The dangers of cynicism in the age of Trump

Vox's Constance Grady pans Zadie Smith's new collection of essays:

And when Smith turns her gaze to current events, to the politics of the pandemic, the results can feel downright facile. In “The American Exception,” she attempts to reckon with why America’s response to the pandemic has been so lacking on every level. Smith’s sentences in this essay can sometimes sing — “We are great with death,” she writes, devastatingly; “we are mighty with it” — but this question has been turned over and over and over so often by so many different thinkers over the past few months that by the time Smith takes her turn, the result feels almost empty. I know by now that my country’s elected officials have failed the country. I know that they are using the rhetoric of American exceptionalism to justify their failure. I know that people are dying as a result. What else you got?

I dunno. Seems to me the failure of American officials -- and the way they justify themselves through American exceptionalism -- is the one of the most salient facts about our country's political life right now. Reckoning with both the failures, and the scandalous use of patriotism and "greatest country in the world" rhetoric, does not have to be an original project because it is a necessary one. Let's not get jaded about this state of affairs.