s ieglinde l emke American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality We have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional��� Barack Obama, 2009 I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.... Barack Obama, 2014 The storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism� The American Communist Party, 1930 Despite a widely held belief to the contrary, 1 President Barack Obama is an advocate of American exceptionalism� He has repeatedly and passionately pronounced his firm belief in the doctrine, although he has never explained precisely what he means by this term� When deployed by presidents, the concept usually amounts to a collective ego-boost that is intended to unite a people in times of crisis, as when George W� Bush deployed the rhetoric of American supremacy to wage a war on terror both abroad and at home� Unlike his predecessor, whose presidency was defined primarily by foreign policy issues, Obama has had to confront the decline of America’s economy and thus has had to face issues of class, which go to the core of the nation’s self-understanding� Founded as a classless society, America distinguished itself from - and believed to be superior to - the aristocratic European system� This ideological foundation is relevant to an understanding of the most recent manifestation of American exceptionalism, as personified by Barack Obama, who has simultaneously pledged his allegiance to it while also acknowledging the profoundly precarious state of the economy and the nation� In contrast to Bush’s imperialist and supremacist rhetoric, Obama admits the “imperfect” state of national affairs, a self-critical stance has not been without 1 See James Wilson (2009), Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation� Apart from conservatives like Wilson, most Americans did not think of Obama as an advocate of American exceptionalism� When asked in 2010 which “president believes or believed the United States has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world,” Ronald Reagan scored 86% and Obama 58%� This might explain Obama’s affirmation thereof in 2014. See Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans See U.S. as Exceptional; 37% Doubt Obama Does�” 360 s ieglinde l emke political repercussions� Some commentators have charged the president of promoting a kind of anti-American exceptionalism that demolishes collective faith in the nation� 2 The president’s understanding of the nation, and its symbolic meaning, is indeed complex� It wavers between two positions� On the one hand, he affirms and embodies exceptionalism; 3 on the other, he admits to the nation’s current weaknesses and warns against the threat that these may diminish its foundational promises� Obama’s wavering position is indicative of the balancing act that characterizes diplomacy in general but that is even more inexorable at a time marked by drastic political polarization� Since Obama very often embraces two positions that are taken to be mutually exclusive, his ostensibly contradictory position on American exceptionalism as well as the aporia represented through the gridlock typifies his deconstructive approach to politics� This article is less concerned with presidential rhetoric than it is to understand American exceptionalism more broadly as the discourse about the ways in which America and its citizens define, sustain, and protect their national identity� The construct of American exceptionalism has two major components: in domestic affairs, a view that heralds America as the land of opportunity or an exemplary democracy; and in foreign affairs, the view that America is a global police force that protects democracy and liberty worldwide� Focusing on domestic instead of foreign affairs, concentrating on America’s constitutional promise instead of its imperialist endeavors, I argue that the recent manifestation of American exceptionalism is fundamentally different from the ones that have preceded it� This post-American exceptionalism, as it were, builds on and diverges from the New American exceptionalism - which, according to Don Pease, is informed by a “state fantasy” and the rationale of the “state of exception” (Pease 2009) - by taking into account unflattering socio-economic realities. If the New Exceptionalism is a state fantasy that managed to imbue nationalist interests with a collective desire to the effect that Americans tolerated violations of its democratic principles, the fantasy driving Obama’s version of American exceptionalism is informed by a rising awareness that America is a class-ridden, immobile und increasingly unequal society. If the new exceptionalism “opened fissures in the myth of 2 See: Ginni Thomas (2014), “Dinesh D’Souza: Obama Mobilizes Resentment Toward America To Grow His PowerApart from D’Souza, several other conservatives including Sarah Palin, Monica Cowley, and Charles Krauthammer have also charged Obama for not believing in American exceptionalism� See “The Big Lie” (2010) and also “Sarah Palin: Where Is Obama’s ‘Faith In American Exceptionalism? ’” (2010)� 3 Obama has incessantly, in his memoir as well as in numerous speeches, cast his own life story in terms in the American-Dream-come-true format� After all, he comes from a middle class background and made it into the Ivy League as well as the White House, bringing along a first lady whose life story Obama has repeatedly casted in the rags-toriches formula emphasizing her working class background� For example, in December 2013, in his economic mobility speech, he referred to Michelle as “the daughter of a shift worker at a water plant and a secretary�” See “Remarks by the President on Economic Mobility�” American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 361 exceptionalism,” (Pease) the latest version registers the schism that defines post-crisis America: the gap between rich and poor and the attendant polarization between blue and red America� To understand this current version and to assess how its construction of America’s national identity differs from its predecessors, it is helpful to step back and take a diachronic approach� The discourse of American exceptionalism, which has in different contexts and for different purposes proposed that there is something distinctive, even superior about America, extends back for four centuries� It has its roots in the 17th century and the religious ideal of creating a model “brotherly community” to be emulated in the rest of the world (John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill”)� Citing documents like Franklin’s Autobiography, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, foreign commentators like Crèvecoeur and Tocqueville helped shape the myth of America’s civic and democratic virtues and argued for its distinctiveness as well as superiority to other countries� This belief was expanded throughout the 19th century by philosophical (Ralph Emerson), poetic (Walt Whitman), fictional (Horatio Alger), non-fictional (Frederick Jackson Turner) and visual texts (Currier & Ives’ Ladder of Fortune) and was reinforced by the cult of positive thinking promoted in 20th century self-help literature (e�g� Dale Carnegie, Vincent Peale, or Napoleon Hill’s bestseller Think and Grow Rich)� The belief in the protestant work ethic and meritocracy drives this narrative, which remains hegemonic, despite a century’s worth of fiction and nonfiction exploring the personal and political costs of the success myth and America’s notorious optimism (from The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided). Even contemporary fictional renderings that modify the traditional narrative by making an African-American or a woman the main protagonist still produce uncritical versions of the same rags-to-riches meritocratic narrative (e.g. films like The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith or Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts) known as the American Dream� This short survey serves as a reminder that American exceptionalism has taken on ever new manifestations in order to adapt to the cultural and political demands of the time of its assertion� Like all constructs, it has incorporated ever-new connotations - from self-determination to wealth creation, from aspiring personal success to a social vision of a civic community bound by affection and trust - accumulating many meanings and functions� In recent years, commentators have begun to start talking about “the end of American exceptionalism” (Bacevich 2009) or about the decline of the nation (Krugman 2010), 4 wondering who “stole” (Smith 2012) or who was responsible for “betraying” the American Deram (Barlett and Steele 2012)� A CBS News feature summarizes the main thrust of this “boom of American Declinism” as follows: “We are broke; we are poorly educated; we 4 “ We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end,” Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman noted, “but most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic�” Paul Krugman (2010), “America Is Not Yet Lost�” 362 s ieglinde l emke are uncompetitive; we have gone soft; our political institutions are broken…” 5 In contrast, or perhaps in response to this narrative of decline, there has been a revival on the right of discourse that exalts America’s “Greatness” (Romney 2010), or explains why America is “a Nation Like No Other” and “why American exceptionalism matters,” to quote the subtitle of Newt Gingrich’s book (Gingrich 2011)� America by Heart is the telling title of Sarah Palin’s patriotic expose on why America is “a model to the world” (Palin 2010)� Her use of a romantic metaphor resonates with Jim De Mint’s Falling in Love with America Again (2014)� Both Palin and De Mint use American exceptionalism and patriotism interchangeably� 6 The four above mentioned conservative reconsiderations have appropriated parts of the cultural legacy of American exceptionalism to combat the perceived decline of a super power� 7 Alongside a diachronic account, it is important to place a synchronic account of American exceptionalism� According to Seymour Martin Lipset, the concept “can be defined in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez faire” (31)� His list comprises ideologies championed by liberals (individualism, laissez faire) and progressives (egalitarianism, populism) with “liberty” as the common denominator� 8 In regard to the cultural work the concept of American exceptionalism has taken on, Winfried Fluck differentiates among five cultural agendas and myths, each of which expresses a slightly different romance with America: the myth of a heroic individual who sets himself (traditionally it is a he) off from the masses, the “outlaw-and-defiance romance,” “the 5 This observation is followed by “the Obama administration does its part, with sloganeering like ‘reset,’ ‘lead from behind,’ ‘post-American world,’ and America as exceptional only to the degree that all nations feel exceptional�” Obama is accused of causing the decline since he is not convinced of America’s superiority and uses a defeatist language� See Victor Davis Hanson for CBS News: “Beware the Boom in American ‘Declinism�’” Whatever, or whoever, caused the decline the perception of a loss of power seems to drive much of the recent renaissance of the discourse on American exceptionalism� 6 See Mitt Romey (2010)� No Apology: The Case for American Greatness; Newt Gingrich (2011), A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters; Sarah Palin (2010), America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag; and there is also the above-mentioned study by James Wilson� For a compelling reading of Jim De Mint ‘s Falling in Love with America Again, see Simon Schleusener’s contribution to this volume “Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism�” 7 I was reminded of a statement by Richard J� Tofel, who observed in another historical context, “as our unquestioned supremacy recedes, we need to decide what ‘America’ means to us, and what it means to the world” (1980)� The more recent diagnosis of the American zeitgeist, while speculative, is also revealing I think: “We’re gripped by concern we’ll soon be a nation of austerity and dependency, not opportunity, that America’s spiraling into insolvency with Greece” (McCoy)� 8 The foundational value of liberty embodied by America’s national icon the Statue of Liberty, is a good case in point for the need to historicize the core values that generate American exceptionalism since this particular symbol of American national identity has served numerous political agendas as it has been instrumental in struggles for nationalistic and egalitarian purposes� See Sieglinde Lemke (2011), “Liberty: A Transnational Icon�” American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 363 tragic-nobility-romance,” the myth in which individual freedom and creativity converge; the myth of a democratic culture understood as “a romance of the common man” (Fluck 2000, 89-90)� When Donald Pease explains American exceptionalism synchronically, he refers to specific political and socio-economic elements, notably clusters of absent (feudal hierarchies, class conflicts, socialist labor party, trade unionism, and divisive ideological passions) and present (a predominant middle class, tolerance for diversity, upward mobility, hospitality toward immigrants, a shared constitutional faith, and liberal individualism) elements that putatively set America apart from other national cultures� (Pease 2009, 8) However, if a strong middle class, upward mobility, a lack of class consciousness, and a shared faith in the constitution are what defines America, the realities of the new economy might blow down this house of cards� America today, as social scientists and journalists have pointed out, is defined by a shrinking middle class, a lack of mobility, and a rising conflict between the top 1% and the 99%� Many Americans feel uneasy about the current state of the economy and about the partisan rancor, gridlock, and lobbying that characterize the political scene� 9 The President himself has publicly and repeatedly called attention to the daunting “challenges” the U�S� faces: an extremely unequal economy, a polarized government, a rising national deficit, an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots� 10 How does he frame this unpleasant message? For one, he compares America’s exceptionally bad situation with that of other countries to infer “it is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies - countries like Canada or Germany or France�” Then he adds in a daunting tone of voice, “they have greater mobility than we do” to continue with rhetorically reaffirming this view by the parenthesis “not less” (2013). By Obama’s account, Americans live in an “economy that’s become profoundly unequal” and he singles out economic inequality to be the “defining challenge of our time” (2013)� Yet, he fails to expound on the ways in which this new reality undermines any claims to American distinction or greatness� In his candid speech on the economy Obama implicitly commented on American exceptionalism, saying “the premise that we’re all created equal is the opening line in the American story� And while we don’t promise equal outcomes, we have strived to deliver equal opportunity - the idea that success doesn’t depend on being born into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit” (ital� SL) The claim to meritocracy and equal opportunity plays an essential role in this well-known story� The promise that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules is likely to move up the social ladder makes this narrative extremely 9 Rebecca Riffkin, “U.S. Economic Confidence Index Retreats Slightly to -15.” 10 Obama explicitly mentions all these faltering elements, and more, in his “Remarks on Economic Mobility�” This speech, delivered on December 4, 2013 and hosted by the progressive think-tank the Center of American Progress, is remarkable since Obama pronounces the precarious state of the nation when “a growing number of Americans barely get by�” 364 s ieglinde l emke compelling to all who believe it is true� Legal equality is associated with the possibility of economic success� The foundational premise of the Declaration of Independence, which Obama does not mention in this passage but alludes to by the near-homophone, bestows every American with the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. The symbolic efficacy of American exceptionalism is grounded in these four interrelated mythemes - meritocracy, opportunity, equality, happiness - and augur will power, self-determination, success, and possibly bliss� 11 The opening line in the American story, “we are all created equal,” also implies that its political system is one that is governed by the people, rather than a few aristocrats or a single monarch. The U.S. represents the first modern democracy in the original (Greek) sense of the word - the rule (kratia) of the people (demos)� Founded as a republic, the former British colonists opted for self-government and invited a wider, though still limited, group to participate in politics� It was a self-declared government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” in Abraham Lincoln’s arresting phrase� The premise of the democratic experiment was that when people (as long as they were male and of European origin) were assured economic liberty and political rights circumstances were promising for the expansion of their property and wealth� This is precisely the premise and the promise that is now at risk� Obama alerts the audience of his speech to “the dangerous and growing inequality and [the] lack of upward mobility which has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain - that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead�” In other words, inequality jeopardizes belief in the construct of American exceptionalism. Social scientists of various fields have amassed a host of data that demonstrate the lack of economic mobility in the fabled land of opportunity. The data and particularly the official measurement of income distribution, the Gini coefficient, suggests that what sets America apart from Europe is actually its high degree of income inequality� The 2013 Country Report for the United States, for example, maintains that “income inequality in the United States has always been the highest among rich OECD nations and it still leads the pack in 2012 in both level and trend among the rich countries in the OECD (excluding Mexico)” (Kenworthy and Smeeding 9)� 12 Of course, the U�S� is not unique or exceptional in regards to 11 I am alluding to the replacement of the term “property” for “happiness” in the last version of The Declaration of Independence� More than terminological quibble, this foundational moment was a game changer that set America, or its history of ideas, on a particular path� The meaning of happiness is inextricably intertwined with the history of American exceptionalism� 12 The social scientists Lane Kenworthy and Timothy Smeeding distinguish between the Money Income Index, which stood at 0�477 in 2011, and the Gini-Index of Income Inequality, which amounted to 0�38 in 2008 (Kenworthy and Smeeding, 2013)� They conclude that, “among the world’s affluent countries, the United States can be considered an especially revealing test case� The level of income inequality is very high, and it increased very rapidly in the past generation� If income inequality has adverse impacts on social, political, cultural, or other outcomes, they are likely to be particularly visible in the United States” (3)� Not only is the U�S� exceptional, its development American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 365 the class divide; wealth inequality is a pertinent feature of many nations around the world (Afghanistan, Mexico, Pakistan, Angola and various other African countries rank much higher)� Inequality has also risen in European countries, but the recent data about economic mobility certainly damages claims to American superiority (Piketty 544)� The report of the World Health Organization is another telling indicator because economic inequality impacts, among other areas of social life, the rate of life expectancy� Globally, the U�S� ranks 35th after Greece, Portugal, and Slovenia� 13 A third global measurement is the World Happiness Report which, in 2013, listed the U�S� 17th (below Panama and Mexico)� Social democratic countries such as Denmark and Norway are on top of the list when it comes to the subjective perception of happiness� 14 The discrepancy between the Declaration’s call to pursue one’s happiness and a relative lack thereof in today’s America is noteworthy because it calls into question the relationship between mere opportunity and actual result� The Great Gatsby Curve, which illustrates the stark differences in economic mobility between counties as well as the correlation between inequality and downward mobility� It shows that today economic mobility in the U�S� is lower than that of many developing nations, whereas social-democratic countries like Sweden or Denmark grant the highest level of economic mobility to its citizens� The likelihood of a child born in Denmark to move out of poverty is twice as high as that of a child born in the U�S� 15 Social mobility in Germany is 1�5 times higher� Since the Great Gatsby Curve is part of a governmental report released in 2012 by the Council of Economic Advisors, President Obama was aware of these facts when he gave his speech on inequality� Paul Krugman’s response to this report - “very illuminating - and disturbing” (2013) - might equally have been the presidential reaction� After all, economic immobility undermines the promise of equal opportunity pricking more than national pride� A different study went so far as to argue that 70% of the children at the bottom of society will never make it into the middle class� 16 The probability of an American child raised in a family from the bottom quintile to reach the top quintile of the national income distribution varies from 4�4% (Charlotte) also anticipates trends that are likely to affect other Western European countries in the near future� The OECD also lists 0�38 after taxes and transfers and 0�49 before taxes� See “Income Distribution and Poverty: by country - Inequality�” Compared to other European countries like Germany (0�30) and the United Kingdom (0�34), the U�S�’s income distribution is exceptionally high� See “The Rise of Income Inequality Amongst Rich Countries” on Inequality Watch� On a global scale it ranks with Pakistan and many African countries (“GINI Index”)� On this issue, see also Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez who, starting in 2001, have gathered extensive qualitative data on income inequality in the U�S� (“Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998”)� 13 “Life expectancy: Life expectancy Data by Country,” WHO, 2012� On the many social manifestation of inequality, see Pickett’s and Wilkinson’s The Spirit Level� 14 John Helliwell et al�, eds�, World Happiness Report 2013� 15 “Bloomberg Visual Data - The Great Gatsby Curve: Declining Mobility�” 16 “Moving On Up - Why Do Some Americans Leave the Bottom of the Economic Ladder, but Not Others? ” 366 s ieglinde l emke to 12�9% (San Jose), according to a study conducted at Harvard University in June 2014� 17 The chances to get ahead in 21st century America are predetermined by one’s zip code and family background� 18 The idea that success does not depend on being born into wealth or privilege has also been shattered by Piketty’s revelations about “patrimonial capitalism�” Compared to other Western nations, America’s exceptional level of economic inequality, combined with the recent trend of economic immobility does indeed make it distinct and particular - in an unfortunate way� Not only the President is aware of the contradiction between myth and reality: according to a poll conducted in 2012, the majority of the America population (60%) have also started to doubt the validity of the rags-to-riches story� Only 40 percent of those interviewed thought it was “common for a person in the United States to start poor, work hard, and become rich�” 19 Not only is the belief in meritocracy faltering, two in three Americans are aware of the existence of “strong conflicts” between the rich and the poor. 20 A broad majority (61% of Republicans; 68% of Democrats) of Americans considers the income gap a serious “problem�” 21 60% subscribe to the view that the economic system in the U�S� “unfairly favors the wealthy” while 82% feel “the government should take steps to reduce poverty�” 22 The collective awareness of conflicting class interests is also striking since it runs counter to the ideology - that all Americans are members of one class, the middle class - that is the backbone of the ideology of American exceptionalism� Polls, however, have also proven the tenacity of the collective fantasy� When asked in 2010, 80% agreed “the U�S� is the greatest country in the world�” 23 This USA Today/ Gallup study, which differentiated the responses along social stratificatory lines, shows a discrepancy between class, age, and gender. The public apparently doubts that meritocracy and opportunity are enough to determine success in life. Likewise, the general confidence in equality is waning� The media has become fascinated by the inequality debate, to which several hundred thousands of pundits, journalists, filmmakers, 17 Raj Chetty et al�, “Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States�” 18 See Richard Morrill, “Rich, Poor, and Unequal Zip Codes�” 19 “Moving On Up - Why Do Some Americans Leave the Bottom of the Economic Ladder, but Not Others? ” 20 Rich Morin, “Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor.” 21 Susan Page and Kendall Breitman, “Poll: United We Stand On Wealth Gap - Income Inequality and the Government’s Role�” 22 Ibid� There is an interesting paradox underlying this Pew poll, since 60% of all interviewed held on to the classic belief in upward mobility (“most people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard“) but only 38% said that “the rich are rich because they worked harder than others�“ This shows that the conservative view still defines the cultural hegemony; nevertheless, 64% realized that wealth is not a sign of hard work or diligence but inherited� 23 Jeffrey M� Jones, “Americans See U�S� as Exceptional; 37% Doubt Obama Does�” This study also finds that those more likely than average to affirm America’s greatness are male, conservative, older, and affluent. Women, liberals, younger people, and those with an annual income of less than $ 20,000 were less likely to say so� American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 367 bloggers, and politicians have contributed since 2008� 24 The general distress about the rising gap between the rich and the poor - once the preoccupation of left-leaning activists and the Occupy Wall Street movement - has gone viral� 25 The division between the 1% and the 99%, a phrase the OWS popularized, has been incorporated into everyday language� The hype surrounding economist Thomas Piketty’s surprise runaway bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century is further evidence that Americans are taking the idea that inherited wealth drives inequality and that the remedy for this problem might be higher taxes seriously� 26 Even the Republican Party, once a bastion of outright inequality denialism, can no longer ignore the economic data, and has begun to consider ways to participate in the discourse� The debate on inequality is having a profound impact on America’s sense of self� To start with, it has impacted the President’s view of his nation and his people� When addressing the growing gap between the rich and the poor in December 2013, President Obama speculates that “people get the bad taste that the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government” (2013)� His passing remark on lobbying implies that the wealthy manipulate the system in their favor� The rich have stolen the America Dream, as Smith puts it, whereas the majority of Americans, Obama surmises, looses its interest in politics and its faith in America� 27 Obama’s cautionary note on the state of American democracy therefore undermines the very ideological foundation he tries to uphold with every fiber of his political being� Let’s take this paradox as the springboard to further explore this new understanding of American exceptionalism, which acknowledges the existence of economic immobility and inequality defining features of American life. A good starting point is Seymour Martin Lipset’s American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword (1997) because it grapples with class-related issues such as the absence of trade unions, the lack of a socialist or labor party, and the overall reluctance to finance social welfare programs. 28 By his account, “the United States has stood out among the industrial nations of the world in frustrating all efforts to create a mass socialist or labor party” (77)� In fact, the original usage of the term American exceptionalism has been attributed to Joseph Stalin, who in 1929 rebuked Jay Lovestone, the leader of the American 24 For an overview of this heated debate see Sieglinde Lemke, PrecarioUS: American Inequality and Poverty in the 21st Century (forthcoming)� 25 The entries on inequality in the U�S� and inequality in America produced more than 80 million hits the last time I checked� 26 For a closer analysis of the inequality debate, see the first chapter of my book PrecarioUS (forthcoming)� 27 For an extensive view of this argument see Hedrick Smith (2012), Who Stole the American Dream? as well as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010), Winner-Take-All-Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - And Turned its Back on the Middle Class� 28 “The U�S is a ‘welfare laggard’,” Lipset observes (289) claiming that “the fact has occasioned a considerable literature seeking to explain this aspect of American exceptionalism…” (Lipset 77)� 368 s ieglinde l emke Communist Party, for arguing that the American proletariat was uninterested in revolution and that Marx’s understanding of historical development did not apply to America� (Pease 2007, 108)� 29 A few months later, after the Wall Street crash, the American Communist Party used it to express their mischievous joy that the crash of 1929 had shattered America’s long tradition of collective self-flattery: “The storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism” (McCoy)� Thus, the Party was implicitly agreeing with Stalin� Class-based narratives of American exceptionalism project their collective desires and reflect the socio-economic and political realities of their time. Writing in the era of Clinton, Lipset (who did not mention Stalin’s remark) had reason to think of the U�S� economy as exceptional due to its immense productivity and remarkable job creation (Lipset claims that between 1973-87 a total of thirty million jobs were created in the U�S�)� In productivity gains, the U�S� far exceeded those of Germany and Japan� Lipset’s optimism about the state of the economy and his appraisal of America’s exceptionally high living standards as well as its high degree of economic equality - “workers as a group are fully sharing in economic gain” (57) - make more sense if considered in the context of the economic boom of the Clinton Presidency� Since the real wages and salaries of American workers have stagnated since the 1980s, however, and given that 95% of income gains since the 2008 crisis went to the top 1% of American households, American workers today are not sharing in economic gain� Given that the living standards of the middle and lower classes have fallen drastically in the past six years, Lipset’s understanding of American exceptionalism has to be updated and adapted to the economic realities of the Great Recession (Kenworthy and Smeeding 2)� Apart from a weakened economy, the public attitude towards inequality has also changed� Americans have traditionally tolerated high degrees of inequality� Winfried Fluck and Welf Werner aptly argue in Wieviel Ungleichheit verträgt die Demokratie: Armut und Reichtum in den USA (2003) that the acceptance of inequality is a distinct feature of American culture since the majority of Americans do not consider the wealth gap to threaten democracy� This view has since changed as the above-cited polls on the perception of the economy, mobility, and class conflict indicate. Six years into the recession, we might wonder how much longer will Americans tolerate the relentlessly increasing wealth gap� Possibly, there is a breaking point for a democracy when it turns into a financial oligarchy with 442 billionaires and 150 Million have-nots who live in or near poverty� In recent years the voice expressing discontent with this imbalance have grown� In 2009, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, for example, argued that “inequality is socially corrosive” (29) and insist on reducing inequality since this is “the best way of improving the quality of the social environment” 29 See Ben Zimmer, “Did Stalin Really Coin ‘American Exceptionalism’? ” Here, the origin of the term is dated back to 1861, to a statement about America’s self-image during the Civil War� American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 369 (29)� In The Spirit Level the authors maintain that “greater equality makes societies stronger” and that America can no longer afford inequality because it weakens the nation as it leads to a high crime rate, low life expectancy, a rise of mental and physical disease, and an exorbitant incarceration rate� 30 Only a decade ago, the experts and scholars who insisted that inequality mattered and who warned of its “poisonous consequences” (Lardner and Smith) were a small group of voices crying in the wilderness� 31 Today, theirs is a commonly held view� Seven years ago the view that “social class is simply not on the radar screen of American political consciousness,” (Kenneth Oldfield, qtd. in Cahill and Johannessen 7) had as much validity as the observation, “bemoan[ing] the absence of class discourse in the United States becomes the discourse itself” (Jones 7)� Today, the discourse on inequality is booming� Moving beyond the long-standing denial of class issues and the lament about its absence (Michaels 2006), the past decade witnessed a surge in awareness of class matters� 32 Hence the President and now also members of the GOP (notably Paul Ryan) jumped on the bandwagon� This acknowledgement of the limits of America’s presumed superiority distinguishes this version from the bolder American exceptionalism of the Bush Era� As Donald Pease argues, the New American Exceptionalism created a state fantasy that “caused U�S� citizens to want to participate in the state’s imperial will by changing the objective cause of their desire” (21)� This allowed for the toleration of the government’s abuse of human rights (Abu Ghraib) and collective neglect of impoverished African-American citizens (Hurricane Katrina)� 33 30 US crime rate in 2009 was 3466 crimes per 100,000 residents, see <http: / / www�disastercenter�com/ crime/ uscrime�htm>; the incarceration rate 2009 was 743 in 100,000 residents (highest documented incarceration rate in the world)� See <http: / / bjs�ojp�usdoj� gov/ content/ glance/ tables/ corr2tab�cfm> and <http: / / bjs�ojp�usdoj�gov/ content/ pub/ pdf/ cpus09�pdf>� 31 “Inequality Matters“ was the title of a conference held in 2004, years before the economic crisis hit, and the subsequent volume is subtitled The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences� 32 What about the academic field devoted to examine American literature, history, and culture? Class has long been a blind spot in American Studies (Jones 2006)� While there are a few path-breaking studies on class-related cultural issues (Amy Lang, 2009; Walter Benn Michaels, 2006; Gavin Jones, 2007; William Dow, 2009; Josef Entin, 2007) one might expect a rise in academic articles devoted to cultural aspects pertaining to inequality over the next years� 33 To Pease, “the more or less agreed upon archive concerned with what made America exceptional would include the following phrases: America is a moral exception (the “City on the Hill”); America is a nation with a “Manifest Destiny”; America is the “Nation of Nations”; America is an “Invincible Nation�” These conceptual metaphors, Pease aptly argues, “give directions for finding the meanings that are intended to corroborate the belief in American exceptionality� All of which leads to the conclusion that American exceptionalism operates less like a collection of discrete, potentially falsifiable descriptions of American society than as a fantasy through which U.S. citizens bring these contradictory political and cultural descriptions into correlation with one another through the desires that make them meaningful�” In the state of exception, 370 s ieglinde l emke The American Exceptionalism in the era of Obama relates to domestic issues and class matters, to be specific, propelled by a collective awareness of the economic divide it has potentially disaffecting consequences, as Obama himself noticed a growing sense of “frustration” (2013)� If people lose their faith in meritocracy and democracy, the phantasmagoric nature of the construct becomes painfully evident� The President’s audacity to call out the devastating economic situation and to concede that 50% of all Americans have experienced poverty at one time in their life is remarkable� 34 No longer trying to conceal the inconsistencies at the heart of exceptionalism, the President flaunts them. By publically admitting to the disintegration of the ideological foundation, on which the discourse of American exceptionalism rests, the President deconstructs this myth in the all-American tradition of the jeremiad� Beginning with the Puritans, the jeremiad, as Sacvan Bercovitch has so aptly described, became a fixture of the American rhetorical tradition. The jeremiad links lament to exultation, a ritual that evokes an ideal state while naming and condemning the shortcomings of the existing one� Despite the recognition of and lament over the distance between promise and reality, the jeremiad actually bespeaks an ideological consensus, Bercovitch argues, that preempts radical alternatives� Instead of bringing about real change, these expressions of dissent ultimately produce cultural cohesion� Just so, Obama’s jeremiad, which alerts his audience to the daunting threat of a dysfunctional economy operated by a self-serving financial industry, evokes the possibility of economic democracy while lamenting America’s precarious socio-economic reality� Instead of emphasizing that the U�S� is not immune to the effects of the post-crisis global economy, however, his jeremiadic oratory reverts at crucial moments to the long-standing myth of American exceptionalism� In so doing, Obama uses this ideological tradition - which in the past was upheld by writers, thinkers, and political dissidents - and imbues it with presidential authority� Even if he is aware that exceptionalism is merely a construct, Obama trades on it when it is politically necessary. “With every fibre of [his] political being,” he affirms his belief in this construct, attempting to forge a national consensus that will keep the daunting specters of political polarization and economic inequality at bay� when democratic rights are violated, this collective desire causes U�S� citizens “to want to participate in the state’s imperial will” instead of pursuing their own self-interest or political will� 34 That number is low compared to some accounts� Mark Rank argues that 79% of all Americans experience economic insecurity at least once in their life - i�e� unemployment, income-threatening health problems, dependence on food stamps or living at 150% of the poverty level: “four out of every five United States adults “struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives” (Yen)� American Exceptionalism in the Age of Inequality 371 Works Cited Aglietta, Michel (2000)� A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience� London and New York: Verso� Bacevich, Andrew J� (2009)� The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism� New York: Holt Paperbacks� Barlett, Donald L� and James B� Steele (2012)� The Betrayal of the American Dream� New York: PublicAffairs� “Bloomberg Visual Data - The Great Gatsby Curve: Declining Mobility�” Bloomberg� Bloomberg L�P� 6 Oct� 2013� Web� 30 June 2014� Cahill, Kevin, and Lene Johannessen, eds� Considering Class. 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