American exceptionalism has never been for everyone

American exceptionalism?

You're kidding, right?

For all the talk about Cities on Hills and Last Best Hopes of Mankind, America has always had a significant gap between reality and ideals.

Let's start at the beginning, whether it was Columbus who "discovered" America or the Vikings hundreds of years earlier.

It's impossible to know the exact number, but there's no question there were millions of Native Americans inhabiting the continent the first time white men arrived.

So of course the Europeans called them heathens and set out to convert them to Christianity. Then they started taking their land, pushing them west and eventually killing them off.

Exceptional, huh?