ABSTRACT
The culture of death and apocalypticism has infected the thinking of the contemporary world, and certainly the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath demonstrate this unequivocally. The murderous events of 9/11 hardened that sense of entitlement as nothing else could have. A superpower's encounter with death and destruction and its sense of victimization bring on both intolerable humiliation and an angry determination to restore, or even extend, the boundaries of a superpower-dominated world. Integral to superpower syndrome and the expansion of the culture of death are the existence of menacing nuclear stockpiles and their world-destroying capacity. The confrontation between Islamist and American versions of planetary excess has unfortunately tended to define a world in which the vast majority of people embrace neither. But the apocalyptic vision needs no majority to dominate a landscape. 9/11 has been a vast trauma to Americans on many levels. But there is danger in absolutizing our sense of victimization.
