Ronald Reagan loved using the phrase “Shining city on a hill” as a metaphor for America and all its purported greatness. Implicit in the phrase were insistences of nobility, morality, and uprightness that were specifically American. The romantic folklore of the “greatest beacon of hope and democracy that the world has ever known” is from the same fount of American rah-rah-rah. Over time the same sentiment evolved into an even more rousing expression i.e., “American exceptionalism”.
Again, it suggested unique virtues of honour, integrity and conduct that were inherently superior to all others. But is it true? Is there such a thing as ‘American exceptionalism’? Was it ever so? Or is it yet another case of brilliant brand building with smooth storytelling in the highest temple of capitalism? Part of this romantic notion and brand appeal extends to its bipartisan national leadership which like the country was invariably made of stellar leaders with impeccable credentials ~ righteous, honourable, and upright. Like some comic book superheroes, the occupants to the Oval Office were always dashing men (because the gender glass ceiling hasn’t been broken as yet in the White House) of steel in a world full of aimless straws blowing in the windy world! Or so we were made to believe, as the monopoly-on-truth was always with Uncle Sam.
Ironically in a rare Op-ed in the New York Times, the muchdespised Russian leader, Vladimir Putin noted, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation….. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” Despite it coming from an authoritarian who can ill afford to talk of moral leadership, Putin did make solid points by putting the mirror in front of Americans, who pretended to be ‘exceptional’, and somehow superior in thought and action to all others. They are undoubtedly the best storytellers and brand builders, but beyond that glib marketing, they are like the rest of the world, or perhaps worse.
The current bonhomie between Washington DC and Delhi too, is a topical and transactional necessity. In a deeply and dangerously fractured world (no longer Unipolar) it is even given to ‘win-win’ portents. But it barely masks the historical hypocrisy and amorality of the US, when it comes to its conduct pertaining to India. In the 1971 Indo-Pak war, the Americans were fully aware of the ground atrocities and genocide as reported by the American Consul General at Dhaka ~ but they ignored the same and knowingly kept supporting the ironfisted dictator, General Yahya Khan. Even more despicably, they had menacingly sailed their 7th Fleet into the Bay of Bengal, but it was too late, as Dhaka had fallen. Later, declassified White House transcripts from that time would point to the vilest and most ignoble form of Presidential racism and misogyny that got infamously exchanged between the President of the USA and his Secretary of State ~ India and Indira Gandhi in particular were the specific targets of the uncouth Presidential diatribe.
Actually, US Presidential duplicity is genealogical in that no less than the first Commander-in-Chief or President, the much-revered George Washington, is guilty of attempting to rewrite a winning (though false) story of being the real victorious visionary over British forces in Yorktown in the Revolutionary Wars ~ when it was actually the French allies who had masterminded that battle in Virginia. Washington’s biographer concocted the story of a young idealist George confessing to his father, “I can’t tell a lie, pa” ~ which goes down popular conscience as a sign of a precocious and moral prodigy, except that it was just a made-up story, not a fact.
Generations later, George W Bush was questioned about the lies that took him to the Second Gulf War including claimed Weapons of Mass Destruction etc., but it was his father, George HW Bush, who was far more guilty of having brazenly manipulated lies to start the First Gulf War. He had infamously got a 15- year-old girl called ‘Nayirah’ to get coached and tearfully narrate to US Congressmen as to how Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators and left them to die. She had ostensibly used an assumed name to protect herself. It was only years later that it turned out that she was no such victim but the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to US! Whereas President George HW Bush had repeatedly invoked the ‘Nayirah’ story to galvanise the national mood and launch Operation Desert Storm.
From impeachments of President Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton to Nixongate and John F Kennedy’s personal dalliances ~ the murky details about affairs within White House kept tumbling out even as it kept up the moral posture of the ‘American Dream’ and its accompanying shenanigans. However, the one to elevate amorality to a fine art is the incorrigible, still defiant, and dangerous Donald Trump. His debauchery and unbecoming past notwithstanding, the Washington Post factchecker recorded 30,573 lies or misleading statements made by the President in his tumultuous tenure, a shocking average of 21 per day! A brilliant (if Machiavellian) proponent of the ‘Big Lie’ technique, his deviousness and knavishness continues to date, as he attempts to stage a surreal comeback, after his recent conviction.
Officially, the candidate of the Republican Party is a felon who could be in jail. But as the framers of the Constitution would have never imagined such a situation, there doesn’t seem to be anything that debars him from continuing campaigning or denial of presidency, even if he were to be behind bars. This recent case of falsifying business records in order to book hush money paid to a lady does not come as any surprise to Trump supporters who even gloat of his ‘ingenuity’ and AllAmerican Hero persona! Beyond Trump, it says something about the American electorate per se when in the last 2020 Presidential elections, when much of his peccadilloes and amorality were well established he had still managed 47.8 per cent of popular votes to Joe Biden’s 51.3 per cent. While it is still for the American courts and the citizenry to decide the future course of action, US Presidential amorality is not an exception but the historic norm ~ Trump is only on top of that dirty heap.
(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)