Yet today a staggering 62 percent of Americans say the U.S. is no longer that shining city on a hill. Just 17 percent say it still is.

“I am in Texas, COVID-19 is on the rise, and there’s quite a lot of anxiety,” said poll respondent Alexandra Foulks, a 62-year-old native of France who now lives in Dallas with her husband.

Foulks scoffed at the notion of America as the proverbial “shining city on a hill.”

“We are banned from Europe right now,” she said. “How could we be shining?”

Overall, the poll found the American people in a historically pessimistic mood heading into a holiday weekend traditionally marked by family cookouts and fireworks displays — events that have been canceled across the country in the midst of a surging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 128,000 Americans and is currently infecting more than 50,000 each day.