Roberto Sirvent

This is a great book. I need to say that up front, because the vast majority of this review is going to criticize the one flaw I found in it. So like I said, great book. Anybody in your life who is caught up in the anti-CRT movement could benefit from reading about America's not-so-innocent roots in this book. American Exceptionalism and American Innocence is about dispelling the myth that America is an ideologically pure country by digging through its imperialistic history with a fine-tooth comb. From slavery and genocide to incarceration and civil rights, American Exceptionalism will rip the wool from any eyes still blinded by the lies taught in elementary school history classes. Objective, receptive eyes need only apply, however; biased eyes will see only ungrateful, unpatriotic trash-talk.

The one flaw I feel compelled to point out in American Exceptionalism is the flaw that invariably occurs when outlining an extreme ideology, ignoring information that may weaken or contradict your argument. In the case of American Exceptionalism, the authors stumble repeatedly around the giant fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon in the room, Donald Trump.

You would think that you would get an earful of Trump in a book published in 2019 about American imperialism and racism. Poster-child for the problem, you would think. But it appears that the authors are so hell-bent on exposing the hidden lie of American Exceptionalism that they are afraid to actually point out the worst of his actions and utterances that resulted in HUGE public outcries, out of fear that the public reaction to his lunacy would overshadow the argument that the vast majority of the (white) American public are completely blind to America's brutal history and continued transgressions against humanity.

This isn't readily apparent in earlier chapters that focus more on the past history of America, but once we get into conflicts with Russia and immigration issues, the silence on the Trump front is deafening. According to the authors, Russia was a completely innocent victim of the 2016 elections, and were falsely accused of interfering with the U.S. election to deflect from Hillary losing the election, with Putin being unfairly maligned by Democrats just to save face. Every discussion involving the Cold War or other interactions between the U.S. and Russia invariably sides with the reality that Russia is the innocent victim at the hands of the evil capitalist American regime, and while we can all agree that the American demonization of Communism has been a false vendetta pushed by capitalist fears of collectivism and a self-determining work force, painting Russia (and Putin) as wide-eyed innocents is just as disingenuous as any Red Scare propaganda. These extreme left-wing authors (and I don't mean that as an insult) don't hesitate to adopt right-wing tactics such as disinformation and straw-man arguments when wading into this territory, including falsehoods-by-omission or cherry-picking choice quotes from a sea of data to make it sound like the exception has become the rule.

I know it sounds like an odd accusation, but how else do you explain an entire chapter on American Borders and Immigration - written DURING the Trump presidency - in which the vast majority of discussion is about how bad Bush, Obama, and Hillary (who wasn't even president) really were when compared to Trump's "offhand comments." It is almost as if the authors felt that the American public's (and world's) reaction to Trump might demonstrate that not all of America has bought into the exceptionalism myth, and even more distressing, perhaps not all of (white) America is blindly complicit in upholding the myth.

I see this willful disassociation often from people who desire the claim of being "beyond politics" to a point where both left and right are absolute evils, where whichever position seems politically closest to their own ideology gets the hardest pushback. The concept seems to be that if you are against a two-party system, then you must see everything the two-party system does as wrong, regardless of anything else. So if we are anti-American Exceptionalism, we can't really be focusing on anything positive that ANY American president has done, can we? I readily admit that Bush, Obama, and Hillary deserve the vast majority of accusations leveled against them, and I'm not here to carry water for the DNC. I voted for Bernie in the primaries, okay? But the volume of anti-Obama material when compared to the many excuses made for Trump's administration as just an unwitting victim of nefarious DNC propaganda... well, it just leaves a bitter after taste.

In short, a great book, but if you need to make excuses for Trump in order to strengthen your argument, maybe you need a better argument.… (mehr)

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - plus slavery and genocide. Those are the founding principles of the USA, as Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong do their utmost to explain in American Exceptionalism and American Innocence.

American exceptionalism means anything the US does is excusable, because it is done to promote democracy and humanitarianism. American innocence means anything the US does is without ulterior motive, because the US is a new country without European empire baggage. The book explores these two (of five) great American Myths. The authors don’t mention the others: the Chosen nation, the Christian nation, and Nature’s nation. See my review of Myths America Lives By, by Richard Hughes.

For whatever reason, the authors did not take the final step (that Hughes did), showing that the same single factor underlies all the myths. That is white supremacy. It is there and obvious, but they treat it rather remotely as an adjunct and not the true foundation. They only go as far as saying they are “interrelated”. But it’s there on every page.

Similarly, they don’t expand on the ignorance of history that Americans demonstrate. Americans live in the future, with only a nod to the present. There is no past. “You’re history” is a death threat in the USA, Hughes says in his book on the same topic.

The authors initially present plenty of memorable historical facts to back the claims:
-The first Thanksgiving was not in 1621, but in 1637. It celebrated not the harvest, but the massacre of 700+ Pequot Indians in Connecticut, not Virginia.
-Scalping was a white, not Indian preoccupation, as scalps were required by law to receive cash bounties from local governments and civic organizations, according to an 1890 US government report.
-The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery except as penalty for crime. So it’s still legal.
-The Revolutionary War became necessary when England banned slavery and armed black soldiers in the Caribbean, threatening the American colonies’ way of life.
-Hitler cited inspiration from American racial policies in Mein Kampf.
-The National Football League mandated teams standing for the national anthem only in 2009, when it began accepting $11 million from the National Guard as a sponsor.
-Since the end of World War II, the US military has killed an estimated 20-30 million people around the world.
-If democracy is better, it should be spread by example, not by invasion.
-The USA ranks 41st in the World Press Freedom Index, just behind Slovenia and ahead of Burkina Faso. It toes the official line on innocence and exceptionalism, heroic soldiers and white saviors, despite the available truth.

Meanwhile, internal statistics put a lie to the greatest nation on Earth:
-nearly 19 million at less than half the (inadequate) poverty level
- more than 50% earning less than $30,000
-nearly half unable to raise even $500 for an emergency
- 114,000 New York City public school children homeless
- more than 18 million homes vacant
-nearly half of all job paying minimum wage or less.
This, the authors say, is the real face of American exceptionalism.

So far, a powerful, rational indictment of The American Dream.

Then, less than half way through, the book goes off the rails. It makes true statements out of context, attributing blame and evil where it is not warranted. For example, professional sports are described as modern slavery for blacks, purely for the enjoyment of whites. Blacks don’t like being traded from club to club, the authors say. But left unsaid is that before blacks were allowed in the leagues, white players were paid a pittance, and had to move from city to city with no say in their own futures. There was no free agency. In my own lifetime, NHL stars made $10-$25 thousand dollars a year, no pension and no benefits. Now NFL stars make upwards of $100,000 - per game. Endorsements flow easily to black stars, who are idolized by millions of both blacks and whites, as they gobble up the caps, shirts, jackets and shoes endorsed by the players. This is hardly an industry designed to enslave blacks, as the authors position it. And where exceptionalism fits in, they don’t say.

Similarly in international aid, yes, the USA exploits developing nations. So does China. When countries stop paying, China seizes their national assets. The USSR just took the countries over entirely. This is a well worn strategy –taking advantage of the poor. It was neither invented nor perfected by the USA. Accusing charities and NGOs of leading that exploitation is totally unsupported in the book, though it assumes that is the truth. The authors claim Africa has all but been taken over and destroyed by American aid, NGOs and charities. But if that is true, the same can be said of the whole world.

The authors slap sentences together to make it seem like all evil comes from America. In a paragraph denouncing the military’s AFRICOM office and the war in Libya (which they bring up repeatedly), they insert the sentence: “Muammar Gadhafi was brutally assassinated without trial,” making it seem like American soldiers did it. Gadhafi was shot with a single bullet by a Libyan irregular who discovered him in a drainage pipe, and feared (correctly) that he was armed and dangerous. No Americans were present. This kind of loose treatment by the authors negates the important work they began with.

They also confuse white supremacy with garden variety corruption. They accuse the Clinton Foundation of “siphoning” billions to billionaires to build hotels in Haiti that will profit them, rather than helping the poor. This is an example, they say, of the “white savior industrial complex” when in fact it is just crony capitalism at work. No exceptionalism present.

It also becomes endlessly repetitive, with the authors dropping in the same facts in passing. That the USA has more than 800 overseas bases is mentioned at least six times in different chapters, but never in a discussion of whether this is good or bad, successful or a failure, cause or effect, useful or a fraud. Even simply pointing out that there are fewer than 200 countries in the world, and at least half would never even consider having a US base would have given the fact some perspective.

“Our book is best read as an invitation to consider the new kinds of questions and new kinds of possibilities that might emerge once the ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence are debunked and discredited …. Renouncing our ties to ‘America’ would force us to rethink whose lives we mourn, who is my neighbor, and what worlds are possible.” But there are no suggestions, and the final words seem to just want to destroy the country altogether.

It’s not an invitation; it is black rage. As for Indians, they get jettisoned very early, except for the occasional use of the word genocide as in “slavery and genocide”. The book is almost entirely about blacks.

There is nothing wrong with black rage. It is valid, justified and important. It’s just not what was promised.

David Wineberg… (mehr)