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The main reason US can and could ever delude itself into being great is for having a ridiculous people-to-land/resources ratio. There is nothing inherently great about how the US does things, it just seems that way because you can do whatever you want if you have essentially infinite resources compared to everyone else.
Also, they are geographically isolated which kept them out of most destructive wars.
Yeah the US only became....
... The US.
Because of the World Wars.
Europe, the then-seat of every worldwide empire, was killing itself and dragging all of Asia and Africa down with them.
The Americas in general were "safe". Isolated from this chaos. Every country in the New World got a boost from the wars.
.... But the US had a nation that was a. Fully Independent b. Relatively Stable and c. Rich in resources -- So they basically got a decade-and-change of time to develop themselves while everyone who had previosly been rich and powerful was getting fucked, and by the time the dust settled, they were the top dogs just because they were lucky.
Yeah, in addition to having a super-endowment of natural resources, remember that we also stole the labor of about 20 generations of Africans to help turn that into wealth.
Yeah, and the right side of our government is now trying to cover up and bury that entire segment of our history. It's absolutely insane what they are doing.
True, but that isn't really very unique to the US
Of course! The part that Americans don't want to hear is that we are wealthy because of that theft of labor. It's not just an immoral peccadillo of our ancestors.
We've been converting that over to latinos, still shit pay but less chaining people to things.
The people who worship it are also the people who screwed it all up. It's like a failed experiment that needs to be reset. The freedom that everyone speaks of is mostly just one person's way of taking freedom from another.
Honestly, speaking as an American, there's kind of endless examples of us doing most things worse. Healthcare, democracy, workers rights, our "justice" system, incarceration... The list goes on and on.