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You're so right with all that you say. Except your admirable self deprecating US exceptionalism. US peeps shouldn't beat themselves up about the crimes or horrible acts their countrymen are/have done. Where and when any other country is in the same position individuals of those places act in the same ways. Cue every powerful and not so powerful civilisation in history. The rest of us it seems have to clean up their messes as best we can. It seems its a natural animal response that we as a species haven't been able to adequately address socially or civilisationally.
I don't really know enough about the subject and how it relates. But these awful group dynamics aren't confined to humans alone, i feel like this article, Chimpanzees in Uganda's Kibale National Park wage lethal 'civil war', relates in an important way to the point you make in your comment.
I can't really speak to other countries but from my understanding the entire world is varying degrees of fascism at this point.
The US is exceptional, just not in the way most people think. No nation comes close to the suffering the US has caused and will cause in the future.
You can see parallels to modern US imperialism like with Britain costing countless lives in places like India. Also, a little further in the past with the Spanish treatment of Native Americans which the US then repeated.
We of course have the privilege of looking at this through a modern lense. What really strikes me is the level of enlightenment in Europe in regards to native rights and the practice of slavery before the US was formed.
It is clear that people knew better at this point and this shows the malfeasance that defines America. The people that went on to found America knew better than to do what they did. This animus against humans is what makes people in the US arguably unique. A kind of modern day barbarian if you will bringing back what was supposed to be lost.
The heart of the US is a republic founded on deception, terrorism, greed, and murder. Even our first President was a murderous land baron well on his way to becoming the world's first billionaire adjusted for inflation.
I think your point centers around if anyone else would have done it the way these depraved manipulators did. I really don't think so. The ruling class of the US are really in a league of their own.
Exceptionally depraved, cruel, and greedy amongst their peers around the world with near limitless resources at their finger tips. Imagine any single European country having access to the empty landmass that is the United States.
This is the real reason behind the myth of American Exceptionalism. It is like having near limitless wealth compared to everyone else who has a fixed income. The US is the equivalent of a trust fund baby. A psychotic mass murdering nepo baby that spread its shit all over the world.
Remember all that land, well you see it wasn't really empty. Que the first genocide which the US still carries out to this day with boarding schools. There was of course plenty of room for the Native Americans and the whites to coexist. Hell, most of the US is still pretty damned empty to this day.
It was never even about the land. It was about a desire for systematic extermination. This ties in with your point about chimpanzees and also back to your original point that anyone else would have done the same thing.
Have you ever heard of the bonobos? They are another Chimpanzee that doesn't fight and kill each other. If a male gets too aggressive the females hold him down and have sex with him until he chills.