04/28/2017
From the NYT Op-Ed page:
America, From Exceptionalism to NihilismSure, maybe America’s pre-Trump elites messed up now and then, like “9/11, the bloody stalemates in Iraq and Afghanistan or the worst economic crisis since the Depression,” but they let in Fareed Zakaria and Barack Obama Sr.The U.S. leads the free world in its helplessness before the dissolution of its most cherished values.
By PANKAJ MISHRA APRIL 28, 2017
MASHOBRA, India — “The world is going America’s way,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in 2008. “Countries are becoming more open, market friendly and democratic.” Since the fall of communism, American leaders in politics, business and journalism have repeatedly broadcast the conceit that we live, or will soon live, in the best of all possible worlds. Not even 9/11, the bloody stalemates in Iraq and Afghanistan or the worst economic crisis since the Depression challenged faith in a benignly Americanized world. Barack Obama declared last year that “if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now.”
And, to Pankaj Mishra, that’s what really counts.
What finally shattered such Panglossian notions was the demagogue on the campaign trail last year who ranted, credibly to many, about “American carnage.” It took the rise of Donald J. Trump …You must Make America Great Again, Pankaj Mishra says: bring back the America that was so welcoming to Third World elites with names like Zakaria and Obama.
That’s who you are!
Commenter De Wit explains that what Mishra is lamenting is the increase in skepticism about the dogma of:
American Acceptionalism: Accept every idiot who shows up at the door.[Comment at Unz.com]
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