Sunday reading: What is “Un-American”?
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There is a willfully ignorant, self-exculpatory exceptionalism that mythologizes U.S. history into an easily digestible, triumphant tale. It is as ahistorical as it is politically useless. Worse than useless, actually, as it engenders a self-satisfied and dangerously unimaginative complacency.
But to insist that America – its history, identity, and political tradition – is solely defined by these continuities of racist authoritarianism and white patriarchal domination is equally ahistorical. From the start, the American experiment was also shaped by an egalitarian promise.
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But to insist that America – its history, identity, and political tradition – is solely defined by these continuities of racist authoritarianism and white patriarchal domination is equally ahistorical. From the start, the American experiment was also shaped by an egalitarian promise.
That aspirational tradition isn’t any less authentically American than the idea of a white Christian “homeland” defined by hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth. There simply has never been a consensual answer to the question of “who we are.”
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That aspirational tradition isn’t any less authentically American than the idea of a white Christian “homeland” defined by hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth. There simply has never been a consensual answer to the question of “who we are.”
MAGA claims that “real America” was only ever intended to be and only ever existed as a white Christian ethno-state. To renounce America’s aspirational tradition is to help them perpetuate this idea that the injustices of the past and present represent the one true essence of the nation.
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MAGA claims that “real America” was only ever intended to be and only ever existed as a white Christian ethno-state. To renounce America’s aspirational tradition is to help them perpetuate this idea that the injustices of the past and present represent the one true essence of the nation.
If we can get rid of the willfully naïve exceptionalism that glorifies America, let us not replace it with its dark mirror equivalent that only serves to confirm MAGA’s tale – but with an aspirational creed, fueled by an acknowledgment of injustice, as our common understanding.
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If we can get rid of the willfully naïve exceptionalism that glorifies America, let us not replace it with its dark mirror equivalent that only serves to confirm MAGA’s tale – but with an aspirational creed, fueled by an acknowledgment of injustice, as our common understanding.
Whereas the traditional exceptionalist tale presented America as intrinsically good, noble, and democratic, this dark mirror narrative views the nation as inherently incapable of anything but hierarchical violence: There never was democracy in America – and there never will be.
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Whereas the traditional exceptionalist tale presented America as intrinsically good, noble, and democratic, this dark mirror narrative views the nation as inherently incapable of anything but hierarchical violence: There never was democracy in America – and there never will be.
I believe such dark mirror exceptionalism is deeply mistaken. We must distinguish between acknowledging traditions of racial violence and state authoritarianism on the one hand – and reducing the nation’s history to those traditions on the other.
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I believe such dark mirror exceptionalism is deeply mistaken. We must distinguish between acknowledging traditions of racial violence and state authoritarianism on the one hand – and reducing the nation’s history to those traditions on the other.
What Is America, and for Whom? Two competing forms of nationalism: A pluralistic democracy with egalitarian aspirations – or a white Christian ethno-state with strict hierarchies? American society has always been divided over what this country should strive to be.
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What Is America, and for Whom? Two competing forms of nationalism: A pluralistic democracy with egalitarian aspirations – or a white Christian ethno-state with strict hierarchies? American society has always been divided over what this country should strive to be.
But it is simply not true that the latter, with all the brutal subjugation it fueled and legitimized, is the sole true political tradition - while the former is just hypocritical theater intended to distract us from that reality.
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But it is simply not true that the latter, with all the brutal subjugation it fueled and legitimized, is the sole true political tradition - while the former is just hypocritical theater intended to distract us from that reality.
Too long have rightwingers been allowed to drape their grievances and bigotries in the nation’s collective symbols, to call on the patriotic mythology of the nation in order to pretend that their desire to dominate is somehow an expression of the timeless essence of the nation.
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Sunday reading: What is “Un-American”?
We must acknowledge America’s history of state authoritarianism and racial violence – but also dare to claim its aspirational tradition of egalitarian democracy.
Let’s Make MAGA un-American, finally.
My new piece:
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What is “Un-American”?
We must acknowledge America’s history of state authoritarianism and racial violence – but also dare to claim its aspirational tradition. Make MAGA un-American, finally.
Steady (steady.page)
@tzimmer_history THANK you.
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Too long have rightwingers been allowed to drape their grievances and bigotries in the nation’s collective symbols, to call on the patriotic mythology of the nation in order to pretend that their desire to dominate is somehow an expression of the timeless essence of the nation.
The reluctance by those on the liberal-left to engage the Right on this terrain, the tendency to abdicate and surrender the field of patriotism to the Right, has allowed a bunch of ethno-nationalist extremists to present themselves as the guardians of the national mythos.
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The reluctance by those on the liberal-left to engage the Right on this terrain, the tendency to abdicate and surrender the field of patriotism to the Right, has allowed a bunch of ethno-nationalist extremists to present themselves as the guardians of the national mythos.
There is an American tradition of egalitarian pluralism that puts the Right’s vicious, exclusionary domination fantasies to shame. We should invoke it as a reminder to the Trumpists that their claim to be the sole representatives of “authentic” Americanism has no historical basis.
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There is an American tradition of egalitarian pluralism that puts the Right’s vicious, exclusionary domination fantasies to shame. We should invoke it as a reminder to the Trumpists that their claim to be the sole representatives of “authentic” Americanism has no historical basis.
The Right’s vision of white Christian patriarchal domination is indeed deeply rooted in U.S. history. To counter it, we should take heart from that other American tradition, that boldly democratic promise of egalitarian pluralism.
Make MAGA un-American, finally.
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There is an American tradition of egalitarian pluralism that puts the Right’s vicious, exclusionary domination fantasies to shame. We should invoke it as a reminder to the Trumpists that their claim to be the sole representatives of “authentic” Americanism has no historical basis.
@tzimmer_history i've been listening to lots of aaron copland's work and am also a rabid fan of harry partch. both way too american for maga.
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