America's Misguided Self-Conceptualization
Since the inception of the nation, political rhetoric of the United States has carried a recurring theme of "Americans" and how they make or made up the "best nation on Earth". To most mainstream observers in the country, particularly those of the 20th century, this idea may have overtly or latently seemed self-evident or generic, nothing worth examining or discussion in any critical or meaningful way. If it was discussed, and even today, it is discussed in a way reminiscent of either a schmaltzy or nostalgic way. In recent American memory, there have been two resurgent waves of this feeling, both encompassing similar, yet slightly differing defining elements.
The first was during the Reagan era. He came to embody an image of the "everyday" America (hence the slogan, "Morning in America"). He rejected, politically at least, the notion that something was wrong with the countrys approach to foreign policy. He put himself in direct contrast to the Carter administration, one that has previously been occupied with Human Rights and efforts to advance global peace. Obviously, not everybody felt the same way as Ronnie, but the feeling permeated both young and old and across political spectrums to his politically agile advantage. The demographics of the country, coupled with institutional practices and ideology of the time, allowed for a virtually unchallenged worldview in media and society of domestic and foreign policy honed under this mindset of renewed American identity, order, and exceptionalism.
What was not raised as a question, was the fact that the racial color divide in the country was still evident. Reagan's "Morning in America" tended to project the glorified image of the experiences of the White, middle-class image, an image remniscent of a mythological 1950's American utopia. Gaps in pay between Blacks and Whites had not closed significantly since Civil Rights legislation had passed, and American media images were still permeated with the same notion of "American Whiteness", the idea that Whites were the "norm" and "generic", sharing the universal outlook on society. This is still not to mention a male-centric outlook on society and the world taking root in European political thought pre-dating their very arrival. Reagan's approach took this gendered and racial outlook and utilized it to reject and regress on many in-roads made during the previous two decades in social justice achievements.
This renewal in the "American spirit" also provided a way to deal with the anxieties over U.S. policy failure in Vietnam, attacking those who would go against the renewed American spirit, implicitly demonizing any opposition from the American left. This ideology, and the subsequent national vigor it would cement in the American psyche for years to come, would come to define the bulk of Ronald Reagan's approach in the 1980's.
Challenges to reshaping the same paradigm
While post-Cold War challenges and redefining approaches to social policy came to define a bulk of 1990's American political discourse, the early years of the 21st century came to set the ultimate framework for a return to the vigorous nostalgia of the Reagan ideology. With a newly defined threat, terrorism, the United States once again came to define itself (as it had in the Reagan generation) with a global enemy. As it had in the 1980's, America was suffering from a national anxiety over its failures to execute an ambitious and idyllic policy in its Middle East conflicts. Thus, in this context we can view clearly the importance ( and possible worry over) the rise of Sarah Palin and other ideologues who share a policy eerily remniscent of that "other" wave of American exceptionalist rhetoric.
To look at this more critically, let us also take a look at the demographic changes within the country. Our country has become three things it was not or not as much so in the 1980s: more college educated since the 1980's (the college educated were a demographic instrumental to the election of Barack Obama), more technologically aware, and more ethnically diverse and furthermore populated by an identity not previously regarded as existentially threatening by the status quo: the Hispanic ethnicity. These three changes have come to define the challenges faced by the resurgence of the American exceptionalist approach, which, had Sarah Palin been the representative in 1988, for example, would not have been quite the stumbling blocks for her that they are today.
In spite of these changes and circumstances, Palin prides herself and defines herself in a familiar tone: unapologetic pride in the nostalgic feeling of American exceptionalism. What should be noted here is an ominous realization that one might arrive at after looking at the information above: Both Reagan in the 1980s and Palin today have come to represent a mythological America, a country that never was and is not today. It is an America taken out of socio-historical context to suit the psychological investment of what it considers to be its traditional "core" culture - the White, Male, Protestant.
To understand what Palin and this approach represents further, let us look at what is politically in opposition to her: the election and re-election of Barack Obama. As America is poised to become "majority-minority" in the next few decades according to the latest Census results, a demographic unseen on the continent since the founding of the nation, the rise of racial, linguistic, and religious diversity will be ever more present and visible in everyday American life for a large chunk of the country. This change, either ignored or not predicted by the Reagan coalition, has come to define the contrast to Sarah Palin's very rhetoric and approach. In the 1980's, Reagan's view of what America was went unchallenged in the way that escapes meticulous examination today (largely due in part to a 24 hour news cycle, in addition to the afforementioned demographic changes). Technology coupled with a newly shaped media has given new voice to those voices that might have been neglected in the Reagan years, and those voices are now going to rebut and attest to all of the contextual inaccuracies of this exceptionalist resurgence.
What does all of this mean?
Sarah Palin represents, on the surface, the last attempts of the rightist Baby Boom generation to perpetuate the globalistic ends many seem to have internalized by way of Neo-conservative ideologues and to salvage the legitimacy of this mythological image of the past (which necessarily creates a false "dilemma" in the minds of those adhering to this mindset). Thus, the cries of "I want my country back!" signal an anxious reaction to facing up to a reality that was never presented to them for so much time: the reality that America never was that infallible, exceptional giant that all others fell so far short of achieving. America, as a whole, never was at it's core made up of the White, Male, Protestant culture and approach.
What is quickly being understood by many observers is that the outcry of the recent Tea Party phenomenon is a manifestation of the fact that the "normal" America that is envisioned is due to a historical silencing of the realites of ethnic, gender, and religious minorities in the country, creating a false sense of cultural position and identity. When this psychological investment in this identity is challenged on the scale that it is now, you see the outbursts of denial, regardless of a lack of evidence to support the outbursts. This section of America sees the election of Barack Obama, a "socialist, Muslim, son of a Kenyan" as a threat because the context under which they (as a group) approach an understanding of the country is taken out of context of the realities of so many others that have not shared that experience. Their uniqueness of holding on to the monopoly of being "truly" American is slowly dissappearing.
What should be asked and approached from both ends of this divide is whether that section of America is willing to work together with so many that have been disenfranchised historically and give up the perks and privileges they've enjoyed for so long, or if they will fight to the bitter end to hold onto the institutional, social, and psychological advantages that come with identifying themselves the same way as they have tended to. What's more, it is in seeing this divide that the ultimate and more latent importance of the rise of and challenge towards Sarah Palin and this new exceptionalism is understood. It's a landmark moment for this county in it's social-demographic make-up. If approached responsibly, her supporters fears and anxieties may be an invaluable example for a lesson in broadening our view as a country into our historical past and social present. The approach of Palin's exceptionalism represents what America used to think it was. Obama (for all of his achievements or faults) is, in a sense, a representation, literally and figuratively, of what America is and has been becoming for some time (and the reaction to him as amplified by the media helps confim this): an America much more diverse than its psyche realized it was.
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