Editing Captain America (section)

===Political themes===
Though Marvel has historically trended away from making overt partisan statements in the post-war period, writers have nevertheless used Captain America to comment on the state of American society and government at particular moments in history.{{sfn|Weiner|2013|p=105}} For example, the conspiracy storyline of "Secret Empire" reflected what writer Steve Englehart saw as broad disillusionment with American institutions in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal,{{sfn|Weiner|2013|p=106}} the "Streets of Poison" storyline by Mark Gruenwald in the 1990s was intended to address anxieties around the [[Illegal drug trade in the United States|drug trade]] and debates on the [[war on drugs]],{{sfn|Weiner|2013|p=106}} and "Civil War" by Mark Millar was widely interpreted as an allegory for the [[Patriot Act]] and post-9/11 debates on the balance between national security and civil liberties.{{sfn|Dittmer|2012|p=12}} While the ideological orientation of Captain America stories has shifted in response to changing social and political attitudes, Stevens notes how a central component of Captain America's mythology is that the character himself does not change: when the character's attitudes have shifted, it is consistently framed as an evolution or a new understanding of his previously held ideals. Stevens argues that the character's seeming paradoxical steadfastness is reflective of "the language of comics, where continuity is continually updated to fit the needs of the serialized present."{{Sfn|Stevens|2015|pp=3–4}}

Despite his status as patriotic superhero, Captain America is rarely depicted as an overtly [[jingoistic]] figure. Stevens writes that the character's "patriotism is more focused on the universal rights of man as expressed through the [[American Dream]]" rather than "a position championing the specific cultural or political goals of the United States."{{Sfn|Stevens|2015|p=280}} Weiner similarly concurs that the character "embodies what America strives to be, not what it sometimes is".{{sfn|Weiner|2013|p=111}} Dittmer agrees that while the character sees himself "as the living embodiment of the American Dream (rather than a tool of the state)",{{sfn|Dittmer|2012|p=7}} his status as a patriotic superhero nevertheless tethers him to American foreign policy and hegemony.{{sfn|Dittmer|2012|p=8}} He argues that Captain America tends to skew away from interventionist actions at moments where the United States is undertaking policies that its critics deem imperialist, specifically citing the character's non-participation in the Vietnam and Iraq wars,{{sfn|Dittmer|2012|p=135}} and argues that the character's inconsistent position on the use of deadly force across his editorial history "is perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of the violence, or the threat of violence, at the heart of American hegemony."{{sfn|Dittmer|2012|p=140}}