As an immigrant in US, I feel that this whole American exceptionalism thing has been sort of internalized and reflected by much of the American liberal left into some kind of "we're exceptionally bad" deal. I often hear claims that US is horrible because such-and-such is common practice here unlike "all other civilized countries" or some such, while the speaker is oblivious to the fact that many American laws regarding something are actually very liberal by that standard (voter identification is probably the single most common example, but it also comes up sometimes wrt abortion term limits in some states).

To be clear, being better at something than somebody else who is even worse than you is not a valid excuse for being bad either way. I just hate that this kind of rhetoric 1) discredits the points being made, and 2) spreads misinformation.