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Sources

Beyond Donald Trump, The Real Problem Is American Exceptionalism

The parade at Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20
The parade at Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20
Helio Schwartsman

-OpEd-

When Donald Trump spoke at his inauguration on Jan. 20, there wasn't even a hint of trying to be magnanimous. Instead, he called for the most narrow-minded form of nationalism. It's tempting to see this as one of the many personal shortcomings of the new president of the United States.

But that's not the point.

The inconvenient truth is that Trump merely exacerbates "American exceptionalism," that combination of vision and narrative that sees the U.S. as having a special role in the world. This viewpoint is an integral part of the country's DNA; it has been guiding the actions of all presidents since George Washington.

Obviously, some form of ethnocentrism is inherent in everyone to some extent. When people don't make up flattering stories about themselves, they tell jokes that place them higher than their neighbors. But the U.S. embodies this trait in the extreme.

The puritans who founded the U.S. like to describe it as a New Israel, a land that would have a special relationship with the Creator, one nation under God. And Americans aren't any more subtle when religion isn't mentioned. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, said in his famous Gettysburg address that the U.S."s special mission was to ensure that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

So in the name of that special mission, the U.S. has sought to bring democracy and freedom to everyone on the planet. Different American governments have intervened in the most diverse countries around the world, sometimes bringing freedom but perhaps in a larger number of cases they ended up suppressing it.

Former president George W. Bush went as far as saying that American exceptionalism exempted the country from heeding to international law when it came to the invasion of Iraq.

Exceptionalism based on ethnocentrism is a bit like self-esteem. In reasonable quantities, it's fundamental to forging a healthy national psyche. But too much of it produces narcissistic personalities and even psychopaths. One thing's for sure — Trump cannot be diagnosed as someone with low self-esteem.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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