America’s Comic Quest

If you were living in a golden age, would you know it? Did the Romans of Augustus’s time know that theirs was the most extensive, populous, and developed empire the world had ever known? Did the Elizabethans know that despite having just lost its last toehold in Calais, and being far outmatched in power by Spain and France, England was nonetheless laying the foundations of the most extensive, populous, and developed empire the world would know? Perhaps they did; perhaps, in fact, belief in their greatness was an important part of what made them great. On the other hand, if willing greatness were enough to make it so, then the swastika would be flying across Europe today instead of being the preeminent modern symbol of nihilistic destruction, revived only by those willfully determined to forget.