The slogan “Make America Great Again” only meant something in 2016 because of the enduring appeal of the theory of exceptionalism, the conviction that the United States retains a unique place in human history and a unique responsibility as role model for all other nations. It’s a fittingly banal bromide for a blindly boastful Trump. President Obama’s so-called “apology tour” was the reactionaries’ symbolic proof that his election spelled the end of exceptionalism – which may explain why Obama felt impelled to invoke his belief in American exceptionalism so publicly and so repetitiously. Our politicians parrot old clichés because Americans have been eagerly accepting clichéd history ever since Parson Weems claimed that George Washington chopped down his dad’s cherry tree. Our people continue to adopt an overly sentimental grade-school mentality and take civics lessons in the form of fantastic morality tales.
The vast majority of Americans suffer from historical amnesia, and others of us permit the condition to go untreated. In its finest rendering, our history is the story of a union of sentiment connected to the noble idea of self-government and individual freedom. The unprecedented Great Depression brought about FDR’s hyperactive federal relief programs and, thankfully, we still have Social Security; yet by and large, the American idea is associated not with beneficial government programs but instead with countless stories of individual success.
Sociologists report that the best predictor of success in America is wealth and privilege passed down from ancestors, or from parents to children. Despite this fact (the Trump system, if you will), we prefer to claim hard work as the dominant component of the national character. Biographical testaments to the power of freedom and democracy have worn us down. Columbus the intrepid adventurer – with his own national holiday. Washington the Solomon-like father figure. Lincoln the soul of us. Not to mention a hip-hop musical’s magical conversion of a British subject named Alexander Hamilton into the first immigrant-made-good story. Spoiler alert: Hamilton actually “made good” by marrying the daughter of a slave-owning land baron, and still died broke – after doing all he could to consolidate power and prestige in the hands of the moneyed elite. It’s not just Trump. No other nation names so many of its towns after land developers. Allentown. Astoria. Austin. Baltimore. Binghamton. Cleveland. Cooperstown. There are thousands.
But our received history masks financial motives.