{"id":281761,"date":"2016-10-15T08:35:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T12:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=281761"},"modified":"2020-11-01T08:43:06","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T13:43:06","slug":"american-exceptionalism-as-rorschach-test-means-anything-you-want-it-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/american-exceptionalism-as-rorschach-test-means-anything-you-want-it-to\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018American exceptionalism as Rorschach test: Means anything you want it to\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Yes! And the USA is 5% of the world population, never forget that. It\u2019s a dwarf pretending to be a giant.<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton\u2019s take on American exceptionalism has the \u201cintellectual nutritional value of junk food,\u201d according to media and political analyst Lionel, who believes the majority of the population don\u2019t have the slightest clue what the term even connotes.<\/p>\n

RT:\u00a0Inside the US there\u2019s a fundamental principle of law which is everybody equal based on sex, or race or anything else. But outside of the country,\u00a0according\u00a0to Hillary Clinton, there\u2019s no equality and the US is exceptional or, basically better than everybody else. Isn\u2019t it fundamentally and grossly hypocritical?<\/p>\n

Lionel:\u00a0Well, you know, hypocritical in whose eyes? We have this wonderful idea that America is the cornerstone of liberty and freedom. Notwithstanding the fact that our first Constitution had the Fugitive Slave Clause, which provided that you had to give slaves back to their owner if they ran away. Details, details. Then we\u2019ve had the Thirteenth Amendment, which we\u2019ve had to pass to abolish slavery. Women were not allowed to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment. Blacks and whites could be actually penalized, could be charged with the felony if they were caught in\u00a0\u201cmiscegenation.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the term \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d I\u2019m sorry, I beg to differ. Most people don\u2019t have the slightest clue what that even connotes. It\u2019s a nice start: Exceptional. Sometimes exceptional is not good, it’s like\u00a0the word \u201cspecial.\u201d It depends on how it\u2019s used.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the problem: We talk about American exceptionalism \u2013 that we\u2019re a great country, based on a one nation theory. That\u2019s terrific. Or that we are a country that espouses equality and here go justice and the law. That\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

The problem though, when we start talking about being\u00a0\u201csuperior,\u201d\u00a0not so much that we feel better than, but when you have ideology espoused especially by some of the neo-conservative factions that say:\u00a0\u201cNot only we\u2019re superior, but we want to go and spread this superiority, this freedom. We\u2019re about to go and spread this,\u201d\u00a0\u2013 now that\u2019s when we get a little dangerous here.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s interesting if you go back and watch the first debates, cause we love talking about debates now, between George Bush and Al Gore (who basically got more votes but lost, but that\u2019s another story), George W. Bush said:\u00a0\u201cOur goal is not to go and tell people what to do, follow our ways.\u201d\u00a0And I watched this recently and I was thinking:\u00a0\u201cWow. Who is that? That looks like George Bush, sounds like George Bush, but that\u2019s not the policy that the Bush administration espoused.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, American exceptionalism is like a Rorschach test; it\u2019s anything you want it to be. And when you read this particular piece,\u00a0written by Hillary Clinton\u00a0(and I assume it was written by her; I would never suspect somebody wrote it and that she merely signed her name to it). But what this is, it\u2019s basically, well, shall we say it\u2019s calorie dense, but as far as the intellectual and factual nutrients go I\u2019m not so sure. It might pass as literally junk food.<\/p>\n

So what we need to do is to put this into perspective. I believe we have a great country, I believe we are great people, but sometimes we inadvertently use terms and use phrases which over a period of time could have lose their intrinsic value. And that \u2018one size fits all\u2019 kind of a \u2018feel good\u2019 type of situation. I hope it cleared that up perfectly.<\/p>\n

RT:\u00a0It has to an extent. Does the US have the right to claim that it is above of it as it is exceptional?<\/p>\n

L:\u00a0Oh, what we can, there\u2019s no law against it. I think it is OK for certain people to feel proud. Look, you want to talk about another term that is interesting \u2013 \u2018exceptionalism\u2019. I can tell some people can say:\u00a0\u201cOuuu, I don\u2019t like the sound of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

My favorite is the difference between \u201cnationalism\u201d and \u201cpatriotism\u201d. See, \u201cpatriotism\u201d is good \u201cnationalism\u201d is [so-so] and then we have \u201cnativism.\u201d You know, I love to basically parse definitions, I think it\u2019s important. I thing symbols are important, and also the words are important, and I think who\u2019s saying these things are important. For example, the word \u201cterrorist\u201d always implies somebody else, \u201cfundamentalist zealot\u201d \u2013 somebody else, \u201cextremist\u201d \u2013 somebody else, \u201cwar criminal\u201d \u2013 somebody else. Nobody ever uses those terms willingly.<\/p>\n

So when you say \u201cnational exceptionalism\u201d I\u2019m telling you right now, with all due respect. Not you, of course, but the others \u2013 don\u2019t read too much into this, because this phrase has been used for so long, that we\u2019ve kind of habituated to it.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s a certain basis that we have. Where people almost say \u201cYes, American exceptionalism, a shining city on the hill. Yes, that\u2019s OK.\u201d And if we really go into that, wait a minute \u2013 exceptional how? We\u2019re 240-years-old. And that\u2019s wonderful, but sometimes we have to realize that there\u2019re other countries that are pretty darn gone good too, and in their own way feel exceptional and, dare I say it, in some cases, superior.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rt.com\/op-ed\/362854-us-exceptionalism-rorschach-test\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Yes! And the USA is 5% of the world population, never forget that. It\u2019s a dwarf pretending to be a giant.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":281762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}