[Feature] America the Beautiful, a Confused Country Yet To Be Realized: A Chronicle of Promises, Hypocrisy, and Despair / Lee Heajeong
The Quarterly Changbi 191, Spring 2021
Abstract
The feature in this issue, titled: “The World After a Split US, and How To Respond to It,” diagnoses how the existing world order is currently changing due to a serious split within the US and to fierce strategic competition between the US and China, exploring what directions our responses should take. Political scientist Lee Heajeong carefully examines the meaning of the 2020 US presidential election. Tracing the trajectory of American history, composed of a series of promises, hypocrisy, and despair, Lee’s article adds meticulous and meaningful interpretations, while also commenting on the massacres of the native population, history of slavery and racism, and American exceptionalism. At the same time, it offers sharp analyses of what kinds of changes in ideological and policy orientation have been made during the transition from the Trump to Biden administrations, how each reconstructed American history, and how these reconstructed histories are different from the real one. It vividly depicts at what crossroads the US and Biden administration, and the entire world, are standing now.