Three weeks later the real show, no mere test pattern this time, tore open the sky above Hiroshima. Time now (in this country with its particular genius for building on the ruins of others, generations of black slaves, the whole of an indigenous population, exploited immigrants, proud fallen Europe) for “the American century.” Time for Uncle Miltie, the Today show, Peyton Place and Perry Como, Ike alounge in his golf shirts and The Power of Positive Thinking. This country that would carry so many burdens (its own double vision of self perhaps the greatest of all) became responsible (again, in its own view) for the world. The shift to creature comfort and consumerism initiated with thirties urbanization and interrupted by the war now in postwar prosperity came to full bloom. Conformity—homogeneity—became America’s vade mecum. Popular literature, as ever, provided a shibboleth, pressure relief valves, safe enclosed spaces where society could say what it was about without seeming to do so.
