American exceptionalism is best exemplified by universal health care reform. Any rational comparative analysis of health care systems around the world would lead one to conclude that the US system is easily the least effective and the most expensive of any OECD country.  The obvious solution would be to look at a model that works better- say, in France- and come up with ways to reform the American system so that it conforms to a higher international standard.

Yet opponents to universal health care in the US, represented neatly in the Republican Party, believe that because the US system is different it must therefore be better. As a result they devote their energy to devising mendacious explanations for why our broken system is in fact superior.

In foreign affairs right-wing Americans find no trouble distinguishing between acts of terror and violence by our political enemies between those of ourselves and allies such as Israel. If we do it, then it isn’t bad, because we did it, right?

China for its part is at least well aware that it is a developing country, yet Sinic exceptionalism does exist. One notion shared between both countries is its persistent refusal to accept that they are imperial in nature.

Rather than accept that China annexed and colonized Tibet for strategic reasons, most Chinese I know find it easier to believe that Tibet has ‘always been a part of China’. The same logic applies to Xinjiang. Beijing’s historical designs for Central Asia are no different than that of the Russians, British, and other participants in the Great Game. Yet for some reason China pretends that that part of the world is intrinsically Chinese regardless of what the indigineous inhabitants say.

Americans are fond of the same fiction. I remember the usually-astute Bill Maher claiming on a talk show that America has never engaged in empire- building. Oh, really? Historians familiar with the late 19th/early 20th century administrations of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt would likely beg to differ. In contemporary America, there are currently US soldiers stationed on bases throughout the world. As much as we’d like to believe that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were strictly for liberalization purposes, imperial strategy dictates otherwise.  And from the Monroe Doctrine to Bush-era US skullduggery in Venezuela and Haiti the US has long claimed a certain dominion over the distribution of power in the Americas.

I’m not trying to be cynical for its own purpose but rather point out that nations the size of the US and China- and Russia- are imperial by nature.

Exceptionalism also shines through in politics. In China, the Communist Party is fond of saying that while democracy may be well and good for other countries it doesn’t suit China. Chinese and Western apologists for the CCP parrot this line oblivious of how self-serving it is.

Why doesn’t exceptionalism exist elsewhere? In Europe, there are so many countries crowded in a small area that insulation is simply untenable. Yet in China and the US our shared sense of exceptionalism can persist given our physical immensity.

I understand that geo-politics are much more complex than this, and that there are a great number of variables at play. But would elements in both China and America realize that both are merely members of the great big nation-state family rather than exceptional elements some progress could be made.