The Great Unmasking: American Exceptionalism in the Age of COVID-19

Abstract

This article analyzes the United States’ COVID-19 response from the lens of American exceptionalism. The historic function of American exceptionalism is reviewed to provide context for the problematic response to COVID-19 in the United States. American exceptionalism, it is argued, has justified disastrous economic and military policies which have exacerbated the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and abroad. American exceptionalism has been unmasked by the United States’ domestic and international response to COVID-19 as a set of dangerous myths that protect the interests of private capital and imperial hegemony. China's adherence to the principles of multipolarity and win-win cooperation is explored as an alternative to the ideology of American exceptionalism and the model of US imperial hegemony which the ideology defends and preserves.