Alternative facts: American exceptionalism

It doesn't exist.

The tale of American exceptionalism is a sensitive subject I imagine for many readers (especially those who take their time to send me angry emails and comments).

I touched on this a little in my last column on mixed reactions to Fidel Castro’s death, and it seemed to get a lot of people riled up. Angry commenters detested it while quoting passages of crimes Castro committed — crimes I already knew of because the whole point of the article was to acknowledge the multifaceted views of him (both good and bad). So they conveniently missed the main idea.

While it wasn’t the central theme, the point that American exceptionalism is a myth was met with fierce opposition. I presume I might have pushed a couple of red buttons? So let’s talk about this exceptionalism people so dearly cling on to.

For whom, exactly, has America always been and still is exceptional for?

Since they’re already expecting me to bring up that it certainly wasn’t exceptional for enslaved Black people, I also expect that these people are repeating to themselves, “Slavery was a long time ago,” “Why can’t they just get over it,” “They have a better opportunity here than they could have ever had back there,” maybe even with a dash of “It wasn’t that bad,” “They had clothes and housing,” “Slavery was in Africa, too,” and my personal favorite: “Irish people were also slaves."

Well, those are all alternative facts (shout out to y’all's president). I would hope if you’re going to discuss that topic, you at least know about chattel slavery, the timeline of minority and womyn's rights in this nation and the difference between indentured servitude and generational enslavement.

They’re also probably expecting me to bring up Native Americans who didn’t find it exceptional to be systematically wiped out community by community, poisoned, infected with diseases, forcefully removed from their own land and still currently fighting for their rights to have the basic necessity of clean water (another special shout out to y’all's president). Maybe they appease this by pretending indigenous people just don’t exist or never existed.

But back to some more questions.

Is it exceptional for poor white people who are continuously fed propaganda to vote against their own self-interest for the preservation of whiteness?

For nations like Iraq and Afghanistan who are used as political toys for false claims of “protecting human rights overseas” when America’s real interest is capital accumulation and oil?

For undocumented immigrants who are constantly exploited for cheap labor because of their status, yet dehumanized and criminalized for the same reason?

For womyn and others who now see their reproductive rights restricted by cisgender men, the people furthest from ever experiencing their reality?

Attempting to find a loop around these questions without experiencing cognitive dissonance or some moral questioning is telling of a person's character. The point is, they were lied to.

Here’s the real truth — Cisheterosexual Protestant White Males who owned, or rather colonized, some share of land is who America is and has always been exceptional for.

As the “middle class” continues to shrink, America is really only exceptional for a small group more and more each day.

Maybe they’ll try lying to themselves again that they live in the land of the free with equal opportunities for ALL.