An American Looks Home from India Adam Hochschild There is evidence of a certain mean-spiritedness in American public life today which was not there during the idealistic 1960s nor even part of the decade that followed. The rise of this anxious inward- looking mood seems all the more surprising today, when American (and European) dictates about free trade, open markets, structural adjustment and so on increasingly dominate the global economy. And when in the popular mind throughout the world, the west won the cold war. Why is America then not behaving with the magnanimity of a victor, but with the embattled, ungenerous bitterness of a loser?
