On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the U.S., on January 19, 2017, I wrote an article I could easily write now. It was entitled “A Memory of America on Obama’s Last Day.” With minor edits, it’s worth repeating as Trump happens again as the 47th President of the U.S.
Only exceptionalism could have offered that opportunity. Only exceptionalism could produce a Barack Obama and, eight years later, bring forth a Donald Trump—one neoliberal and the other a neo-anything-is-possible.
The peculiar aspect of the U.S. is that everything is extraordinary. If any doubt remains, the election of Donald J. Trump, who takes office on Friday as the 45th President of the United States of America, resolves the matter.
Everything about Trump is unsettlingly peculiar. He has weakened his party, exploited voters’ most basic instincts, ignored the media, and mocked U.S. allies. Nonetheless, he has secured a victory that has made him even more powerful and audacious. Everyone else, including the party and the nation, seems weaker, more bewildered, and divided.
In Trump versus the rest of the world, Trump is the indescribable enigma. The rest are demystified and stranded.
As the new Trump world order emerges, exceptionalism – once a distinctly American concept – assumes a different significance. I grappled with that word when I first encountered it from my lecturer, Ayo Akinbobola, many years ago in school.
Exceptionalism. How do I explain it? It’s that special quality for which most people love America; the idea that you can become whatever you wish to be, whoever you are, regardless of your background; that through hard work, persistence, and innovation, you can attain grace from grass; that America is the only place on earth that confronts its diversity with courage, not shying away from its own worst demons; that America is a land of both genius and demagogue, each pursuing their path, but within a system that also strives to protect the weak and vulnerable while, some would add, paradoxically creating its own weak and vulnerable.
I learned from my US-trained teachers in school and saw from the cowboy movies I watched growing up that this made America unique.
My first American friends embodied the generosity of spirit I had always heard about. Melvin and Paula Baker, whom my family and I met during a holiday in Florida over ten years ago, have consistently treated us like family, offering themselves and everything they have at our disposal whenever we visit.
Melvin and Paula are white, but colour or creed has never been a concern—whether we or they are visiting. Occasionally, I’m amused to see them sweating over a meal of pepper soup, even when it contains the mildest spices.
America is exceptional not because it is perfect but because, despite its flaws, people like Melvin and Paula made it extraordinary.
Then 9/11 happened. Fear took hold, and exceptionalism faced its most significant test since Vietnam. The political elite and the military leaders started a catastrophic war in Iraq by dressing up fear and suspicion as facts.
That changed everything. Al-Queda, the Taliban, ISIL and other terror franchises around the world were born by the mother of all wars from which America and the world have not recovered.
I felt the change around this time seven years ago when I visited the U.S. before Christmas. A young Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had planted a bomb in his pants to bring down a commercial plane over Detroit. Coming at America’s vulnerable moment, there was a severe backlash from that incident.
During my visit in January 2010, many U.S. airports and border posts opened a black book for Nigerian travellers. The intrusive body searches at these airports and the cold, hostile stares at non-whites left me in no doubt that something was changing in America.
But Barack Obama’s election was supposed to halt the tide; it was supposed to send a message that America had not wholly forsaken exceptionalism, that if a black guy with a funny Muslim-sounding name could become president in America, you could be what you want to be – no matter who you are – if you work at it.
That’s Obama’s story, which he calls “the audacity of hope.” How else could someone born to a Kenyan father and raised by an Indonesian stepfather become a senator and then the 44th president of the United States?
Yet, some say that it is precisely this exceptional quality that is the trouble with America. They say it is exceptionalism that produced an Obama who is not black enough to meet black expectations, not white enough to be accepted by whites, and not brown enough to attract the sympathy of those in between.
Evangelicals regard him as the anti-Christ for endorsing stem cell research and despise him for his late remarks on gay rights. Millions of Nigerians will also not forgive him for never once visiting the world’s most populous black nation during his eight years in office, opting instead to throw stones from Ghana, the country’s backyard.
It’s a deep bucket, but who can deny that America’s exceptionalism produced a miracle that Martin Luther King could only dream of?
Eight years ago today, America was on its knees, broken by a catastrophic terror war and greedy Wall Street.
Globalisation was also taking its toll and would become a significant factor in U.S. politics. To think that this was the moment when the country elected its first black president –when the lines of failure seemed to have fallen in the most unpleasant places – is hard to imagine now.
But it happened, and Obama made the most of his lemons. In several ways, he’s leaving America better than he found it: jobs growing, the country cured of its addiction to oil, its economy in better shape, and its youth unleashed and innovating.
Obama is leaving without the scars of scandals that marred many of his predecessors. The dignity of his office is intact.
Only exceptionalism could have provided that chance. Only exceptionalism could produce an Obama and eight years later produce a Trump – the one neo-liberal and the other neo-anything-is-possible.
In the days ahead, no one is exactly sure what to expect – not pollsters, pundits, or even members of Trump’s cabinet. But we’ll see, one tweet at a time, just what is left of what has made America exceptional.
