I started wring this seven years ago, 2/6/15, and must have forgotten about it because I found it in a draft file just now...I see things have only gotten exceptionally worse since then. My optimism is at it’s breaking point by now but was struck at how naive I was in thinking things couldn’t get THIS bad!
American Exceptionalism is a term that is being tossed around by the right-wing noise machine but as usual, they have it all backwards. Exceptional should be a positive trait and not the selfishness exhibited by this current crop of regressives who call themselves Tea-Partiers. Granted, we do have the biggest, baddest army in the world, but we seem to use it to prop up phony governments owned by robber barons. We can boast of having the most and the (mostly) best hospitals in the world but millions of our own citizens have no access to them. I suppose one could say that our universities are all top-notch (although that is a mostly sketchy claim too) but when our young people graduate they do so with debt that is impossible to reconcile with the minimum wage jobs they will end up getting. Refusing to accept the metric system is pretty stubborn behavior for a nation and I always just got a chuckle out of that but this business of denying climate change, refusing vaccinations and thinking that washing hands is too great a burden on FOOD PREPARERS for God's sake, is just a bridge too far. So no; these things are not good exceptional things, they are exceptionally bad things but...there is still hope because what DOES make America exceptional is the fact that We the People have the ability to change all of those things and to make America the Beautiful the beautiful and inclusive place it is supposed to be. All's we need to do, is vote the right people in and the wrong people out. I know; easier said than done but I am ever the optimist and think that all things are possible.