Nostalgia for a past that may not have existed disrupts temporal logic. It offers a gap that can be filled with imagination, to create a version of the past that then exacerbates the same longing. It is a cyclical process. Such inherent disruption manufactures not just a longing but also the means to justify it: personal histories get reinscribed and collective histories become myths. One such myth is the myth of American exceptionalism. Thomas Byers defines it as ‘not only the claim that America is different, but that it is unique, one of a (superior) kind—and generally that that kind carries with it a unique moral value and responsibility’ (86). It exemplifies such justification: a myth built upon the foundation of liberal thought, freedom, and a palpable sense of being exceptional, it uses nostalgia as a vehicle to drive its version of false history forward. Whether it is garbed under the urge to ‘Make American Great Again’ or the infinitely multiplying superhero comics in America that for generations have romanticised patriotism and been on the right side of the Manichean opposition, what has remained constant is its ability to blind us to what was and show us what could have been.