This book probes the mythic underpinnings of U.S. war culture, asking how myth can be reconfigured to foster a discourse more conducive to a culture of peace. It breaks with an imperial mindset of endless warfare and places myth’s creative potential into productive relationship with rhetoric’s democratic vocation to foster an attitude of tolerance and interdependence and resist the violence of alienation. Drawing on the archetype of coyote and manifestations of a people’s better angels, the book examines both the resistance of imperial orthodoxy to critique and susceptibility to cultural change. It locates Barack Obama’s presidency and rhetorical juggling at the threshold of a shifting hemispheric consciousness and explores the prophetic voice of veterans opposed to war, a voice that prefigures the possibility of conversion to a culture of peace. The book culminates in consideration of democracy’s renewal by means of rhetorically adept dissent to enable deliberation amidst conflict.weiterlesen