As a Soviet Jewish immigrant, the son of Reagan-loving anti-Communists, I grew up in a kind of secular religion: American exceptionalism. I was raised to believe that the evils of tyranny—ones as mundane as toilet-paper lines or as horrific as the Holocaust—could only have happened far away or long ago, in places without democracy or capitalism. Gradually, I became aware of arguments that the U.S. was exceptional in far less desirable ways, too: poorer health outcomes, higher murder rates, and greater inequality when compared with similarly prosperous nations. What I notice now, as a journalist working during the second Trump administration, is that for all the ways that America is unlike other nations, in crucial ways it is just like any other place: What happens anywhere—including moves toward authoritarianism—can also happen here. This idea underpins two recent essays in The Atlantic.
First, here are four new articles from the Atlantic’s Books section:
In her immersive work of nonfiction, A Flower Traveled in My Blood, Haley Cohen Gilliland documents the decades-long struggle to recover children who, during Argentina’s Dirty War, were snatched away from detained dissidents (many of whom were murdered) and given to supporters of the regime. In an Atlantic essay about the book published this week, Julia M. Klein highlights Gilliland’s insistence that this specific case bears cautionary lessons for many societies. Klein, who as a reporter witnessed Argentina’s still-incomplete reckoning with its atrocities, finds that the U.S. “government’s turn to sudden, legally questionable seizures” of immigrants, “often by unidentified masked men,” reminds her of past abuses across South America. “When tyrants threaten, more people and institutions may cower than resist,” Klein writes, drawing on the experience of Argentines and others who saw state terror. “The loss of checks on state violence can be catastrophic; and no one knows who the next victim will be.”
The lessons in America, América, Greg Grandin’s sweeping history of the Western Hemisphere after many of its nations gained independence from Europe’s empires, are less ominous—perhaps surprisingly so, considering the strongmen and civil wars that tend to dominate American media portrayals of those countries. “As some historians talk about Trump as a strongman in the Latin American mold, perhaps the region has something to teach us about democracy,” Carolina A. Miranda wrote a couple of weeks ago in an article about Grandin’s book. Miranda noted that many democratic concepts, including birthright citizenship, were pioneered in the region before spreading across the world. “Grandin’s narrative upends the idea of Latin America as perpetual victim,” Miranda wrote—along with the image of the U.S. as “a forbearing parent” shepherding its wayward southern neighbors. Instead, she suggested, Latin American constitutions and liberation movements have incubated principles that might help guide Americans.
I might never let go entirely of the faith I grew up with, a core belief that the world has much to learn from the American example and from the freedoms Americans are promised. But I also believe we have much to learn—and not just through cautionary tales. We may not have universal health care or ample high-speed rail like some of our wealthy peer nations, but over the past few decades I have seen these concepts seriously contemplated—even, in some places, enacted—by policy makers who look to other countries for ideas. These modest experiments have strengthened my belief that the U.S. is not exceptional in every way. Bad things that have happened elsewhere can happen here—and so can changes that make life better.
