Is It Really So Difficult To Tell

America Is Indeed A Revelation, Though Not Quite The One That Was Planned. Given A Clean Slate, Man, It Was Hoped, Would Write The Future. Instead, He Has Written His Past.

I Once Started A Detective Story To Make Money—but I Couldn't Get The Murder To Take Place! At The End Of Three Chapters I Was Still Describing The Characters And The Milieu, So I Thought, This Is Not Going To Work. No Corpse!

Europeans Used To Say Americans Were Puritanical. Then They Discovered That We Were Not Puritans. So Now They Say That We Are Obsessed With Sex.

To Care For The Quarrels Of The Past, To Identify Oneself Passionately With A Cause That Became, Politically Speaking, A Losing Cause With The Birth Of The Modern World, Is To Experience A Kind Of Straining Against Reality, A Rebellious Nonconformity That, Again, Is Rare In America, Where Children Are Instructed In The Virtues Of The System They Live Under, As Though History Had Achieved A Happy Ending In American Civics.

The Dictator Is Also The Scapegoat; In Assuming Absolute Authority, He Assumes Absolute Guilt; And The Oppressed Masses, Groaning Under The Yoke, Know Themselves To Be Innocent As Lambs, While They Pray Hypocritically For Deliverance.