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Say what you will about American exceptionalism, but one thing we really are exceptional at is lying.

How has American exceptionalism, along with other cultural myths, created a type of myopia or blindness to the types of discontent, rage at the elites and collective anger that helped to birth the democracy crisis and the Age of Trump?

American exceptionalism is problematic because it assumes that our history with mass democracy is more relevant to every other country than their own history.

We do not do ourselves any favors if we are just complacent and thinking, Oh, it’ll just be OK, because, what, American exceptionalism?

There were some voices, most notably Black and brown people and others who are not enamored with or blinded by America’s various myths of its own exceptionalism and greatness and the permanence of its “democracy”, that saw the danger clearly because they were not blinded by Whiteness and its many small and big lies that in total created the failure of imagination that led to Trump and MAGA’s triumphant return to power.