My Turn: American exceptionalism – really? jacoblund
Published: 4/23/2021 2:10:21 PM
With each passing event the latest being an insurrection on our Capitol, hate crimes against Asian Americans, voter suppression efforts by the Trumplican party with 253 bills in 43 states and the continuation via police brutality of 400 years of oppression of African Americans we are left to wonder what it will take for far too many of our leaders and our countrywomen and men to realize we are not exceptional – unless we change it to mean exceptionally troubled as a country.
It is essential that we understand the sources of the destructive belief in our country’s exceptionalism. None of this is to say that our country lacks the capacity to be better than we’ve been or that there haven’t been moments in history where we rose to the challenge. No, the two big points are that for reasons that undermine efforts to do better by our citizens, as a nation we have: