We’re talking about the length of history, there’s no intersection.

Clearly there is, from the industrial revolution forward.

France tried to completely recreate itself several times during this period. By way of example, we no longer call it the Frankish lands nor the monarchy. Aggregate governance structures have changed tens of times, whereas the US really hasn't changed dramatically in the post Native American and post Revolution periods.

I think give the US is a collection of independent states the massive growth of states in the 1800’s might count as another transformative period for the political institution, which has been relatively stable since the 1900’s with 5 state governments being established (most front loaded the ~first decade).

The French national identity goes back to Charlemagne, not merely de Gaulle.

And the American national identity goes back primarily to the Anglo-Saxons.

We fought multiple wars to sever those ties. Then allowed generations of non-Anglo immigration, not to mention slavery.

There are far more Americans who claim German descent than English. Irish, too. And Blacks.

That’s one of the reasons I used the word “primarily”, which is a word that I would defend. Even if many Americans don’t personally have much English descent, the shared cultural narrative of the country starts there. The central complaint of the American Revolution was that the British were infringing on our traditional “rights of Englishmen”, which evolved over centuries. We’ve retained the English language and the English common law. Many of our cultural and regional variations to this day, even down to our regional dialects, can be traced to those that existed in different parts of England.

Also, please find a reliable citation that says that more Americans have African than English heritage. That strikes me as a very surprising claim.

The US Census, self-identified ancestry.

1 German 46,403,053

2 Black/African-American (non-Hispanic) 38,785,726

3 Mexican (of any race) 34,640,287

4 Irish 33,526,444

5 English 24,787,018

One consequence of American, especially historical, racism (including things like the one-drop rule) is that the experience, and over time the identity, of people (and thus their descendants) who were Black and something else tend to be heavily weighted on the Black side.

Napoleon, in case you studied the subject. The history of Franks and France is certainly not one of direct descendence, nor was there such a thing as a nation or national identity at the time of Charlemagne. Did you know the only surviving Franconian language is Dutch?

There are ancient indigenous civilizations that continue to this day in America, or do we deny their history is part of the history of America? The history of the political Germany is very short if we are talking about established political institutions.

Yes, we worked very deliberately to eradicate those indigenous civilizations, and finally isolate what remained of them from white America.

I’m not sure why people keep bringing up political institutions when the conversation is clearly about cultural institutions.

As the numerous other commentators have identified, people are bringing up politicl institutions because your key point proposing differentiation is defined by political institutions, such as the American revolution, but fails to account for continuity and evolution of cultural institutions that persist beyond those changes. Like continuity of the tossed salad blend of Americans.

But, my original comment to you is that noting continuity and shared evolution of cultural institutions between America and Europe during the industrial revolution is not American Exceptionalism, and isn't really something to have umbrage regarding when others note it.

Well the revolution was ostensibly the founding of America so that seemed the place to start the discussion of American identity. But it’s a fair point that the actual beginnings were was earlier, somewhere between 1607 and 1776.