Amnesia and Reinvention in America

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, Tuesday, August 3, 2010; A15:

"Historical amnesia is at once the most endearing and the most frustrating of American qualities. On the one hand, it means that -- F. Scott Fitzgerald notwithstanding -- there really are second acts in American lives. People can move somewhere else, reinvent themselves, start again. On the other hand, our inability to remember what our policy was last week, never mind last decade, drives outsiders crazy."

See also