America and "American exceptionalism" as a mindset/ideology are very different things, though. The form of "American exceptionalism" that seems to be most comm

America and "American exceptionalism" as a mindset/ideology are very different things, though. The form of "American exceptionalism" that seems to be most common today is one of "we are uniquely important and many rules don't apply to us in the same way they would others, because of [various usually underlying differences like "freedom"/"democracy"/religious dominion/destiny]." The difference between "we're going to reach the moon because we're special" and "let's spin up this massive program to do it in response to discovering that another nation might be dangerously ahead of us."