the happiest place on earth?

The point that Gitlin is trying to make seems to me that we mask America, and for a while we did it very well. Earlier in Americas history, we were seen as this super power nation, that could do, make, or solve anything. We showed people an 'American Dream' as well as amazing products, only able to be made by these mythical American workers. Although Gitlin's artical confused me a bit, from what I took of it he claimed all of this came to betray us. People realized that we were not in fact this invincible nation. So when the mask we wore fell off, people came to see America in a much much darker light.