Chasing America and Identity: My Road Trip to Nebraska and South Dakota (Part 5)
Nothing exceptional about American exceptionalism
This is part 5 of a six-part series. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
The Great Plains promised to supply innumerable signs of America’s patriotism and what I like to call — as a foreigner, and not without occasionally raising American eyebrows — cult of the nation. I found the pinnacle at Our Place, the Custer, South Dakota, diner where I had breakfast following recommendations from Abby and Tim, the locals I had met the night before. Our Place is a veritable stars-and-stripes sanctuary. The wooden walls are plastered in red-white-and-blue memorabilia evoking eagles, 1776, and God’s blessings on the nation. On the quintessential formica tables, creamers and jams sit inside little wool baskets knitted in the American flag color palette. Perhaps most impressive is a red-and-blue wall of white stars containing photos of what I assumed were fallen veterans across various branches of the U.S. military: Army, Navy, Marines.
“They’re local military folks,” Susan, the diner’s owner, told me when she delivered my breakfast of scrambled eggs, crispy strips of bacon, a generous load of hashbrowns and well-buttered toast. They’re still alive, she explained, and her two sons are also on the wall. “I just appreciate them so much,” she said. I felt the depth of admiration transpiring from her words — the depth of love.
I’ll take a break from my roadshow to share a reflection on American patriotism and so-called exceptionalism that — I couldn’t stress more — follows my description of Our Place and narration of Susan’s words only insofar as the general theme is concerned. My critique of American exceptionalism is not criticism of Susan’s gratitude toward the U.S. military and the veterans in her life. I may not relate to her sentiments, but I respect them very much. My hope is that no one will conflate my commentary on American patriotism as a general notion with disapproval of each individual citizen’s unassailable pride in their country.
As a foreigner in the United States, I experience American patriotism with discomfort when it’s predicated on beliefs of exceptionalism. I itch at the self-proclamation of “the greatest country on earth,” which, to be sure, comes from the right hand of the aisle as much as the left. “Great” is a qualitative feature that rests on morality, an abstract philosophical concept that cannot be measured objectively. I sneer at the claim that there exists one “great” nation above all others. Yet, as the citizen of a different country — one that stands at the opposite side of self-confidence to a point of complete self-deprecation (with the notable exception of food) — I contend with this claim on a daily basis. Imagine living around people who in large numbers believe that their country is morally superior (whatever that means) to all others, including yours. It’s just weird.
Crucially, though, American exceptionalism makes me uncomfortable because if it were a non-Western, non-developed, non-dominating country to display such a flamboyant and outsized belief in its own power, the Western world would be quick to admonish it as a potentially dangerous expression of nationalism. Geopolitical efforts to keep it in check would be initiated. We live in a world, however, where India’s Supreme Court 2016 order (since reversed) to play the national anthem in movie theaters is evidence of “swelling nationalist pride,” while singing the Star-Spangled Banner before sporting events is “tradition.” Even conceding that the latter isn’t enforced by law, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day is required in 47 states. All of these, in India or the United States, are unmistakably nationalistic practices. And if you ask me, the extensive deployment of military troops and machinery at the Super Bowl is just downright scary.
Indeed, the devotion to the military in the United States is especially bewildering to me. Emphasis on the military is traditionally a feature of reactionary governments, if not authoritarian regimes. There is also an inherent contradiction between the romanticization of the military for “protecting Americans” from the threats of foreign powers and “maintaining peace and stability” in the world, and the means by which this duty is accomplished: weapons, bombs, tanks, etc. You can’t disassociate the military from war and violence. There is nothing romantic about the military. In fact, it would be romantic if countries didn’t need one.¹ But saying that is just weak. “I’m sorry if my patriotism offends you. Trust me, your lack of spine offends me more” was a catchphrase on a wall of black t-shirts hanging outside a shop next to The Saloon in Custer. (Other t-shirts boasted lines such as “These colors don’t run. They reload” on a background of guns and the American flag, and “I have PTSD. Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats. Trump 2024.”)
“American exceptionalism had declared our country unique in the world, the one true free and modern country, and instead of ever considering that that exceptionalism was no different from any other country’s nationalistic propaganda, I had internalized this belief as the basis of my reality.”² These are the words of American journalist Suzy Hansen in her 2017 Pulitzer Prize-finalist book “Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World,” where she examines how Turkey and other Muslim countries have been impacted by American power across the world. Continues Hansen:
We are told it is the greatest country on earth. […] We will never reconsider that narrative. […] Because to us, that isn’t propaganda, that is truth. And to us, that isn’t nationalism, it’s patriotism. […] We will never question any of it because at the same time, all we are being told is how freethinking we are, that we are free. So we don’t know that there is anything wrong in believing our country is the greatest on earth. The whole thing sort of convinces you that a collective consciousness in the world came to that very conclusion.
“Wow,” a friend once replied [to this]. “How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isn’t it?”³
I hail from the country that gave fascism to the world — and was rightfully punished for it — and when I first read these words, a few years ago, they blew my mind. I’m fundamentally a child of the Western world. My parents were born shortly after Italy installed itself on the capitalist, pro-America side of the Iron Curtain, staving off the prospect of another authoritarian regime after two decades of fascism. They were raised in the economic prosperity that resulted from this strategic siding, and passed that prosperity onto me. When I was born in 1989, the Berlin Wall wouldn’t crumble for another three months, and siding with America was still relevant. What is more, I am generationally very few steps removed from fascist Italy — my paternal grandparents were ten and one years old when Benito Mussolini seized power; my maternal grandparents, born after the 1922 coup, didn’t experience life without a dictatorship until their late teens. They both greeted the arrival of American tanks with cheers — soldiers were distributing good-quality cigarettes, and the promise of liberation from war, destruction, starvation.
With original fascism informing my definition of nationalistic propaganda — and American intervention chronicled in history books as an antidote to it — it had never crossed my mind that certain flares of American patriotism could be an example of it. Indeed, we shouldn’t use the word “fascism” liberally in the context of a democracy. But make no mistake: Hansen’s friend’s words actually resonated with me. The more I live in the United States through the filter of my foreign identity, the more I believe that beliefs of exceptionalism and claims of “the greatest country on earth” approximate nationalistic propaganda pretty darn well.
I found an echo of Hansen’s words in Tim Wise’s “Under the Affluence,” on the topic of income inequality in the United States. “Our pride and hubris have long tended to get the better of us, much to the amusement of persons around the globe, and quite often to their horror,” says Wise, also an American. “After all, people who believe themselves smarter, wiser, more imbued with insight, and inspired by providence can be both incredibly domineering and dangerous.”⁴
Why are we giving America such a pass?
For one, I think it’s because we’ve never really moved past the post-WWII notion of the United States as the world’s saving grace. Its military reaches your shores to save you, not threaten you — that notion is still accepted as true no matter the Vietnams, Iraqs, Afghanistans that occurred in the interim. As my lengthy footnote below shows, we better all just be thankful for the atomic bomb. Then, of course, democracy, however frail these days. The veneer of democracy protects the United States from suggestions that self-anointing as the leading world power can be far-fetched or even dangerous. The double standards proliferate on this topic as well — in the wake of the January 6 storming on the Capitol by Trump supporters who did not accept Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, a brilliant Washington Post opinion article by Karen Attiah hypothesized how Western media would have reported on the attack had it not happened in the United States: “The coup attempt unfolded as the former British colony continues to struggle with a dysfunctional response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic.”
Finally, and crucially, because when bad things happen in America — attempted coups, mass shootings of elementary school children, the election of a rich individual caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women — they’re usually processed with the cop-out of “this is not America.” “This is not America” is how American exceptionalism cannily guarantees its survival. Self-criticism is hardly contemplated from a standpoint of “the best and greatest.” After all, if your self-graded school report is a landslide of A+, you probably won’t feel the need to study like they were B-. So what happens when America gets a B-? Enter “This is not America.” The phrase ensures that what is not so good about you is cast outside of you. Once safely outside of you, you bear no responsibility to acknowledge it, address it, change it. “Humans — like nations — are not going to perform radical surgery on cancers that they don’t think are part of them,” Ibram X. Kendi brilliantly argued in another touching post-January 6 essay on The Atlantic. Kendi calls this the “American denial”:
What is the inevitable response of Americans to tragic stories of mass murder, of extreme destitution, of gross corruption, of dangerous injustice, of political chaos, of a raw attack on democracy within the very borders of the United States, as we witnessed at the U.S. Capitol? This is not who we are. From this bipartisan perspective, America is existentially nonviolent, prosperous, orderly, democratic, just, and exceptional. America is apparently not like those so-called banana republics, which are existentially violent, poor, chaotic, tyrannical, unjust, and inferior — as Republicans and Democrats keep implying.
So has America historically kept itself above reproach, with no qualms from the rest of the world. And that is why I am uncomfortable with American exceptionalism. It’s the opposite of moral superiority — it’s self-righteousness. Moral superiority means believing that no country is the greatest in the world, and acting like it; you can rank countries by all possible measurable standards (richest, poorest, winning the most World Cups or least Olympic medals, etc.), but not by “good” or “great” (if the United States is the greatest country on earth, what is the least great? North Korea? Go explain that to the North Koreans). Moral superiority means engaging in self-criticism and owning up to strategic mistakes; the United States has done this at times, but it’s not a natural posture. Moral superiority means acknowledging that the wheels of history turn constantly, and your place in the world is a process of continuous negotiation; no red carpet is owed to you or your citizens, ever (especially with little to no reciprocation on paper). Moral superiority means humility.
I would not have written and carefully edited 2,000 words on American exceptionalism if I didn’t love America. You don’t go about critiquing things that you don’t care about. I went on my road trip because I wanted to connect with and understand the United States more, because I too love this country. I just feel strongly that a humbler America would be a more hospitable America. I, for one, think I would feel happier in it.
Back at Our Place, I observed a family wrapping up their breakfast at a table near mine. People-watching rural Americans captured my imagination intensely — I could do that ad libitum. They were white, obviously. I identified them as two parents, two children in their late teens or early twenties, two grandparents, and a woman who was perhaps an aunt. The boy sat with his legs sprawled, chewing on a toothpick that dangled from alternate sides of his mouth. The remnants of an omelette and breakfast potatoes lay on his plate. The women were discussing an old prom dress. The grandfather sat at the head of the table wearing a war veteran hat. He didn’t say a word the whole time I spent observing, but the weight of his person on the family, as the patriarch and honorable serviceman, was palpable. My eyes followed them as they left the restaurant and drove away in their trucks.
Susan handed me the check: thirteen dollars and some change. I paid with a twenty-dollar bill (I don’t normally carry cash in my wallet, but I had acquired some for the road), and left the change as tip. “Thanks, sweetie. God bless you,” Susan said, then returned to serving eggs around her red-white-and-blue shrine.
Continue to part 6: Finale: freedom and fate
[1] One personal anecdote will forever remain etched in my mind. The second time I lived in the United States, I taught Italian at a small liberal arts college where I also took coursework. In one undergraduate literature class, the professor asked students what they knew about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. I raised my hand and shared the insightful analysis of my high school history book in Italy: with the atomic bomb, the United States ended with violence and mass destruction the same war it had entered with the mission of stopping violence and mass destruction. I said so sincerely, not confrontationally. The study of Italian history is open about the wrongness of the fascist regime and the harm that it caused; I naively assumed that the same applied to U.S. history with examples of American intervention in the world whose virtue is ambiguous. Silence fell on the class. The professor noted “how interesting it is to hear how history is studied in other countries,” and that all U.S. Presidents since Harry Truman, including Barack Obama (then the president), have stood by Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. It meant “ending the suffering of so many Americans at home,” she said. I don’t doubt it, and my own maternal grandfather told me that however horrible the death and destruction caused by the atomic bomb was, he welcomed with relief the liberation that it brought from five years of war. But that’s the thing — for my grandfather, World War II took place at home. Bombs fell from the sky on his very head. Cities in Italy and Europe were torn apart. Any minute you could be walking down the street and a siren would start blaring and you would seek underground refuge not knowing whether you’d see the light again. German soldiers tried to take over my maternal grandmother’s family house — the house where I later grew up — deterred only by a pimple on my grandma’s teenage face, which her mother frantically pretended was some sort of infectious disease. That was the reality of war in Italy and Europe — it was physical, and my grandparents lived through that, and I’m sorry, but at the risk of petty one-upmanship, I don’t think it compares to the “suffering of so many Americans at home” when no WWII combat occurred on U.S. soil. In fact, no combat has occurred on U.S. soil in the 20th and 21st centuries (yet), despite the United States’ involvement in or initiation of more than half a dozen global conflicts. You can argue that by ending WWII with the atomic bomb, the U.S. military accomplished its duty: it protected its citizens at home. No matter if it did so by killing over one hundred thousand Japanese civilians in their own home, in final retribution for the killing of over two thousand soldiers at Pearl Harbor. I had found the professor’s dismissal of my observations tone-deaf. But when I approached her at the end of class to explain where I was coming from, she didn’t have much time for me.
[2] Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, p. 96
[3] Ibidem, p. 97
[4] Tim Wise, Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich, and Sacrificing the Future of America, City Lights Books, 2015, p. 229
