I had to post this, because it brings up a weird point about America these days. We don't have to be exceptional - we can abandon our principles and torture prisoners like the Gestapo, our children can be near the bottom of global rankings in education, and we can look like a banana republic in terms of income inequality - but there's no one better at claiming to be exceptional.
As usual, Republicans are the biggest offenders. Through cowardice, they abandoned our standards of civilized behavior after 9/11. Through ignorance and superstition, they continue to reject science. And in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans - the only people who are actually doing well in our country - they've given up on even maintaining our old, crumbling infrastructure, let alone building anything new and impressive.
But heaven help anyone who's insufficiently exuberant about claiming how great we are! "American exceptionalism" is a huge rallying cry on the right. The substance of that means nothing to them. Only the PR.
Yeah, we're a people who've let advertising take over everything, haven't we? Reality has stopped being important to us. Now it's only our fantasies that matter.
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