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The election of Speaker of the Home of Representatives within the 118th US Congress final week was a rare spectacle, one which stretched over 4 gruelling days and 15 agonisingly lengthy rounds of contentious voting and that led to a close to brawl within the chamber.
Nobody had seen such a historic debacle, on such a gargantuan scale, for the reason that late 1800s, nor may anybody have written a extra vibrant script concerning the norm-shattering drama even when they tried.
That all of it occurred through the week of Jan. 6, the second anniversary of the assault on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters who sought to dam the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, gave an added symbolic pitch to the spectacle.
I watched it. You watched it. Everyone and his uncle watched it. Aghast. And what we had been left with within the aftermath was this one query: What did all of it say to us concerning the sorry state of American politics and, extra importantly, concerning the equally sorry state that “American exceptionalism” has descended into in our time.
Picture Credit score: REUTERS
Shining metropolis on a hill?
No fantasy is extra deeply embedded in American historical past and encoded within the DNA of America’s nationwide character than this messianic view of the world — a fantasy whose roots return to the Pilgrims’ imaginative and prescient of the New World because the “shining metropolis on a hill”, and whose ethos continues to outline the self- picture of latest America and the consciousness of its folks.
This declare to exceptionalism in trendy occasions, historically embraced extra by proper wing than by left wing circles in political tradition, has it that America’s manifest future isn’t just to steer the free world however to be its exemplar. And it’ll accomplish that as a result of, properly, America isn’t solely inherently completely different from however inherently superior to different nations.
And the extra in recent times this exceptionalism turned “much less distinctive” as a result of, let’s say, of a puncture in its drained, Anglo-centric assumptions, the extra the so-called “white backlash” hit again.
Recall Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the Home between 1995 and 1999, hollering at whoever needed to pay attention, within the US and overseas, that America was the “most unusual civilisation on this planet”. (By no means thoughts, by the way, {that a} grammarian ought to’ve slapped his wrist for prefacing the phrase “distinctive” with an adverb).
And recall, in equal measure, Donald Trump introducing Individuals to the notion of America First, specifically, when doubtful, faucet into — sorry, Spiro Agnew — the discontents of the “silent majority” and the alarm that majority feels over the diminution of its privileged standing as lord of the manor inhabiting an distinctive place within the globe.
All of which takes us again to the speakership fiasco within the Home final week, which represents a decline within the putative exceptionalism of the American political system, which in flip represents the deep polarisation, divisiveness and the penchant for trafficking of untruths that characterise the soul of American society and its public discourse.
Politicians of the calibre we noticed on tv placing of their two-cents price of politicking within the US Home of Representatives will not be certified — not by a stretch — to cope with the disaster that bedevils America presently in historical past.
A tragic showdown
And it no secret that the overwhelming majority of the politicians you and I noticed horse buying and selling over whom to offer and never give the Speaker’s gavel to on the finish of day are — not in contrast to different politicians who had preceded them in congress through the tenures of administrations book-ended by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump — ill-informed and little-read people allergic to data, elected by voters who know that in a democracy rule is exercised by the folks however too typically have no idea what they rule over.
“Critics say that America is a lie as a result of its actuality falls so in need of its beliefs”, wrote Harvard College political scientist Samuel Huntington, who gained each acclaim and notoriety for his 1993 thesis on the “conflict of civilisations”. “They’re unsuitable. America isn’t a lie. It’s a disappointment”.
And what could possibly be extra disappointing than the spectacle of polarisation, rancour and divisiveness overtaking American politics, the one you and I, together with everybody and his uncle, watched on reside TV final week?
Fawaz Turki is a journalist, tutorial and creator primarily based in Washington. He’s the creator of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.
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