The Price of Exceptionalism
Americans are prisoners of myth and fantasy:
Y/our "exceptionalism."
The "best ever," the "greatest ever," the "freest ever," and yadda-yadda. Repeat that stuff long enough, and without any countervailing, critical narrative or correction, and you're gonna end up with a pretty distorted idea of your situation. whuch we have (see above).
The emergence of "Critical--Legal, Race, Educational, Economic, Historical, etc.--Theory" has spotlighted what the exceptionalist propaganda has elided almost from the first: the disjuncture between the principles "we" espouse and the deeds we commit.
The overwhelming majority of y/our compatriots have absolutely NO fucking idea about how the country and the economy AND the Empire actually "work," and have no interest in--or capacity for--learning.
Yet they have zero hesitation about furiously and bitterly criticizing and inveighing against that about which they know embarrassingly little; or, worse, blindly following the shrillest, meanest-spirited demagogues who most loudly spew what they need to hear to sustain their fantasies and amplify their grievances.
It wasn't always this way--though the current conditions were always immanent within the system--and it is turning out that the commentators who have warned that the Constitution could become a mutual suicide pact might be correct, after all.
It was/is a system predicated on an ideal of "honor," on "playing fair," which had/has no way of dealing with a concerted, "popular" effort to cheat.
And we have been overtaken by cheaters.
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