By Carlos Lozada
Opinion Columnist

July 2, 2024

If America were a painting, it would almost certainly be a self-portrait.

Ours is a nation obsessed with depicting and interpreting itself, usually with
the boldest of brushstrokes. We’ve claimed an American way, an American creed,
an American idea, an American experiment, an American dream, even an American
century. Our political battles do not center only on who is right or wrong but
on whose positions best reflect the nation’s professed values. “That’s not who
we are” is our harshest burn.

In our most back-patting moments, that self-portrait has a one-word caption:
exceptional. We tell ourselves that we are the world’s last and best hope,
unique among nations, chosen by God, exempt from history, on a mission befitting
a “shining city upon a hill,” as Ronald Reagan put it in his 1989 Oval Office
farewell.

Now is not a back-patting moment. Americans’ confidence in vital government
institutions — the military, the judiciary, the electoral system — ranks lowest
among the world’s rich nations, and satisfaction with the way our democracy is
working is the weakest it has been in the four decades Gallup has tracked it.
The coming presidential election feels more existential than exceptional, as did
the one before it and the one before that. No wonder Americans alternate between
hailing our ideals and deploring how we fail to live up to them or denouncing
those ideals for not delivering the exceptional nation we desire.

But the reality or falsity of American exceptionalism is not a measurable,
observable or unambiguous fact, no matter how confidently or derisively we
invoke the term or how brightly Reagan’s metaphor still glitters. To claim
American exceptionalism is to assert a political or cultural belief and to
engage in an endless argument, one which our political leaders are compelled to
join — whether extolling the city that is, pining for one that was or imagining
the one yet to be.

In late 2016, during his final weeks as vice president, Joe Biden decried the
coarse presidential campaign the nation had just witnessed. “So much for the
shining city on the hill,” he said. Yet on Friday, the day after his painful
debate performance, Biden called the United States “the finest and most unique
nation in the world,” the only one built not on ethnicity, geography or religion
but on the ideal of human equality. Donald Trump, for his part, has gone from
praising American exceptionalism (“really a great term”) to dismissing it (“I
don’t like the term, I’ll be honest with you”) to hailing it again (“America is
the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world”) to
claiming during the debate that, under Biden, “we’ve become like a third world
nation, and it’s a shame.” His version of American exceptionalism is about
beating the world, not leading it.

President Barack Obama told the graduates of West Point in 2014 that he believed
in the nation’s exceptionalism “with every fiber of my being” and has lauded
American values, including free speech and equality, “that, though imperfect,
are exceptional.” His exceptionalism is more self-critical, regarding the
American story as a struggle to live up to the truths of the Declaration of
Independence, truths that may be self-evident but are hardly self-fulfilling.

The rest at
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/american-exceptionalism-reagan-biden-trump.html

The notion of "American exceptionalism" is complete bullshit. It's cult-like
thinking, and it just isn't so. The ideals of our founding myth are great, but
we don't come remotely close to living up to them. And the people who bray the
loudest about American exceptionalism are those who willfully refuse to see the
gap. The U.S. ranks far from the top in every meaningful measure of well-being.
That's why the U.S. come in at #23 in the world happiness rankings, and never
ranked higher than #15 since the survey began.
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/20/world-happiness-america-low-list-countries.
The chest-beaters and "we're #1!" bleaters alway blabber, "If we're not so
great, why do so many people want to immigrate here?" The sad harsh fact is, *no
one* from countries that rank above us wants to move to the U.S.

I know what the blowhard chest-thumping blowhards are going to say: "If it's so
bad here, why don't you go somewhere else?" I didn't say it's "so" bad here.
What I said is that it's nowhere nearly as great here as the blowhard
chest-thumpers claim it to be. It certainly is *not* "the greatest country in
the history of the world." One of the things that makes it not so great here is
the very presence of the blowhard chest-thumpers. It still would not be a truly
great country if the chest-thumpers were gone, but it certainly would be much
better than it is.

[Default] Rudy "Cunt Flaps" Canoza <rudy@phil.hendrie.con> typed:

>One of the things that makes it not so great here is
>the very presence of the blowhard chest-thumpers.

Then why don't you Aaron Bushnell yourself, dwarf?

On Wed, 3 Jul 2024 11:39:13 -0700, Rudy Canoza <rudy@phil.hendrie.con> wrote:

>The notion of "American exceptionalism" is complete bullshit. It's cult-like
>thinking, and it just isn't so. The ideals of our founding myth are great, but
>we don't come remotely close to living up to them. And the people who bray the
>loudest about American exceptionalism are those who willfully refuse to see the
>gap. The U.S. ranks far from the top in every meaningful measure of well-being.
>That's why the U.S. come in at #23 in the world happiness rankings, and never
>ranked higher than #15 since the survey began.
>https://www.axios.com/2024/03/20/world-happiness-america-low-list-countries.

But is that the fault of the nation or the fault of how the survey is constructed?

Swill

On Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:47:55 -0700, Klaus Schadenfreude
<klaus.schadenfreude.Zwergentöter.@gmail.com> wrote:

>[Default] Rudy "Cunt Flaps" Canoza <rudy@phil.hendrie.con> typed:
>
>>One of the things that makes it not so great here is
>>the very presence of the blowhard chest-thumpers.
>
>Then why don't you Aaron Bushnell yourself, dwarf?

Because it would be more fun to Aaron Bushnell the blowhard chest-thumpers!

Swill