American Exceptionalism is the same as Not Invented Here Syndrome.
It’s a pretty straightforward thought. In the United States of America, we have several problems that other countries seem to have solved in the obvious way; they solve gun violence with gun control laws; they solve unaffordable healthcare with government funded or run healthcare; they solve homelessness by building housing.
In the US, we are just so exceptional, that of course those solution aren’t acceptable. So we accept the problems.
Similarly, tech companies will re-invent the wheel over and over and over again – or “not invented here” syndrome. Who cares if there’s an open source tool or a paid offering to solve basic problems that aren’t core to your company’s offering. Those solutions are for everyone else, you need something custom and in house. So you accept the problems with maintaining 100 different tools that are basically the same as the standard solutions.
In both cases we look around, see what should be perfectly adequate solutions used in many other places, and say “nah, we’re too special for that to work.”