Hmm...

[stoutfellow]

I'm currently reading John Lewis Gaddis' We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. (oilhistorian informs me that Gaddis has a more recent book out on the same topic, which would be better to read, but We Now Know has the sterling advantage of actual presence in my house.) I'm still in the early going, but the following passage struck me as interesting. (The book is copyright 1997.)

[T]he possibility that even malignant authoritarianism might harm the United States remained hypothetical until 7 December 1941, when it suddenly became very real. Americans are only now, after more than half a century, getting over the shock: they became so accustomed to a Pearl Harbor mentality - to the idea that there really are deadly enemies out there - that they find it a strange new world, instead of an old familiar one, now that there are not.

The implications of that comment are not as obvious as they might seem...

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

It's hardly all or nothing. I remember lots of folks in the 1980s insisting that there wasn't an enemy out there and if the USA would stop being so mean the whole world would be peaceful. Granted, this is "lots" from the perspective of someone living in Cambridge, MA, but they weren't the only ones.