Are Americans exceptional? Maybe only exceptionally uninformed

Conservatives love to go on and on about American exceptionalism.

I think it's fair to say that used to be somewhat true, but so much of what used to be special about our country only has lip service paid to it now.

Land of opportunity? Not so much, with more and more of our national wealth winding up in the pockets of the top 1 percent.

Free press? Six companies own more than 90 percent of the media outlets in the country, which is why the only outlets that seem to attack corporate malfeasance are small, fringe publications.

Consider this:

Within the last 10 days, the Supreme Court made rulings on three important issues. The one that got the most publicity involved gay marriage. The court overturned Congress's efforts to make gay marriage illegal and also refused to reinstate California's anti-gay marriage referendum. This made folks on the left pretty happy and provided cover for the other two rulings.

By a 5-4 vote, the Court threw out an important part of the Voting Rights Law, making it far easier for conservatives to make it more difficult for minorities to cast votes for Democrats. Since voting is pretty much the key to everything, this one really hurts.

But there was a third ruling, one that didn't get nearly as much play. In another 5-4 vote, the court overturned a lower court's ruling in a lawsuit involving a pharmaceutical company that hid some potentially terrible side effects of one of its drugs. The woman who took the drug suffered a flesh-eating side effect that disfigured most of her body. The Court overturned a lower court's rating and said the woman had no right to sue the corporation because its drugs are exempt from lawsuits.

This is becoming more and more common as business tried to quash class action suits that have yielded big awards for those harmed by malfeasance. Massive corporations already have a huge advantage against folks trying to sue, but we have seen in numerous cases -- the exploding Ford Pinto, for one -- that companies sometimes know there's a problem but find it cheaper not to fix it.

I do think we're fortunate in one respect. We have the greediest, most short-sighted rich people in the world, and in the end they always go too far.

Just as progressivism under Teddy Roosevelt ended the Gilded Age, eventually there will be a charismatic progressive leader who will lead a movement that will end the current era. The problem is, we haven't had a real Democrat in the White House since 1969 when Lyndon Johnson left office.

It has been said that the reason Communism never took hold in the 1930s here is that everyone thought of themselves as middle class, not as working class. But our corporate media could be pushing back against this. During the 2012 campaign, when Republican Mitt Romney said he thought a yearly income of $250,000 or so was middle class, no one in the media really called him on it.

No one really wants a revolution, at least not as long as beer and television are still available at inexpensive prices.

American exceptionalism? Sadly, the way in which we seem to be the most exceptional these days is that we are so easily bewitched, bothered and bewildered to the point where we have no idea how much is being stolen from us.

I hope we learn the lesson before this modern system of feudalism gets locked into place.