>there will always be a loud contingent of Americans spouting counter-arguments based in American Exceptionalism, claiming that everyone else somehow, magically, has the US to thank for its standard of living.

The entire second part of your comment shores up exactly this notion that everyone else has the US to thank for its standard of living and that the country is exceptional.

Underlying all the things you list: the post-WWII order, the Pax Americana, the military hegemony, the position of the dollar as the World's reserve currency and so forth all underscore exactly the fact that the US is or at least has been exceptional and that the rest of the world has been heavily benefited by it.

That some of these people then took this and spun it into idiocy about cutting off "freeloaders" without being aware that this means having to take a hit to the country's exceptional position doesn't change the truth of the U.S being exceptional and many countries having many indirect benefits to thank it for