OPD 3 October 2020
Edited by Margaret McIntyre
Jorge G. Castañeda titled the last chapter of his latest book on the United States, “One Last Reflection, The End of the North American Difference?”.
Jorge describes, explains and reflects on that “difference” throughout the pages of Estados Unidos: en la intimad y a la distancia (United States: Up Close and At a Distance), but today I’m interested in the last chapter. In some ways, Tuesday’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump demonstrated how complicated this end and the construction of the future are for our northern neighbors.
I think Jorge hits the nail on the head when he writes, “Long-lasting triumph and the increased longevity of American civilization will take place when North Americans themselves recognize the decline and end of the difference between them and the rest of the world, or at least wealthy countries. Accepting that it has become like the other rich nations is a difficult task for any society, especially for one that has been in full swing for some time, as is the case with the U.S. It is particularly painstaking for a society that was born with the deep-rooted idea of exceptionalism and that has tried to reproduce it for generations.”
Beyond the chaos and shouting, what we saw on Tuesday was the president’s defense of a seemingly unsustainable country.
Jorge writes, “Reinventing oneself involves casting off the exceptions that no longer fit in the modern world, much less in the North American civilization: weapons, mass incarceration, the death penalty, the ongoing war on drugs. By definition, these are anachronisms that should no longer exist in a society that proclaims to be the most modern society in the world, and probably is.”
On Tuesday, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists and tirelessly defended “law and order” (in other words, more prison and war on drugs). In his words, he is concerned with conserving “the unique and exceptional” traditional American values.
Not because of Biden exactly, but because of what Trump represents, I believe that the 2021 election* is of the magnitude that if the president loses, he and his accompanying forces will resist it. The yelling and interruptions are the least of it.
*Editor’s note: The author mistakenly refers to the 2020 U.S. presidential election as the 2021 election.
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