1. If nothing else, I hope this whole Trump/impeachment debacle puts the tired-ass trope of "American Exceptionalism" in its grave. Turns out our "republic" is just as susceptible to authoritarianism and caudillismo as those "other" places, even though our Founders were white!
2. Who knew that a system of government created in a de facto apartheid state, one that made formal accomodations for the practice of enslavement, would be vulnerable to the repudiation of its governing consensus by wealthy, corrupt wannabe kings?
3. (That's a rhetorical question; the answer is lots of people, mostly women and PoC, knew, but most were prevented from fully participating in the national discourse and political system until very recently, historically speaking.)
4. Trump may have said "Shithole countries," but that was just a cruder version of white opinion in the US. "Those people don't know how to govern themselves. They live like animals. They vote for corrupt strongmen. They shoot each other." Not us, though, WE'RE EXCEPTIONAL
5. Nope. We're not. "We" (speaking in broad, systemic terms) are a failing state that wages war against its own minoritized groups and fetishizes displays of naked power from men who delight in the hurting of others. What we call others, we are ourselves, only more so.
6. It's a rather jarring contrast with the Historians of a Certain Stripe whining about the #1619Project not representing "us," that it leaves out the good parts of "our founding." Only the well-insulated, wealthy, and willfully obtuse would make that argument.
Oh...right.
Oh...right.
7. One of the principle virtues of the #1619Project, and @nhannahjones's stewardship of it, is that it exposes the American Exceptionalism trope for what it really is: the opiate of the elite, a comforting lie to rationalize privilege in the face of increasingly blatant suffering
8. Today's impeachment hearing drives home just how petty, greedy, vacuous, and corrupt the "creation of the Founders" can become, no matter how fervently our civic religion worships it. The only thing "exceptional" here is the persistence with which we deny those facts.
PS-I wrote on the teaching implications of this exceptionalist trope back when I was a new blogger: thetattooedprof.com/2014/08/26/ame…
