Some personal thoughts about American exceptionalism

With everything that is happening in the US and how often the discourse about how this is the end of the American Exceptionalism concept, and although it is, I think a key part is missing; what is American Exceptionalism and more importantly, where does it comes from?

The first question has already been answered as nauseam by researchers, academicians and columnists alike. American Exceptionalism describes, wrongly or not, the idea that the US is more attached to liberalism, freedom and everything it entails than any other country. Professors of this idea will point to the longevity of the US constitution as proof of this while others will point out to how non white people were (and are) treated throughout US history. Importantly, I think both are right in their own ways. The US implementation of liberalism has been terribly flawed and has wronged much too many people. But I do think that it is true that the US has been through an exceptionally long period of relative calm where the principles of liberalism were broadly respected, even if discriminatory in how they were applied. But far from stemming from some sort of attachment Americans would have more with freedom and liberalism than people from other countries, it stems rather from the peculiar situation that led to the United-States existing. By this I mean, a colonial State, built from a clean sheet somewhat disconnected from ancien regime elites, particularly once the American Revolution happened. The American elite in fact was completely indebted to liberalism as without it they wouldn’t have become the elite they became. This led those first few generations of elite to regard social cohesion as primordial, it was more important to them than their own personal interests as they directly understood that their fortune and power depended on liberalism.

But as generations passed, this importance of social cohesion slowly got lost. Particularly in regions of the US where the elite saw their interests clash directly with social cohesion. This I posit led directly to the American Civil War. Southern elite who relied on slavery couldn’t accept to put society interest in front of their own interests. But their crushing defeat led to a revitalization in the US of this attachment to liberalism and this importance about social cohesion and trust in the system as people who sided against it lost and lost their elite status, while those who definitely sided with it won big. But since then no clashing moment happened. One could probably argue that the Great Recession should have been that, that privatizing the losses and socializing the gains would have led to society renewing its elite and encouraging behaviour that led to more trust and social cohesion. But instead we simply saw the continuation of neoliberalism, neoliberalism which is itself a self reinforcing circle where the people who work the hardest against liberalism are the most rewarded, leading directly to elite radicalization against the interest of society in favour of prioritizing their own personal interests. In that sense, if we had privatized the losses and socialized the benefits we would have encouraged sustainably behaviours from the elite. Forced them to reckon with the fact that their actions have consequences. But we didn’t, and the Great Recession only radicalized them even more against liberalism as they saw that their actions did not have consequences. Which leads us directly to today, a moment in history where we are fighting fascism. The elite has turned its back to liberalism as accepting liberalism and what it entails necessarily means seeing part of their wealth being redistributed. Instead they’re betting on ‘nothing ever happens’, and that they can keep asset inflation going forever regardless of the fact that asset inflation is directly borrowing it’s growth from trading in societal cohesion and trust.