Hillary, Trump and Waning American Exceptionalism

Barely three weeks ago, I studied the remarkable presidential campaigns in the United States and suggested sarcastically that we indeed needed a Donald Trump here who would have the courage to tell us what politicians and their friends in power would not like touch during election campaigns. Alas, a lot of water has since passed under the American election bridge to the extent that the hitherto big democratic bridge is no longer strong and reliable for even admirers and allies. Thank goodness, forces of globalization have through the media exposed to the world now that even western democracy model can be volatile too as the mother of all developing countries, China observed at the weekend in a symposium interview on the U.S election.

What is worse, even Russia, the grandmaster of elections opaqueness has fired a missile at the American exceptionalism and democratic credentials. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, generally suspected to be interfering in the presidential elections through Cyber attacks on the Democratic Party’s campaigns has reportedly questioned the credibility of the elections. Election is not an event, it is a process and so Russia, an influential member of the emerging markets’ powerful club – BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa has laughed off the likely outcome of the election she would like Donald Trump top win. Russian authorities have questioned the credibility of the election.

Beyond China and Russia’s sarcasms, the U.S election campaigns by the two major candidates, Mr. Donald Trump and Mrs. Hillary Clinton have shown clearly to the world that the rich can also cry. America is used to showcasing to the world the power of their democracy, their liberty and the institutions that enhance them. They have been telling the world, the awesome powers of their leadership recruitment process. They have been proud of the greatness of their security and intelligence institutions that they claim have been very independent. They have been bullying the developing world and all the vulnerable ones that only the law rules, that persons do not have a place to rule in their awesome governance system.

But since 2002, John A. Andrew III had warned the world about the political uses of their very influential Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which he exposed in a seminal work (book) Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon. After that (revelation we didn’t notice) we have seen how the omnipotent IRS has been using its powers within political contexts. But more important now, the world has seen how the very independent FBI too can be very dependent to the extent of throwing its hat in the political rings, after all. A national security article in The Washington Post at the weekend pointed out “how tensions at the FBI will persist after the election”. The story revealed deep divisions inside the FBI and the Justice Department over how to handle investigations dealing with Hillary Clinton that might fester even after Tuesday’s presidential election. It is said that the case might pose a significant test for James B. Comey’s leadership of the nation’s chief law enforcement agency.

They always come to Africa with their democratic correcting fluids and a manual on the quintessential western democracy. They always help in talking to stubborn opposition leaders that may not concede victory. They always visit prisoners of conscience they don’t want to assume powers. Sometimes, they serve toxic tea products that may silence opposition leaders forever. Their diplomats always breach protocols as they issue statements to decry election dates and postponements approved by sovereign states. They always issue warnings to commanders-in-chief who may want to chiefly command soldiers to deal with dissidents and insurgents. They always issue statements on the “thieves of state” and other corruptible state officials including tax defaulters.

But it is likely that in the U.S, a major tax defaulter who allegedly declared $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, may be the next president of the United States. What is worse, a very good friend of the enemy of the U.S, Russia may be elected president who will dispatch what John Perkins calls “Economic Hit Men” to police the world. Before the Comey’s surprise letter to the Congress 11 days to the election, it was getting to a denouement that the best man for the job could be a woman. But the woman who could be the commander-in-chief of the almighty United States, a country like no other, according to the author of American Exceptionalism…Newt Gringrich, former U.S Speaker (R), has been cast to the world as a crook, a scammer, a political fraudster. It is a paradox of political development in the United States that the fine concept of “American exceptionalism”, espoused by the Republican Party as an enhancer of the “American Dream” has been distorted and rebuffed by the GOP flagbearer, Trump.

And today in the inverted politics of the so-called“American Exceptionalism”,
it is Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s candidate that champions a concept the Republican Party has embraced and Donald Trump has disavowed.

Hillary Clinton is making a strong case for American exceptionalism. “The United States is an exceptional nation,” she said the other day at the American Legion’s national convention in Cincinnati. “It’s not just that we have the greatest military, or that our economy is larger than any on Earth, it’s also the strength of our values.” Clinton added: “Our power comes with a responsibility to lead.”

In 2012, the Republican Party was so hot to hype its love of “American exceptionalism” that it devoted one of the party platform’s seven sections to this notion. In this document, the GOP proclaimed that it embraced “American exceptionalism—the conviction that our country holds a unique place in human history.” But with Donald Trump now the Republicans’ presidential candidate, the party may have to delete this doctrine from the platform because Trump has explicitly declared that he does not believe in “American exceptionalism”.
In late April 2015, a month before Trump officially announced his candidacy, he spoke at an event called “Celebrating the American Dream” that was hosted in Houston by the Texas Patriots PAC, a local tea party outfit. The mogul sat in an oversized leather chair and fielded questions from Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, a prominent local businessman. About an hour into the programme, McIngvale posed Trump this query: “Define American exceptionalism. Does American exceptionalism still exist? And what do we do to grow American exceptionalism?”

Trump didn’t hesitate to shoot down the premise of the question, saying he didn’t “like the term.” He questioned whether the United States was “more exceptional” and “more outstanding” than other nations. He also said that those who refer to “American exceptionalism” were “insulting the world” and offending people in other countries, such as Russia, China, Germany, and Japan. It is “not a nice term,” he said, maintaining it was wrong to equate patriotism with a belief in American exceptionalism. He derided politicians who use the phrase.

Today, a man who has written a book on the subject, Gringrich, is one of the strong orators for the Trump campaign for the White House. It is now a country of anything is possible.

Strangely, Donald Trump and other embattled Republican candidates have resorted to what The New York Times has described as a “particularly bizarre and dangerous tactic” in the closing days of the campaign – warning that they may well seek to impeach Hillary Clinton if she wins, or short of that, tie her up with endless investigations and other delaying tactics. This is one of the regular features in African politics: impeachment threats and endless investigations. In Nigeria, this is part of the weapons the Nigerian legislature has been using to harass the executive. They have been using particularly “endless investigations and other delaying tactics”. So, who is borrowing weapons of delaying tactics and endless investigations from whom?

The point really is that this toxic election campaigns that will produce a successor to Obama who has bagged a remarkable rating of 55 % at departure time has ruined the myth of “American exceptionalism”. I can now agree with Stella Morabito who says that “American exceptionalism” is human exceptionalism, and the most logical meaning… is that America simply chose a path exceptional among nations to codifying the exercise of political power”. And so after the election like no other on Tuesday November 8, people may project their perceptions on to it as a Rorschach test. Depending on your politics, you may see in it greatness or greed, a culture of opportunity or a culture of inequality, a sense of generosity towards the world or a nationalistic sense of superiority against it.

In other words, the conclusion of the whole matter is that we too can see in the mirror that the Republican and the Democrats are displaying that western democracy too can be volatile and dangerous. And in Nigeria’s 2019, for instance, when the U.S overzealous diplomats come up with their warning statements about presidential candidates who make damaging and dangerous remarks about their opponents and accuse the leadership of already rigged elections, we will tell them: “Teacher, please, don’t teach me nonsense, remove the 2016 log in your eyes first”.

Inside Stuff Grammar School:
Outset Vs Onset
We should be very careful in using these two related words. They both depict ‘beginning or start’ of different settings. But the following examples will guide us accordingly.

Onset:
The onset of winter. “Onset” can also mean ‘an assault or attack’: an onset of the enemy.

Outset:
The beginning or start: I wanted to explain the situation from (or at) the outset.
Outset is often used when the action or event being described has already started. Onset is usually used to indicate something unpleasant whereas outset does not often have negative connotations. Onset is followed by the preposition of while outset is preceded by prepositions from or at.

More examples: Onset.
Sneezing indicates the onset of a cold.
The oil prices have soared with the onset of war.
The onset of the cold winter may bring more deaths.
He struggled to resist the creeping onset of fear.

More Examples: Outset.
I made it clear from the outset that I am opposed to the idea.
The project was doomed from the outset.

There have been problems between them from the outset.
At the outset, they agreed to demands, but they changed their minds when other proposals cropped up. Good English Dictionaries (including Oxford and Merriam-Webster) support these examples.