What makes America exceptional

It's far from perfect, but even a pandemic can't deter its moral struggle

A protester.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently pointed out that 2020 started off like 1974 (an impeachment crisis), quickly became 1918 (a pandemic), turned into 1929 (economic crash), and then became 1968 (massive urban unrest). Any country that endured so much in so short a time would lose its way. But the fact is, despite the increasing political polarization and strife, over the last month, America has made some real moral progress on issues of racial justice. That is a far cry from many other countries, including India, my native land, where the pandemic has aborted the struggle to win basic rights and protections for persecuted minorities.

The turmoil in America after George Floyd's brutal murder by a cop is giving authoritarian rulers around the world a serious bout of schadenfreude. China's state media has gone into an overtly gloating mode. The Global Times editor-in-chief wrote that he hoped that U.S. politicos were enjoying what they were seeing "from their own windows" given that Nancy Pelosi "once called the violent protests in Hong Kong 'a beautiful sight to behold.'" Meanwhile, during a phone call with Trump to discuss the pandemic, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the opportunity to express concern about the "ongoing civil disturbances in the U.S." and wished Trump luck in bringing things under control, slyly suggesting that America's travails with black agitation were no different from India's with Muslim unrest.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.