#american-exceptionalism

#american-exceptionalism

The United States emerged from World War II as the undisputed economic superpower, accounting for nearly a third of global GDP at its postwar peak. Prophetically, in 1941, Fortune founder Henry Luce dubbed this era "the American century." The U.S. spent the better part of the 20th century treating its position at the top of the economic order as something close to a birthright.

Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court's decision to grant him a kingly immunity).

In her immersive work of nonfiction, A Flower Traveled in My Blood, Haley Cohen Gilliland documents the decades-long struggle to recover children who, during Argentina's Dirty War, were snatched away from detained dissidents.