this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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It must be really terrible to be a true believer in American exceptionalism. The average American surely doesn't believe that anymore. And if you're believer (from a regular person to columnist) - how can you possibly explain to the unwashed American masses the glory that is their country? All the go-tos are clearly bullshit: the American dream, democracy, the constitution, the American legal system, no one is above the law, free speech, free assembly, etc. And Epstein, the measles, the crippling of the American government, the rise of anti-science, etc are in the news daily.
What's scary on top of that - is the American military is still a thing of power. I guess that'll be the new "proof" of American exceptionalism: murder, killing, violence, and war.
That's all American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny ever was. America can do whatever it wants because of overwhelming military force. That's always been the only reason they can do the crazy things they've been doing since the fucking Thirteen Colonies.
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No, the industrial and agricultural might of the US gave it global economic dominance that allowed it to lead the establishment of a large number of international systems - Bretton-Woods, the UN, IMF + World Bank, NATO, on and on - that enabled it to largely carry out its goals without direct application of military force. Dollar hegemony is just as (if not more) important than the 800 military bases and aircraft carrier fleets. Of course, these things dialectically reinforce each other.
"Fair" competition was in the US's interest because it was so astoundingly economically productive and profitable that it could always guarantee victory, like a fully armed knight on horseback against a peasant with a homemade spear on a level battlefield. But the rise of China has broken that balance, and now the US is scrapping all these systems that had been so important to its dominance and is retreating back to an older and more active form of military power due to lack of other options.
That is a good point. But the military force was needed to engage in their early imperialism and gain the economic advantage, and it reinforces their apparent rights to all of the resources they take from their colonies that supposedly aren't such, and they're falling back on it because it's always been the true core of their global dominance.
You forgot one of the funniest, but I guess it could fall under ''democracy''. The ''checks and balances'' bullshit, it always cracks me up when a lib believes it.
My favorite is the Emoluments Clause which Trump violated tens of millions of times in his first term and in his second term he ramped things up so he's violated it few billion times with each dollar he's grifted.
That's what it's always meant.