Jouet - Exceptional America: what divides Americans from the world and from each other

On November 9, 2016, a puzzled world woke up to a new face of America. How could Donald Trump follow Barack Obama into the White House? Experts were stunned.

I began writing this book several years before the election, and it went to press shortly afterward. I also did not expect Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton, insofar as polls predicted her victory. I was nonetheless skeptical of the conventional wisdom that Trump hardly reflected the views of the Republican Party or most ordinary American conservatives. My research instead suggested that the difference between Trump and the G.O.P. establishment was often one of style, rhetoric, and temperament. While he built his platform on conspiracy theories about Obamas forged U.S. birth certificate and other spectacularly fact-free claims, scores of Americans were already convinced that climate change and the theory of evolution are myths. Some of Trumps campaign promises, such as barring Muslims from entering America, surely went beyond what contemporary leaders had called for. But it was not as if he had suddenly brought bigotry back to America after the civil rights movement of the 1960s ended it once and for all. Yes, Trumps incendiary declarations demonstrated reservations about democracy and the rule of law, yet many citizens and prominent politicians had come to embrace torture and indefinite detention without trial at Guantnamo.

My thesis was that conservative America has become an outlier in the Western world because of its growing radicalization over the past three decades. Four peculiar mindsets especially stood out: profound anti-intellectualism, fervent Christian fundamentalism, a visceral suspicion of government, and racial resentment. This nexus has fostered an exceptionally hardline and anti-rational ideology, which culminated in Trumps election, although it has much older roots in the birth of modern democracy in the United States. It is therefore my hope that this book will humanize Trump voters by tracing their ideology to the fabric of America, including its history, culture, politics, law, economics, religion, and race relations.

Longstanding features of American exceptionalism have shaped the nations intensifying polarization, from an egalitarian spirit to a tradition of religious liberty and a remarkable demographic diversity. These traits can manifest themselves in inspiring, contradictory, and destructive ways. They ultimately led to the presidency of a man whose movement has cast a shadow over the principles of democracy and human rights that America helped spread throughout the world.