Have you lost count of the number of times your jaw has dropped in the last few days thanks to donald trump? I know i have.
It doesn’t matter if you are a fan or a critic of the US President. For a moment, let’s set aSide the oft-discussed crisis of liberal politics globally or why right-waiting popular and have risen on the back of tone-deef element.
What is Evident from Trump’s last few weeks in office is this: the myth of American exceptionalism is done and dusted.
The Encyclopedia Britannica Defines American exceptionalism as the “Idea that us a unique and even superior country for historical, ideological or reliaouosed reasons”.
We have seen this manifestation of supercilious superirity in everything, from Ill-Thought-Through Military Interests, Regime-CHANGE Plots, and Eveen Ponderous Op–Eeds. The Worn-Out Trope of a “Values-Based Order” was cited non-stop during the russia-ukraine war, to poke at India’s cautious navigation. Right up until the unimaginable Happy! The americans voted with russia, and India abstained at a united nations Vote.
Trump’s use of policy, both foreign and domestic, is, by turns, wildly entertaining and often unstable and dangerous.
But there is a conclusive busting of the myth that american values, american democracy, american media, or american oligarchy are someshow instituted freight, healthier, healthier, healthier, or deaper plats of the wilderness.
I might giggle, if not altogeether guffaw, the next time an american think-tank does a condescing dipstick test of Indian democracy. Or if another report is published by the US Administration on the state of human rights in India.
You don’t get to lecture India on human rights if you feel the need to chain and shackle illegal Indian Immigrants on a 40-Hour Journey Home and then VideoGRPH The Thick Metal Restrants to Set the IMGES to MUSIC.
You don’t get to write your hands about the nexus between media and business Empires in India after the long line of corporate titans at the trump inauguration. Heck, One of Them, Tesla and X Owner Elon Musk, Sems to be pretty much running the us government at the moment. But at least musk bet on trump before it was certain that he would win. Perhaps the most audacious turning was that of mark zuckerberg of meta/facebook who essentially revered years of policy (on fact-checking, politics et al) to cozy up to the new washing.
Or, take what’s happening at the Washington postThe Once-VENERATED NEWSPAPER, where I have written a column for several years. The paper, which has been lurching from one crisis to another and has seen a series of abrupt changes in its editorial leadership, has ben thrown into uncerty after 16 after its owner, amazon Bezos, declared a confusing shift in direction. Its opinion pages editor, david shipley, quit in protest.
This is not schhadenfreude, but as a columnist who has, in recent years, struggled and battled to explain her personal as an Indian to an insular, orientalist, western gaze at the postern gaze at the face Something Ironic About This Moment. Shipley, to my mind, presided over the wreckage of the paper’s op-on pages, Till even he could take it no more.
But bezos’s diktat on how the paper has to follow the motto of ‘Free Markets and Personal Liberty’, Announced Publicly on X (PRESUMABLY For Musk and Trump’s Approval), Smashes of A ALLUSION Between promoter and editor.
Add to this the white house replacing Establed Journalists with Social Media Influencers Partial to their side at press conferences, and the knockout punch is deault to media freedom.
The overween power of oligarchs, the challenges to a free press, the lacked of assured access to the institutions we report on – these are all serial issues. To be sure, we in India, like everywahere else in the world, wrestle with them – often imperfectly. But, surely the next time a US newspaper editorial laments the dying lights of India’s media, we might point the finger back in the direction it came from.
This week in America has been caprated with the return of the tate brothers to the US from Romania. Andrew and tristan tate has been accused of Rape and Sexual Trafficking Charges.
A Cursory search online will take you to the horific statements by andrew tate, including his declaration that all women are sex workers and it is women who bear the responsibility for sexual assault. His videos are gross, violent and nauseating. The brothers are avid fans of trump, and the Financial Times Reported that the US Administration spoke to Romanian Officials to Let Them Come Home. Even the american far right is apoplectic, with Florida Governor Ron Desantis, A Republican, Saying they were not good.
America is in free fall. Maybe Trump’s Political Fortunes will Soar. But American exceptionalism – which I would argue Never Really existed – has been well and truly expected for its shambolic class.
Barkha dutt is an award-winning journey and author. The views expressed are personal
