>Is the notion of American exceptionalism as the
>indispensable, singularly benevolent nation that is immune
>from domestic criticism in foreign affairs.

I've been thinking lately about how there's a fairly strong and recurring theme of American Exceptionalism from the left-wing when it comes to *domestic* affairs. Specifically, Bernie often responds to financing questions re: the enormous pricetags of his proposals not with the requested math, but a lot of "In the richest country in the world!..." and "Why does every other advanced nation in the world!...." proclamations instead of simply mapping sufficient revenue sources to his proposed spending... As if America is somehow immune to the economic impacts of poor fiscal discipline (eg. unprecedented deficit spending, debt bigger than the GDP, inflation, hyperinflation, etc.), or that Americans are somehow entitled to certain outcomes despite real structural obstacles.

There's more than enough examples throughout economic history of what happens when governments enact some of the very same fiscal policy Bernie's suggesting, but somehow the "will of the people" overrides that (or any) evidence. It's about as potent an American Exeptionalism as that espoused by neo-cons, just focused internally instead of externally.

Just something I've been mulling over recently lol; you reminded me.

>
>Pete is yet another apologetic mouthpiece for failed U.S.
>policy abroad - when what we need is somebody who has the
>understanding of exactly where we've created geopolitical
>chaos - and how to rehabilitate our standing in the world via
>productive/cooperative policy and diplomacy.
>

And yet Pete's been candid about favoring a foreign policy that is shaped heavily by soft power/diplomacy, peace, and diverting investment from artillery to human capabilities and critical infrastructure, to strengthen US posture against (sometimes hybridized) threats in 21st century spheres like climate, cyber, AI, and bio. I feel like he's spoken on this in multiple speeches. He even made a point to explicity distinguish his position from Bloom during the debate, on the question of deploying/maintaining ground troops abroad during discussion about the middle east.

Tbf I'm not certain where he'd fall on the dove hawk spectrum, in comparison to other politicians. But what gets me is how fixated you guys are on embellishing this soulless, racist, gordon gekko meets neo-con caricature yall need him to embody (to serve as your foil to Bernie lol)... to the point that you'll even attribute foreign policy positions to him that he's literally never endorsed or in some cases has even emphatically denounced. Lol. Just because Pete's not as loud and dogmatic as Sander's doesn't mean he's not also anti-interventionist.