I get that on any historical timeline, the United States of America is merely a blip.  That said, the meteoric events that followed the November, 1620 arrival of pilgrims to Cape Cod, (I don’t think it was called that then), are remarkable in scope and velocity.  Depending on which carefully chronicled construct of events, (they differ widely state-to-state), you may use as gospel for the 401 years that brought us to our present, our trek from fledgling immigrant colonization to imperial world dominance is an astonishing blur.  Anthropologically, the ethnic soup, unique to this place on Earth, that has simmered throughout our history was/is, without question, the catalytic happenstance that spawned the free-thinking and innovative creativity responsible for our ascendence.  Unfortunately, the American Renaissance, rather than giving rise to art and culture, birthed the Industrial and Cyber Revolutions and the products and processes that have become the harbingers of our self-destruction.  And the soup, the never intended “all men created equal” bullshit that gave us our power, well, even after Civil War and marches and rallies and martyrdom, we have been inherently unable to shed the inbred distrust for one another that is as intense today, (and with a lot more fire power), as ever.  We modern-day Americans have been coddled, spoiled and irrationally led to believe that we are, somehow, exceptional.  Yet, we don’t do the work to educate ourselves, to keep ourselves healthy, to pay heed to the grave responsibilities that our nihilistic power requires or to strive for the only natural path for intelligent beings to follow…world peace.  Kum-ba-ya!