"My Little Attempt to Try to Move Things in a More Positive Direction"

"If America has some legitimate claim to being exceptional—and I believe it does, but generally not in the ways that most Americans believe—then the current situation desperately cries out for all of us to calm down and start thinking about how we might be able to improve things by harnessing that exceptionalism, rather than merely wallowing in how exceptionally upsetting things have now become."

Ideas Road Show presents the preface of Howard Burton's Exceptionally Upsetting: How Americans are increasingly confusing knowledge with opinion & what can be done about it.