Unravelling
This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it…
— John Mitchell (1969) Spoken to New York Times reporter and mentioned in his obit (1988)
Manliness and mastery required regeneration through violence, and by the 1890s, { Theodore} Roosevelt was spoiling for a fight: “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one,” he wrote. Any opponent would do, but “the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages”.
— Jackson Lears, How the US Began Its Empire, NYRB 2018