The end of American exceptionalism

       Personally, I have never believed in American exceptionalism.   Every country in the world claims to be the best in the world at something.  Only in America is this seemingly harmless bit of patriotism raised to a fever pitch.  Certainly, the rise of America in the late 1800's after the Civil War is noteworthy as is our intervention in WW 2 leading to the defeat of the Axis powers.  In the aftermath of the war, with the only undamaged economy on the planet we became the world's first superpower.  We organized the world to our specifications and spawned a world wide empire and a Pax Americana supported by a military-industrial complex which allowed most of our industry to outsource its production to the rest of the world, reserving the production of guns and bombs to itself. 
      The Covid 19 pandemic has laid bare this devastation of our industrial capability.   Most production of PPE and medicine has been outsourced to China.  While our doctors, nurses and first responders lack crucial equipment, we can only collectively wring our hands and hope China will be generous in its allocation.    We simply don't have the capacity in the short term to manufacture these items.
     A globally interdependent system makes sense if it is led by a knowledgeable, benevolent entity.   Unfortunately, we are presently led by an ignorant, racist fool who happily shreds the global fabric his predecessors wove together and alienates the nations we need to help us overcome the present pandemic. The very fact we elected Donald J Trump to lead this nation forfeits any claim we may have had to American exceptionalism.  We may emerge from this crisis still claiming to be the richest, most powerful nation on earth, but we have abdicated any claim to moral leadership.