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American Expectations
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"My title, Grand Expectations, tries to capture the main theme of this book, that the majority of the American people during the twenty-five or so years following the end of World War II developed ever-greater expectations about the capacity of the United States to create a better world abroad and a happier society at home. This optimism was not altogether new: most Americans living in a land of opportunity, have always had great hopes for the future. But high expectations, rooted in vibrant economic growth, ascended as never before in the 1950s and peaked in the 1960s, an extraordinary turbulent decade during which faith in the wealth of the United States - and in the capacity of the federal government to promote progress - aroused unprecedented rights-consciousness on the home front. America's political leaders, meanwhile, managed to stimulate enormous expectations about the nation's ability to direct world affairs. More than ever before - or since - Americans came to believe that they could shape the international scene in their own image as well as fashion a more classless, equal opportunity society."
-- James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974
Ah, and that's just the first paragraph of the preface. It is particularly striking that this was written before 9/11, as we see a renewal of the tension between our grand expectations and the grim reality, with our wildly optimistic attempt to democratically transform the Muslim Middle East bringing back the humility of the Vietnam War. But maybe we just need more time. As the editor of this volume put it in his own introduction:
The three decades following the Second World War were prolific breeders of myth. The two great military victories on opposite sides of the globe, followed by unparalleled prosperity at home and world leadership abroad, bred a national euphoria, even hubris in some, capable of the boast that America could do anything: “The impossible takes a little longer.”
xXx
"My title, Grand Expectations, tries to capture the main theme of this book, that the majority of the American people during the twenty-five or so years following the end of World War II developed ever-greater expectations about the capacity of the United States to create a better world abroad and a happier society at home. This optimism was not altogether new: most Americans living in a land of opportunity, have always had great hopes for the future. But high expectations, rooted in vibrant economic growth, ascended as never before in the 1950s and peaked in the 1960s, an extraordinary turbulent decade during which faith in the wealth of the United States - and in the capacity of the federal government to promote progress - aroused unprecedented rights-consciousness on the home front. America's political leaders, meanwhile, managed to stimulate enormous expectations about the nation's ability to direct world affairs. More than ever before - or since - Americans came to believe that they could shape the international scene in their own image as well as fashion a more classless, equal opportunity society."
-- James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974
Ah, and that's just the first paragraph of the preface. It is particularly striking that this was written before 9/11, as we see a renewal of the tension between our grand expectations and the grim reality, with our wildly optimistic attempt to democratically transform the Muslim Middle East bringing back the humility of the Vietnam War. But maybe we just need more time. As the editor of this volume put it in his own introduction:
The three decades following the Second World War were prolific breeders of myth. The two great military victories on opposite sides of the globe, followed by unparalleled prosperity at home and world leadership abroad, bred a national euphoria, even hubris in some, capable of the boast that America could do anything: “The impossible takes a little longer.”