When an American presidential candidate can call people "animals" based specifically on their ethnicity, and then double down on it and receive cheers from an adoring crowd, it's clear that a significant portion of the country has lost its humanity.
If this period has brought out who we really are -- and I think that's very possible, if not probable -- then let's drop the talk about us being "exceptional" once and for all. An exceptional society does not lose itself to raw hate, calling people something subhuman, like that.
But this hasn't happened in a vaccum. The two ends of our political spectrum continue to feed off each other, and neither end is innocent.