I grew up believing in three grand illusions all Americans are subjected to in the course of traversing childhood: Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, and the American Dream. I was a typical true believer, and probably for that reason, I first came to doubt, then question, and finally see them all from a different perspective than those who introduced, spread and propagated these concepts to me intended.

Manifest Destiny was featured in every history text I read in elementary school, junior high school, high school, and college. John Louis O’Sullivan a newspaper columnist and editor coined the term ‘Manifest Destiny,’ using it in an 1845 newspaper column to promote the annexation of Texas and Oregon Country to the United States. It came to be identified with the widely held belief that the United States was ‘destined’ to expand throughout the whole North American continent. Manifest Destiny held within it three themes: 1, The American people and their institutions possessed ‘special’ virtues, 2; It was America’s special mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America; and 3, America had an irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.

Manifest Destiny really amounted to an excuse fabricated by those like O’Sullivan who coveted land controlled by Mexico in the Southwest and Great Britain in the Northwest as an excuse for seizing it. Manifest Destiny exposed a uniquely American pattern of behavior of how we construct elaborate lies for ourselves wrapped in a message tinged with evangelical religious inevitability. We created a war with Mexico predicated on a lie after they refused to sell us what we wanted so we could justify (at least in our own minds) taking it anyway. Then, feeling a bit guilty (but not much) and to put a thin veneer of legitimacy on our actions, paid them pennies on the dollar for the real estate we stole in war. But to properly understand Manifest Destiny and its three principal themes we have to look back farther and view it in relation to our widely held belief in ‘American Exceptionalism.’

Virtually every group, every tribe, every nation sees itself as being exceptional in relation to ‘others.’ The British, until the collapse of the British Empire, believed they were. The French, famous for their perceived arrogance in regard to others. The Germans believed they were part of a master race and plunged the world into two world wars. The Russians claimed they are special in being the third Rome. The Chinese saw the rest of the world as inhabited by unworthy barbarians, the Japanese believed they were special and unique, and the list goes on, and on. Virtually every national group sees itself as ‘exceptional’ in relation to all others. It’s part of their identity. It is a lingering expression of primitive tribalism to protect the uniqueness of particular groups of human beings who share certain historical and cultural traits. It separates us into easily identifiable groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

We Americans hardly have a lock on this overworn thread-bare idea. To understand our own unique twist to the concept we have to go back to the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony and John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” in which he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us.” Winthrop was drawing upon Matthew 5:14 that states, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” What makes the American claim of exceptionalism unique is our combining and wrapping it in an evangelical protestant Christian blanket and using it to proselytize the planet. We make it seem as if only we are specially chosen by God to lead the world on a glorious path to redemption and salvation. It’s almost sacrilegious for anyone to claim otherwise.

It all sounds great until you start delving deeper and dig under the rocks and look in the closets, behind mirrors, and under the sheets. What we then see looks less exceptional and exposes the all too familiar human behavior of which we’ve become accustomed.

Hardly had Winthrop’s words proclaiming the new city on the hill left his lips before our Puritan forefathers began finding reasons or excuses to engage in systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing the land of its indigenous natives. Our forefathers invented a whole list of reasons for the elimination of Native Americans, and we did it all in God’s name. But we never acknowledged then, and we still don’t today, that the primary reason for eliminating these natives was because they were in the way of us fulfilling our own narrow, selfish, and greedy ambitions.

While we Americans never put pen to paper to enunciate a clearly defined and official written policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing against native peoples we can point to, it is easy to infer by virtue of our actions, writings, and recorded words that our ancestors clearly desired the elimination of native peoples. The historical record indicates they did all they could. by whatever means available, to make that happen over a period of more than 400 years stretching into the present. And, rather than be honest with anyone or anything, we wrapped our actions in whatever legalese we could invent in conjunction with evangelical Christianity. We said it was our destiny; it was God’s will.

We often gain the best insights into ourselves by paying attention to what others say and observe about us. Such a revelation was provided in 2013 in an interview between a Russian reporter and prominent Russian liberal politician Vladimir Lukin. Lukin was the former Russian Ambassador to the U.S., founder of the Russian Liberal Party, and a political opponent of Vladimir Putin. When the reporter asked Lukin to respond to a quote from Henry Kissinger’s 1994 book, Diplomacy, in which Kissinger wrote that “integrating Russia into the international system is a key task” for the United States. The reporter noted that as Kissinger was saying and writing this, the Americans were actually pushing Russia away with their policy. “Why?” he asked. Lukin’s answer was both revealing and disturbing. “It is in the genes. America has a simple ideology — that there is only one truth in the world, that truth is held by God, and God created the United States to be an embodiment of that truth. So, the Americans strive to bring this truth to the rest of the world and to make it happy. Only after that will everything be well. This ideology has a strong influence on their policy. A wise traditionalist and a geopolitical expert, Kissinger had good reason to call such politicians ‘Trotskyites’ for advocating a world revolution, albeit in their own way, but always in the front and in shining armor. This is a tempting ideology and has been proclaimed by different countries at different times, not only the United States.”

Lukin’s analysis should cause us to pause and engage in a bit of serious reflection. It requires us to disengage ourselves from the constant flow of politician’s pontifications, media hyperbole, propaganda, and streams of words and look deep and raise questions. We need to move beyond blind cart blanche acceptance of whatever politicians and media feed us.

I am not here trying simply to do harm and trash my country as many will be tempted to claim. I don’t “hate America” as I’m sure some will assert. My family has deep roots. We have been on this continent from the beginning, and I have Native American ancestors who were here for 14,000 years before that. My purpose is constructive and simple.

We can all take pride in our long list of accomplishments. We have been an inspiration and beacon of hope for many. We are creative and industrious people. We have been a force for good and a leader in many ways promoting the best in human behavior. But we cannot close our eyes to the darker aspects of our nature and pretend they don’t exist. We have to look at the entire picture.

Is it not time to give up this over-worn delusion that we Americans are exceptional in ways no other people on the planet can match, and accept our being no different from any of the rest of humanity on this small insignificant rock we share? Is not this illusion becoming a dangerous delusion that distorts our view and twists our understanding of who and what we are and what it means to be part of one group of the many who make up our world? Is it not time to move beyond this leftover expression of primitive tribalism?

Are we exceptional for having practiced virtual genocide against the native indigenous peoples who lived here before our European ancestors arrived? Has our treatment of native peoples who remain and are part of our culture changed, especially now that we presumably know better? Are we exceptional because we still discriminate, lie, cheat, steal, and take every advantage of Native Americans whenever it suits our purposes and fulfills our selfish greed?

Are we exceptional for having kidnapped, raped, murdered, and enslaved in perpetuity over four million fellow human beings for our own greedy purposes simply because their skin was a different color? And are we proud for trying to wrap our inhumanity, lust, and greed in that same evangelical wrapper, claiming from countless pulpits across this land that what we were doing was God’s will or done with God’s sanction?

Is it safe to say we are exceptional for the ways we use words and ideas to fit our purposes? The way we twisted our own laws, ideals and religious beliefs in pursuit of crass material gain, not just during the period of legal slavery but now as well? Are we exceptional in our exercising mental gymnastics in claiming a divine excuse for our vile and cruel behavior? Do we see clearly how this disease has infected every aspect of our culture and lives? Is this what makes us exceptional?

Let us look at how exceptional we are in comparison with other countries in some key areas. Let’s look at the group of 20 advanced democracies that comprise the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).[1] This group includes the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the U.S.

We Americans are fond and accustomed to seeing ourselves as the best, so we might expect to do well compared with these countries. This is how we, the United States of America, rank.

• We have the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;

• The U.S. has the greatest inequality of incomes, the worst among

industrialized nations;

• We rank the lowest in social mobility;

• The U.S. posted the lowest score on the UN’s index of “material well-being of

children”;

• The worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index[2];

· The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but the healthcare system’s efficiency is ranked 46th in the world according to Bloomberg. The U.S. has the highest expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, but

· The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate, 5.9 out of every thousand Americans will not see their fifth birthday;

· The U.S. is one of four countries in the entire world that have not mandated paid maternity leave for mothers of newborns. We share this distinction with Lesotho, Swaziland, and New Guinea;

· The highest prevalence of mental health problems;

· The highest obesity rate;

· The highest percentage of people going without health care due to cost;

· The highest consumption of antidepressants per capita;

· The shortest life expectancy at birth;

· The United States has the highest cost of prescription drugs;

· The next-to-lowest score for student performance in math and middling performance in science in reading;

· The highest homicide rate to which we might add that the U.S. with 5% of the world’s population commits 31% of world mass murders;

· The largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita; The United States incarcerates more people than any other country;

· The highest carbon dioxide emissions and the highest water consumption per capita;

• The lowest spending on international development and humanitarian

assistance as a percentage of national income (except for Japan and Italy);

• The highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; and

• The U.S. is the largest international arms supplier.

Are these the things that make us exceptional? Would we not be better served if we began trying to fix and improve these aspects of our lives rather than spending all our time tweeting about how smart, good looking, strong, and great we are while endlessly standing and staring at our dwindling image in a mirror. Until we do that the American Dream is dead and its use a cynical means of motivating us to fulfill others dreams and desires.

[1] America: The Best Country in the World at Being Last — How Can W Change That? By James Gustave Speth/Orion Magazine, March 1, 2012. AlternetNews & Politics

[2] Other facts listed here are from “10 Reasons Why America is not Exceptional” by Mike Weishar, Culture, October 31, 2013.