I believe in American exceptionalism. That's what makes this crisis so hard to accept.

[Zorro]

I believe in American exceptionalism and think those who don’t must be so blinded by their own prejudices that they can’t see the facts right in front of them. The United States’ military might and economic prowess remain unrivaled. America’s cultural influence and soft power remain enormous, even with the most inward-looking president in over a century sitting in the White House. It should also surprise no one that a country born in the Age of Enlightenment would thrive so mightily in science, medicine and technology.

From Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity to Steve Jobs’s creation of the iPhone, American inventors have fashioned brave new worlds, then wiped clean the boundaries of those ages, before imagining new ones in a blink of the eye — whether it was American visionaries flying across the windy shores of Kitty Hawk or Air Force pilots learning how to guide their spaceships onto the surface of the moon.

Immigrants traveling to our shores have also been pivotal in shaping American exceptionalism, inventing the telephone, the television and the Internet technology that now defines our daily existence. It was also an immigrant from Germany who visited FDR’s White House and pushed the wartime president to launch the Manhattan Project. In so doing, Albert Einstein helped America and its allies win the Second World War.

Our country’s pioneering spirit has also extended to medicine, whether through the creation of lifesaving vaccines, the development of blood transfusions or miraculous breakthroughs in the field of organ transplants. In one survey after another, America’s doctors are viewed as the best in the world, and our universities remain unrivaled. Since 1950, approximately half of all Nobel Prizes awarded in the science fields have been given to Americans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-believe-in-american-exceptionalism-thats-what-makes-this-crisis-so-hard-to-accept/2020/05/20/3e62a5c2-9ab1-11ea-89fd-28fb313d1886_story.html

[Cary]

1. RWNJs have wiped that slate clean for me

America is waking up to the fact, as Germany once did, that a third of its population would murder another third while the remaining third sat by and watched.

~ Werner Twertzog

The third that are.RWNJs are as common as dirt,.and they have dragged us down.

[Karadeniz]

2. I have never believed in exceptionalism as a right. One must work every day, with every policy

And decision, to better conditions for everyone.

[Maven]

3. LOL

Yes, we are exceptional in that we call ourselves a democracy yet have all three branches of government effectively in the control of the party representing the minority of citizens. And we can't even guarantee everyone's right to vote.

We are exceptional as a country with obscene wealth that can't provide food and shelter for millions of citizens in need. A "rich" country, parts of which look like third-world slums.

We are exceptional as a country with elite medical institutions and bioresearch facilities that can't provide basic healthcare to all its citizens.

We are exceptional as a country with unparalleled military prowess but no ability (apparently) to prevent mass murder on a regular basis within our own borders. Or to stop armed militias from shutting down our state governments.

We are exceptional alright!

[Baked Potato]

4. When Republicans figured out they could just by a trophy

instead of earning it, it was all over.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. wow, what hubris. we are a country among many. I hate national pride

let's just all try to be good people and recognize we are all in this dance of life together.

humans...so fucking tribal.

our country can be so exceptionally stupid!

[Girard442]

6. "American Exceptionalism" is a drug and it's killing us.

If you want to be great, you must first be humble.

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. this.

[njhoneybadger]

8. Sounds like Rush Limbaugh bullshit to me

[raccoon]

9. I don't believe in American Exceptionalism.

I expect the nineteenth-century British thought they were exceptional, also the ancient Romans. And many others.