Introduction: the United States of fantasy -- Staging the new world order: Hiroshima, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Persian Gulf War -- America of the two covenants: the Waco siege and the Oklahoma City bombing -- A national rite of passage: the return of Alexis de Tocqueville -- Patriot acts: the Southernification of America -- From virgin land to Ground Zero: mythological foundations of the homeland security state -- Antigone's kin: from Abu Ghraib to Barack Obama.
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For a half century following the end of World War II, the seemingly permanent cold war provided the United States with an organizing logic that governed nearly every aspect of American society and culture, giving rise to an unwavering belief in the nation's exceptionalism in global affairs and world history. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this cold war paradigm was replaced by a series of new ideological narratives that ultimately resulted in the establishment of another potentially endless war: the global war on terror. In The New American Exceptionalism, pioneering scholar Donald E.