YET ANOTHER DEFINITION OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

This one also draws a dire consequence...From John Gray's Enlightenment's Wake, p. 145:

The United States is, as ever, an exception in this regard, since in it both fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist affirmations of the Enlightenment project remain strong. The collapse of these fundamental-isms in the United States, however, were it to occur, would likely be accompanied by an outbreak of nihilism of a violence and intensity unknown in other Western countries; such an outcome is prefigured in much contemporary North American art, literature and popular entertainment.