Why The Real Test of American Exceptionalism is Now

These strange, unmoored days, the economist in me says something that the human in me — laughing at him like he’s a simpleton — challenges. I’ve come to call it the test of American exceptionalism. It’s a little hypothesis, if you like, or just a series of thoughts, which goes like this. If you were to imagine a society which was the ideal, the perfect breeding ground — something like a Petri dish, packed with tasty nutrients — for fascism and authoritarianism, then that society, sadly, ironically, would be America. Why? The two things that we should expect to predict fascism and authoritarianism most are: a) prolonged, severe economic stagnation for the average person, and b) a long history of institutionalized supremacy. Let’s take those one by one. Stagnation predicts fascism for a reason so simple it often hides in plain sight. As their incomes, savings, and assets flatline, and then dwindle — because a stagnant economy means that prices rise, but earnings don’t, so inequality spikes, and the middle collapses back into poverty, things coming undone — people come to live in a world which they feel is unsafe, hostile, and threatening. Just keeping that job, feeing and educating your kids, paying off that mortgage, going to the doctor — all the basics — become exercises fraught with dread, anxiety, and fear. The result? People lose faith in their systems and institutions and norms and values. Such societies are easy meat for demagogues — who promise desperate, broke, and frustrated people what they are seeking most again: a sense of safety, security, belonging, mattering, counting. <a href="https://eand.co/why-the-real-test-of-american-exceptionalism-is-now-35848f05f832">Click Here</a>