i wonder what y'all think about the rhetoric of american exceptionalism, at least as prevalent in obama as in bush or mccain: we are, straight up, god's chosen people, and the spirit of america will necessarily overcome every obstacle. we are destined to lead the world. forever, and lead it into good. now this is required of every american politician, of course. and i wonder whether sarkozy has to say the same thing about the french at every moment of every day. and i like a lot about our culture and our political traditions. i also think that we have lost much of what might have made us in some sense exceptional: cussed self-reliance, frontier can-do attitude, the ideals of independence and fierce defense of liberty. and of course our history, as any black man must know, is an extremely mixed legacy. and of course i deny that we have any particular destiny: we might lead the world for awhile yet; we might be in terminal decline. and i guess i basically think people are more or less the same everywhere and we're not massively superior overall to zimbabweans or whomever it may be. also i think this rhetoric has a little fascist tang: you could transpose it to mussolini and italy, and the rhetoric would fit right in. and i think it does actively encourage a kind of imperialism, especially economic.