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History❖Two Issues:❖One: How to approach the

class?❖Two: how to approach “near

history”. The “two generations” rule.

❖Current Events? Anything after 1975 or 1989? Has to be arbitrary

1

American History

❖Part One: The Dynamo

❖The Great Fact

❖A Changed Political Discussion

❖The Presidency

2

American History ❖The context: the organizational

revolution (1870-1900)

❖A changed economy, politics and society

❖A new political discussion and argument (Progressives and “Liberals”)

❖The “Limits” of the Constitution

❖Catastrophe

3

American History

❖Part Two: Optimism and the Suburban Empire

❖ 1939: Unfulfilled Promises: “why oh why, can’t I”

❖Depression and War

4

American History ❖The aftermath of World

War One

❖The “Great Depression”

❖The purpose and place of the state; the Fascist moment

❖Caught between optimism and the wasteland

5

American History

❖Which war?

❖The importance of the Pacific War

❖The nature of violence and surrender

6

American History ❖“Lost in the universe”

❖What to make of the “peace”

❖Yalta (Feb 3, 1945) and the aftermath

❖How to think about the Soviet Union – just what did Stalin represent

❖A mixture of the utopianism of the 30s and “realism”

7

American History

❖The “myths” of the 1950s and early 1960s

❖Automobiles, suburbs, teenagers, and kitchen appliances

8

American History

❖The Civil Rights Generation

❖The unfinished business of Reconstruction

9

American History ❖Part Three: Here In

Utopia – All Along the Watchtower

❖The Button Down Mind

❖Two Kennedys

❖Wishing so many things so …

10

American History

❖Two Vietnam Generations

❖Nature of the war?

❖Quagmire?

❖Watergate?

11

American History

❖The Dark Carnival

❖June 8, 1982 in the House of Commons: The “evil empire” speech

❖Rejecting the world created at Yalta

12

American History

❖“Once Upon A Time” – Everyone Knew The Rules

❖The legacy of the “Flappers”

❖From Blondie to Lois and Mrs. Peel

13

American History ❖Part Four: Sugar? –

Slouching Toward Dystopia

❖ Money or Hourglass “Liberalism”

❖Orwell, Huxley, Boorstin and Brooks

❖Social Media – Unintended Consequences of Technology and Big Data

14

Themes

15

Themes❖ The Long War

– Weimar to Peace of Paris (Nov 1990); the Soviet Union formally dissolved on December 25, 1991

– A contest between Fascism/Nazism, Communism, Islamism and Constitutional Democracy

Themes

In one sense, the history of the 20th Century is defined by a search for Utopia–Advances in technology,

science and administration (the organizational revolution)

–Social and cultural confidence as well; to create a new person

Themes

The Irony: The Great War shattered this world but not it’s desire for a social and economic paradise (a form of secular faith)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): “God is dead”

Themes

In Europe and Asia: National Socialism(three variations):

Communism (Bolshevik revolution, internationalism and the importance of the Soviet State)

Fascism (Mussolini and the nation state): a world of war and state competition

Themes

Nazism (the Nation and race theory): to return to the true history of the German volk

All three saw Democracy as the primary enemy; anti-Semitism and anti-Christian (anti-Catholic)

To replace the Church with the State

Themes

All of these stressed the ability to know the future; to begin again; an inheritance of the French Revolution; a combination of social analysis and belief (in the religious sense)

–A “new” man

–The Year Zero

Themes

View of those who might

oppose their ideas

–Must be willful ignorance and/or

reactionaries

–No need for debate or argument;

only assertion counted; the

commitment to gaining and

holding power

Themes

In America: Progressivism and or “Liberalism” (In a sense, a fourth National Socialism)

Woodrow Wilson

–A war to end war (to remove power from International relations); self-determination

–Emphasized executive authority

–An inversion of the Founders emphasis on evil and power

Themes

An elite sensibility

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859): toured America 1831-32 and warned against conformity and “expert” opinion

The slow erosion of what happened in 1776: from Aristocracy to a Republic

Themes

Authority and common respect no longer came from the bottom up; the return to an Aristocratic sensibility?

In America: the politics came from the reality of prosperity

The

Truth Is

Out

There