Cultural predispositions and national characters are real, and societies do come to crossroads and make important choices. But while our Fantasyland tendencies were present from the beginning, the current situation was not inevitable, because history and evolution never are. Nor now is any particular future. We could regain our national balance and composure. These last decades may turn out to have been a phase, one strange act of our ongoing epic, an unfortunate episode in the American experiment that we will finally move past and chalk up to experience.
