Why do so many cling to the idea of american exceptionalism?

[iverglas]

45. it's a powerful tool for social cohesion

and adherence to the policies that benefit those who can persuade others to support them by appealing to this self-image. We are exceptional = we are special, we do everything better than anybody else, we are entitled, and we have nothing to learn from anyone.

Gun control, universal health care and other social welfare measures, labour and employment rights, regulation of various economic activities, protections of vulnerable groups, social justice and equality measures of all kinds, all the rest of the beneficial aspects of the modern world that the most closely comparable societies all enjoy to varying degrees but always to a far greater extent than in the US ... they'd never work in the US, because the US is "exceptional", doncha know.

And as long as allegiance to the mythology of anybody-can-succeed, what benefits the rich benefits us all, can be sustained, then opposition to all the policies that stem from recognizing the falseness of that mythology can also be sustained.

Great masses of ordinary people in the US buy into this delusion that they are the only ones in the world who enjoy true "freedom", and thus that the present economic system by which they are ground into dust is the only bulwark against becoming slaves and subjects like the rest of us out here in the outer darkness. Somehow, the rest of us manage to have less violent, more just societies and have no freedom.

From the wiki:

Historian Gordon Wood has argued, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."

Somehow, a whole lot of the rest of us have managed to make our own way toward similar goals, and do a hell of a lot better job of it.

Basically, as has been noted on this thread, continuing belief in USAmerican exceptionalism really does depend on ignorance. It would be hard to keep believing that one was leading anybody or anything if one actually saw what was just over the horizon way up in front of one.