American exceptionalism vs American reality

Salon has a good essay noting how "American exceptionalism" was, from the start, about "branding America" as much as anything.

It also notes that branding was designed to cover up the canker sore of slavery.

Of course, since then, we've had:
"Ghettoization" of American Indians and post-slavery blacks;
Plenty of imperialism;
Moral hypocrisy from time to time;
And a military-industrial complex putting anything old Europe ever had to shame.

But, wingnuts sweep this all under the rug, often with God and a city on a hill metaphors, as the essay notes about Gingrich. Liberal exceptionalists usually invoke the God of liberal Protestantism, suitably filtered to do the same. However, the essay, by focusing on Gingrich, albeit discussing Obama (but only in light of Gingrich) fails to adequately address the liberal wing of American exceptionalism.

And, as the war in Libya has shown, as long as it gets the figleaf of a UN OK, liberals today have no problem wiht interventionalilst American exceptionalism, either.

It's still a good read, but not quite great.