Nations are built on myths and lies — mixed, of course, with bits of the truth. The United States is no different, but our nation’s myths and lies are more extravagant than most: America, we are told to believe, is an “exceptional” or “indispensable” nation, the world’s greatest democracy, a shining city on a hill.

Those beliefs are delusional, sometimes to the extreme. While the American experiment in democracy is historically important, for most of its existence the United States was an overtly racist nation whose democracy was defined by exclusion: First and foremost the exclusion of Black people and women, but also the exclusion of Native Americans, many nonwhite immigrant groups and poor people in general.

Furthermore while claiming to be an exceptional nation and the world’s greatest democracy, the U.S. has consistently supported authoritarian and antidemocratic regimes around the world whenever that was deemed to serve the “national interest.”

Political scientists and other scholars have shown that the U.S. is currently organized […]