Around the year 1500 some pretty vicious Englishmen heard about a new continent up for grabs. America they called it. Hell, it was owned by a bunch of aborigines . . never even heard of gunpowder. “What the Hell, let’s go for it!” they said. So, Puritans came over in boatloads. England was glad to get rid of them. And surprisingly enough, after a century they prospered. And by the 1700s they were doing so well England tried to impose unacceptable taxes on what had now become a thriving colony.  The Americans, as they called themselves, rebelled against these taxes and were punished often such as in in the Boston Massacre. Tit for tat the colonists said, and held the Boston Tea Party (compare with today’s t- party) In short order the colonies fell into open rebellion ending with the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and ultimately The Constitution.
America busied themselves during the 1800s expanding westward and killing off buffalo and native Americans until the 1860s when Lincoln picked a fight at Ft. Sumter and started the civil war. Oh Baby, the carnage and hatred they spawned! Didn’t the colonies just get done asserting States’ rights in breaking away from England? And didn’t the states sign various pacts when they joined the union stating they had the right to secede when and if they wanted? (Read “The Real Lincoln” by Delorenzo) Anyway, the carnage and clean-up from the Civil War and the rapid industrialization of the Northern states occupied America until the 1920s.  American industrialization and corporate abuse of the American worker became an issue. America’s workers rose up like ten million beaten dogs crying “enough is enough” and spawning an effective union movement which still exists. The Great depression of 1929 was brought about by the same type of unregulated speculation that recently ruined the American economy. It exacerbated the ongoing class warfare where the rich lined up on one side hoping to subjugate the workers while doing everything in their power to stop all social programs, safety nets, social security, consumer rights, Medicare etc. To the disgust of conservatives, Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 and enacted a massive stimulus program which provided millions of jobs and put the country back on its feet. By the way, if you want a litmus test about a person’s political position witness their disgust level upon mentioning Franklin Roosevelt’s name. Meanwhile, over in Europe, war took over until 1945. America and Japan got dragged in.  After winning the war on all fronts America emerged as the only intact nation and enjoyed great prosperity. Within America, however, cancerous conservative elements led by Senator Joe McCarthy were hard at work declaring anyone who had progressive thoughts to be a communist sympathizer. It is ironic that McCarthy’s type of thinking was identical to Hitler’s thinking which we fought and died to end. Eventually McCarthy and his blacklists ended in disgrace. Dwight Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial complex but no one listened because there was too much money to be made off war. Some say this is why we got involved in Vietnam. The Vietnam War became a crucial dividing issue in American politics. The military industrial complex was aware that if they wedded Patriotism to war (weather the war was good, bad, or fought just for money ) they could count on the support of a high number of Patriotic Americans who refused to believe Defense contractors would be so cynical as to send America’s sons to die in battle just so the contractors could make a buck. College kids drafted to fight Big Money’s Vietnam War rebelled against the wars’ immorality.  Protests rocked and divided the country. Like the Civil war, brother turned against brother. . father against son. The schism became permanent and America became divided down the middle. Under President Clinton we saw prosperity as the computer age fired up the economy. Despite the dot com bubble the country prospered and segued into the real estate bubble driven by Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, and Wall Street bankers who paid the American Congress to deregulate everything standing in the way of making obscene amounts of money off derivatives. Bankers conspired to sell out municipalities and retirement funds. Being American was reduced to making money – under the guise of “capitalism.” The economy collapsed but not before the top 1% of Americans. . the very rich secured the bulk of America’s wealth and parked it offshore.  Globalization was the final nail in American Manufacturing as massive outsourcing set American workers on a collision course with those on the very bottom of the world’s wage ladder overseas. The Corporation owners felt that Unions had been holding back American profits ever since the New Deal. The Koch Brothers and their ilk bought America’s Congress and Supreme Court and perhaps, most important, America’s airwaves. Bush, Cheney and Rove broke the country’s back by eliminating taxes for the rich while involving us in an unpaid war in Iraq. Obama got elected after Bush drove the country into a tree and the Republicans have been laying roadside bombs for him ever since. Republicans hi-jacked and harnessed the teaparty to their undo-engine to finally undo the programs they hate like Medicare and social security.Â
