Oh well, so much for American exceptionalism

I went to a conference in Venice last month on the rise of strongmen, alt-right populists, and ethnic and religious nationalists in India, Turkey, Western Europe and the United States. An economist from Rome worried about the ways in which skyrocketing economic inequality was fueling these trends. A sociologist from Paris observed how rising Islamophobia was driving young women in France to take up arms with the Islamic State terrorist group. A former Italian ambassador fretted about the growing influence worldwide of “peddlers of reactionary utopias.”

Everyone at this meeting, sponsored by the Italian nonprofit Reset, seemed fearful that hardening ethnic and religious identities were threatening such longstanding democratic values as freedom of the press and respect for the rule of law. It was, in short, an old-fashioned freakout among progressive scholars and journalists who had already suffered through their own elections of Trump-like figures.

I refused to join in the pity party. I had just written a book about how liberals almost always win America’s culture wars. And I had been following closely the prognostications of a Hillary Clinton victory. So I told my colleagues that the United States was different.

I was wrong. As of Nov. 9, the United States is part of a global pandemic of majoritarian antipolitics that threatens to undo longstanding global commitments to religious pluralism and the rights of ethnic and racial minorities. So much for American exceptionalism.

It is tempting to assign local causes to what historians will likely categorize as one of the most shocking political events in modern U.S. history, but the fact that Donald Trump is but one puffed-up strongman among many cries out for more global analysis. The most obvious cause of their rise with empty promises is the new global economy, which has sent factories and workers packing and brought on unprecedented economic inequality.

But this cause is intimately tied up with another: the rise of religious and ethnic nationalisms as easy antidotes to the anxiety and anger brought on by the jarring dislocations (and migrations) of this new global order. Trumpism and Brexit are rejections of global trade, but they are also efforts to pull up the drawbridges and wall off outsiders.

Before Nov. 8, European and Asian nations wrestling with their own flirtations with majoritarianism and illiberal democracy were looking to the U.S. as a beacon of democratic values. Now when people look to what President Reagan proudly described as a “shining city upon a hill,” what they see is a dark and unexceptional America getting in line behind the vulgarities of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the naked aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At least for now, the United States is no longer the foremost defender of Western civilization. It is its greatest threat.