shooting Kristi Noem is now sending hundreds of more ICE agents to Minnesota, but that’s not a show of strength, but a show of fear.  

ICE is afraid.

ICE is afraid of soccer moms and senior citizens.  

And because ICE is afraid, they are going to get *more* violent, not less violent.  

Sending 200 more ICE agents to Minnesota, however, will only result in scores of thousands of more citizens taking to the street in opposition.  

The battle lines are drawn, and this is not a new battle, as Woodie Guthrie reminded us in his 1944 song:

“I’m gonna tell you fascists

You may be surprised

The people in this world

Are getting organized

You’re bound to lose

You fascists bound to lose

“Race hatred cannot stop us

This one thing we know

Your poll tax and Jim Crow

And greed has got to go

You’re bound to lose

You fascists bound to lose.

“People of every color

Marching side to side

Marching ‘cross these fields

Where a million fascists dies

You fascists bound to lose!

“I’m going into this battle 

And take my union gun

We’ll end this world of slavery

Before this battle’s won

You’re bound to lose

You fascists bound to lose!”

The French, of course, are watching all this and are a bit confused. 

Where are the fires?  Where are the barricades?

Good point.  

America has always been slow to waken up, but by God when we do….

I assure you that the fires and barricades are coming. 

They MUST come.  

As Frederick Douglass observed, “the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”  

America is damn tired of Trump, and I do not think we will endure much more. 

We have 400 million guns in this country, and most states have “stand your ground” laws which allow citizens to legally shoot gun-wielding masked men raiding their cars and homes without judicial warrant.

We no longer live in the era of schooners and candles, and America is not going backwards.  

The best slave catcher is a dead slave catcher.  

If that sounds controversial to you, so be it.

America was forged in fire, and the Second Amendment exists in response to the possibility of a police state. 

Americans will not go quietly into that good night.  

We will rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

The fires and barricades are coming.