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Article: American triumphalism: a postmortem.(Short Takes)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- January 30, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Although George W. Bush is a man without intellectual pretensions, his departure from office brings down the curtain on a distinctive era of American political thought. Ideas that recently qualified as smart have suddenly become passe. Propositions once alluringly au courant now appear not simply obsolete but absurd. The bubble of American triumphalism has burst.
That bubble first appeared as the cold war was ending. Triumphalist thinking derived from two widely held perceptions. The first was that the unraveling of the Soviet empire had brought history to a definitive turning point. According to this view, the annus mirabilis of 1989 truly was a year of wonders, ...