Why do you think Americans were so fascinated by this idea of the United States stretching from “sea to sea”?
Answers
American reaction to the breakup of the Soviet Union consisted mainly of self-congratulatory sermonizing about the superiority of our economic system. But the USSR's sudden and unexpected collapse should stand as a warning. The Soviet Union, like the United States, equated bigness with greatness. Governing a land stretching from sea to sea was a massive operation in which key decisions affecting the lives of hundreds of millions were made by a few power brokers. A small coterie of party bosses called the shots in the USSR; in the United States it is a narrow set of corporate bosses. As merger mania eats its way through our economy, these faceless business executives are gaining more and more control over every aspect of American life—and like Communist Party officials, they run things on the basis of what's best for them.