Is the United States Exceptional?

US definitely has exceptional successes, but there are so many systemic flaws which other countries may or may not have, and where US could vastly improve.

* High medical costs

* Highest maternal mortality among developed countries

* Highest income gaps

* High education cost & the vicious circle of college debt.

* Increasing trends of bankruptcy & paycheck-to-paycheck sustenance.

* Lack of public transportation issues in most places

* Very oil dependent economy.

* Gun violence. So many lives needlessly lost every year.

* Growing mental health & opiod crisis

* Lack of public awareness about current affairs (& to some extent apathy even)

* Waning trust in judiciary & in parallel the rise of the rich oligarchy

* Interference in politics of other countries

* Equality of diversity (in true sense) is still to be achieved given racial profiling persists

* The extent of personal freedom without state agencies keeping track of activities.

It definitely has successes but there is a long road to being a model nation. But US as a nation has demonstrated the capacity to overcome odds in fortitude. There is hope - but a sense of cautious hope

This is a common misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 'exceptional'. The origins of the phrase "American exceptionalism" had nothing to do with greatness or thinking one country is better than another. It is exceptional only in that the country was concieved as an exception to the rule of where its power ultimately comes from. The normal foundation for the state was upon a divinely anointed monarchy. America was founded by the people who loan their power to representatives. That power can be revoked at any time by the people. It was a dramatic departure from the expactations of sovereignty at the time.

The logic of "The US is the greatest if you likes X things and bad if you prefer Y" is poor because it can be applied to anything. Colombia during Pablo Escobar's time was probably considered pretty great if you were a Narco Trafficker.

The article entirely misses the problem non-US people have with the US faffing on about greatness or its exceptionality.

Which is that individuals from the US seem to see this as an indication of their own superiority and develop a parochial point of view regardless of their almost total insignificance to the accomplishments of the US.

Most US citizens have done precisely nothing to increase the 'greatness' of the US other than pay their taxes (which they oppose doing). Many non-US citizens have done much more, the success of the USA is the result of a combined effort from many countries but the parochialism of many Americans refuses to acknowledge this.

Even if your country is exceptional, which is immeasurable nonsense (I'm sure every country is exceptional in some ways), you should not take pride from this because you have done incredibly little to achieve it.

I expect precisely 0 Americans to agree with me, but my PoV is not uncommon in Australia at least.

This was a good article, and before making a snap judgement and skipping it, you should note that the author means exceptional in the literal sense of being an exception or being different, rather than the colloquial sense of "really good."

I think the conclusion is interesting, so I'm going to paste it here in case you don't want to read the whole article.

> To put it simply then, the United States might be typified by an emphasis on achieving greatness (as traditionally defined) above almost everything else.18 The very bigness is the goal, driving forward towards larger profits, newer technology, more clicks and views, greater military power, more allies19, damn the consequences. That’s not the only thing at the heart of America, but it is one of the things.

> And on those terms it is hard not to conclude that the United States is a success, indeed, it is a country that has succeeded on those terms like no other country has ever succeeded. It has resulted in a country which is not merely exceptional, but exceptionally exceptional – that is, the United States is highly unusual in an unusually high number of ways. And, as I noted at the beginning, it is unusual in fairly obvious ways, evident enough that one has to accomplish some serious mental contortions not to notice what a strange, expansive and powerful country the United States is.

> The interesting question then is not if the United States is a great country but if it will be a good country, if all of that vastness in wealth, technology, influence and power will be put towards some worthy aim, both judged against our ideals20 and against the historical behavior of other great powers.21 It’s a question that only Americans can really answer, in our doing. I strive and hope that we answer well.

A nation founded on the principles of all men being created equal, along with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is indeed exceptional.

The results have been exceptional, too.

The US does indeed have plenty of problems, but those problems are usually traceable to neglecting those founding principles.

There are two ways one may interpret "American exceptionalism".

The first is that, being a rich country and democratically elected, our standards for fair and ethical behavior are higher than others'. We can afford to be generous and to be kind. Our declaration of universal human rights means we stick up for rights not just in our own territory, but for all our human sisters and brothers, extending due process to all, even those under the boot of foreign enemy governments, and aiding movements toward democracy, freedom, and recognition of inherent human rights and dignity.

The other is that, being so fucking rich and powerful, the rules don't apply to us, and we are justified in doing anything, no matter how harmful, anywhere it gets something for companies based here or people holding power here at the moment.

You can guess which way administrations who have promoted "American exceptionalism" jumped. I don't think I need to trot out examples, but it seems notable that Russia copied the verbiage that US published in support of its unsupportable invasion of Iraq when they invaded Ukraine. The US demanding International Criminal Court attention to Russian war crimes, while warning that any attempt at prosecuting well-known American war criminals would evoke military action, is particularly rich.

Arranging for Nobel Peace Prizes to be issued to war criminals is a neat touch.

Newsroom spoilers ahead!

> The diatribe that statement is treated by the visual language of the scene like a truth bomb, which is why it is so odd because Jeff Daniels’ character is not merely wrong, but (as I intend to show) laughably so

The scene in question is literally the first scene in the first episode of the show. Jeff Daniels' character is disillusioned, sold out to advertisers, lacking integrity, and alone. His character arc, over the entire season, is about him getting over the attitude shown in the clip.

Is this (from a 1992 satirical scifi book) still true?:

> There's only four things we do better than anyone else

  music
  movies
  microcode (software)
  high-speed pizza delivery

> Is the United States Exceptional?

Fun fact, it is a formal heresy to believe (a historical form of) this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americanism_(heresy)

I wonder how many of the conclusions would change if the EU is considered as a "country"?

Which is to say, it's a little bit of a definitional problem around what the word "country" actually means. The US, being a federalist collection of semi-autonomous states is sort of a hybrid country. There are some clear aspects (a single military, federal laws, a common currency, a commonly elected president). But then there are other aspects such as that the autonomy given to states is such that they invent local laws to the extent that for a huge range of areas you effectively have to deal with the US on a state-by-state basis.

IMHO, the article boils down to the fact that the US is the top superpower in the first fully globalised era, and that to me explains why it seems to be "exceptional".

It doesn't mean that it is more exceptional than earlier superpowers, like Rome, or Spain or Great Britain, if we account for the increased interconnectedness of the world. It also doesn't imply that all of these statistics may not one day apply (even more so) to a completely different country, such as maybe China.

But most of all, I don't think any of it implies that this is fully due to any intrinsic qualities of the US per se. While those certainly played a role, so did accidents of history. Had Europe not been so dumb to go to war twice in the 20th century, maybe we would think of Great Britain as "exceptional".

I also don't like how the author continues to use the adjective "great", despite acknowledging that it might be confused with "good". It's probably problematic that we speak of "Alexander the Great" too, but we do so due to historiographic tradition. There's IMHO no need to carry over this baggage to contemporary history. We can just call the US "important" or "a superpower", which is what it is, without using adjectives which so clearly imply moral judgement that the author immediately has to distance themselves from it (and IMHO in a rather half-hearted manner).

The author fails to consider the direction or rate of change the USA standing versus other nations. For most factors considered by the author the outlook is not good for the USA. Churchill did say the USA can be counted on to do the right thing after trying every other option; but nothing changes for the better if one's head is stuck in the sand.

Can you really divorce greatness from goodness?

I mean you can, but the author seems to go back and forth in how he places value on bigness. The sentiment that we have the most research institutions does not seem to be presented as valueless, and yet we also talk about the replicability crisis in science.

McDonald’s is the largest restaurant chain in the world, does that mean American cuisine is the greatest?

I think I agree with the overarching sentiment of the piece: that America is unquestionably exceptional given a neutral definition of the word exceptional, but may conclude we are less driven by greatness and more driven by dominance at all cost.

And this is overly critical, America is obviously not do bad things 100% of the time, in fact I would probably say America is equal parts "Do great things" "Do, even if there's no evidence it's good" and "Gosh, no one has ever been inhumane enough to charge money for THAT before"

The biggest issue we Europeans have with the american exceptionalism are the implications on foreign politics.

Victoria Nuland giving cookies at the Maidan square and appointing the post Yanukovich government? US can.

Paying italian Mafia to kill socialist workers in Italy? US can.

Having US drunk air force peoppe kill 30 civillians in Italy because they wanted to see how low they coukd fly and sending them back home without charges? US can.

Toppling governments, supporting and funding coups in half the world? US can.

Military actions around the world against UN, which include bs wars like Iraq? US can.

Spying on all the world,including the german chancellor, inserting back doors in routers, processors and civilian infrastructure? US can.

US exceptionalism is a dangerous thinking, and what is more worrying is how openly US leaders talk about it. I vividly remember a 4th july speech by Obama with a 10 minutes rant on how US is exceptional and can do things other can't.

The missing part of the story is that US may be exceptional, but also very vulnerable right now. People keep saying "guns/abortions are my right" (with equal extremes from opponents), why should I compromise at all? Well, framers of constitution compromised quite a bit on things they believed in and that caused problem later, but it's only through compromise that the nation came to exist and it's only through continued compromise that it can continue. Otherwise if living in an exceptional country is not making anyone happy, even morally it's better to have 50 less exceptional countries where people can come to some understanding rather than fighting all the time.

First off I think it's good that the author distinguishes between 'greatness' and subjective preference but I think the entire analysis is overly quantitative. It's a very long piece so I'll just take one example, the power and influence across the world:

>"One may of course argue that this situation is changing, albeit slowly, but at the moment the contrast is startling: the sphere of Russian influence does quite reach Kyiv (about 150 miles from the Russian border) and the sphere of Chinese influence does not quite reach Taipei (about the same distance, but over water), but American influence evidently reaches both despite the former being 4,300 miles and the latter 6,500 miles away from American shores."

While that is true one can't talk about influence without talking about depth and quality. Russia and China have more limited reach, but the countries where in particular Russia has had an influence, Russian culture deeply permeates. One only needs to visit Kazakhstan to see the influence from its very system of politics at the top and well into the private homes. US influence around the world is wide but often times quite shallow. It's mirrored in military disappointments despite overwhelming power. Vietnam, Afghanistan recently, and so on. Same in the sphere of culture. Despite the overwhelming dominance of the US and the UK as well and, the Chinese haven't all become American, as people are noticing now, despite what they thought in the 90s. Even South America diverges pretty widely from the US compared to say, Russia and its direct periphery.

And I think this is to an extent true within the US as well. The author rightfully points out the dominance of US education in sheer numbers, but the US also seems to have unique troubles to translate this into social tools. For all the high quality of top tier American education and money, it hasn't necessarily created exceptional outcomes broadly, even compared to much poorer nations.

There's a thinness to American exceptionalism that is often masked by the focus on numbers and size. While the country is exceptionally rich, the life expectancy is not exceptionally high, but lower than in Cuba. And I think articles like this which pretend to be objective do intentionally wave that aside.

So there are a number ways in which people define the phrase "American Exceptionalism". I didn't realize there was a debate about it until the phrase became part of the popular vernacular over the past, 5 years?

All this time I've been stumbling around thinking it was our ability to run twin deficits (trade and budget) for like 40 years, without any appreciable increase in Treasury yields.

All the facts here are fine but I'm left wondering, what are the stakes of "proving" how great America is? What good do all those aircraft carriers do me? Holding down the Chinese, I guess. But then, isn't holding the rest of the world down while the "American way of life" carries on the whole point of all this "greatness"?

At the end of WWII, America was the last rich country standing and proceeded to go round the world kicking out left-wing governments (unfriendly or not) and installing right-wing ones. The result was unprecedented profits and security for American corporations, and some of that wealth undoubtedly trickled down. But I'm left thinking about the cost. Is it any wonder Russia, Iran, South America, etc. would distrust us and want us out of their business?

The comparison at the end to the Mongols feels apt, since while their empire was undeniably great, it is very difficult to argue that they were a force for good in the lives of the people on whose backs that greatness was won.

I agree with the sentiment, but framing your argument by dunking on an Aaron Sorkin avatar is sort of low hanging fruit. I mean that'd be like "destroying Communism" by taking down North Korean state TV. Doesn't mean you're wrong, but nobody worth listening to ever saw these things as more than by-the-numbers propaganda.

It was but the progressives destroyed it in the mid 60s.

Yes. It's one of the few countries where citizens are protected from the government. This means anyone can make huge mistakes, and it's viewed as immoral to stop them. Myopically, it drives a politics of fear and control ('Won't someone please think of the children [who we don't consider people with rights, so as to individually choose not to go to school, for example]'). Long term, America has provided more progress to the world in terms of ideas, technology, knowledge, than any other community in human history. It also means that they are free to make ideological mistakes, no one is embraced to say their opinion even if it's wrong. This is a Tradition of Criticism, and it extends to the West in general, but is exemplified by America (Hollywood, US media, etc). All progress comes from criticism. America is 'exceptional', but with that power comes great responsibility--something recent generations don't seem to want. So, giving up rights, puts the responsibility in some other's hand--an appeal to authority. This has lead to a great culture of pessimism. I hope that will end soon and more American's will be optimistic and proud of their responsibility to infinite knowledge growth through a Tradition of Criticism.