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The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 107; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jaaa344

1945-2314

Ivan Ibargüan,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

After centuries of the western frontier being the grand symbol of the United States—the untrammeled, untamed West ready to be razed and populated with new Americans—the nation, argues Greg Grandin, has outgrown its own legend. This is represented by the rise of Donald J. Trump and his rhetorical insistence on building a border wall. As Grandin says, “whether that wall gets built or not, it is America's new symbol” (p. 275). In Grandin's telling, this retrenchment from the world represents a dramatic rupture in American history. Certainly, the United States has experienced moments of isolationism, but these have been lulls in a history of the nation swarming the earth, ignoring boundaries, breaking sovereignties, projecting power, and doing so proudly to fulfill America's promise as an exceptionally enterprising, democratic, and forward-looking nation. The book connects America's history of aggrandizement to its domestic politics. Grandin argues that America's chest-beating push to venture...