E Pluribus Unum - Of the Many, One

Introduction

The motto of the United States was first adopted in 1789 and remains the official defining statement of the United States.  Back then, the connotation was somewhat different from today’s application.  The many, following the Revolutionary War, were the thirteen separate and independent colonies that came together to form the new United States.  The many colonies created one new nation.  Today, the many refers to the population, and no one has addressed the distinction since 1789.

We are the only country in the world built entirely on immigration.  No other country anywhere can make that claim.  Canadian immigrants quickly blended into the nation’s first natives and adapted to their customs before establishing their own, and today, while boasting immigration policies similar to those of the United States, Canadian culture is highly influenced by its indigenous tribes.  With the singular exception of a few scattered Native Americans, mostly residing on reservations, everyone in the United States is either an immigrant or the offspring of immigrants. 

From its very inception, the United States has been an immigrant nation, and it remains one today.  At the base of the Statue of Liberty is a plaque that reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

That statue, placed there in 1886 and still standing, maintains that invitation to the world. This country holds its doors open to anyone who wants to come here and make a life for themselves.  The invitation is extended without condition or stipulation.  So, what kind of nation did immigration wrought?  What were we at our beginning, and what have we become?  The only country in the world founded, forged, and evolved by immigration stands today among the leading nations of the world, but what are we as a result of all who have come here, and where are we going? 

 

The Birth of a Nation

After Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492 and introduced Western Europe to a new land of vast wealth and resources, adventurers and explorers followed enthusiastically.  They all sailed west, south and north over the next hundred years, and some founded permanent settlements in what had become known as the New World.  The more significant of these new settlements were Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in Massachusetts. 

In 1507, Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian explorer, followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World. A cartographer who followed Vespucci's sailings eventually named the new continents discovered by Vespucci America.

The building of the United States in the new America began in 1565 with the founding of St. Augustine, Florida, by Spanish explorers.  Later, in 1607, the British set up Jamestown, and in 1620, Plymouth.  Over the years that followed, those permanent settlements merged to form the thirteen original colonies.  A great number of people braved impossible odds to leave their homeland and settle in uncharted territory, facing unknown dangers to forge new lives.  Why? Because their existing ones were being trampled on by a tyrannical monarchy in their homeland.  Most of those new adventurers were from England, many came from France, and a large number from Spain, all for the same reasons. 

The new settlers were subjects in their country.  Subjects, citizens bound by rules and mandates they could not change or assuage.  They did not like being subjects.  They were people, and they wanted to be recognized as the individuals they were with wants and desires, dreams and ambitions that were not necessarily in parallel with their monarch.  The challenges and dangers of the New World were deemed worth facing if it meant growing individually in mind and spirit.

After the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements, the eastern seaboard of today’s United States began to fill in.  New settlements emerged, primarily established by British explorers and investors.  The Spanish and Portuguese concentrated their interests in the Caribbean, Central and South America.  The French newcomers settled in the Canadian wilderness north of New York and New England.  While the North American colonies were primarily settled by the British, some Dutch and Scandinavian settlements also grew alongside the English.  Ultimately, the British Crown claimed sovereignty over the new colonies.

As the colonists settled their territory and developed agriculture in the countryside and small industries and businesses in the metropolitan areas, dependence on British imports began to wane.  With diminished need for British goods came reluctance to accept British taxes and fees on the shipments delivered.  When Britain decided to tax tea, Bostonians rebelled.  The famous Boston Tea Party sparked the colonial resentment of British oppression, and in 1774, the colonists convened in Philadelphia to unify against British rule.  Ultimately, the colonies formally established their independence from the British Crown with the issuance of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 

Britain responded by dispatching troops to the colonies, sparking a confrontation in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, that set off a seven-year war.  The war ended with the British surrender, and the colonies unified into a new country, which they called the United States.  They drew up a flag with thirteen white stars against a blue background, set against a field of red and white stripes.  George Washington was elected the first president, marking the beginning of a new nation’s growth.

A good portion of the colonial population was made up of people bound to servitude, slaves.  Some of the slaves accompanied their masters to settle in the new land, while others came as willing servants, exchanging their labor for passage to the New World.  In those days, slavery was not oppression.  It was a service.  Slaves were not demeaned.  They were barely recognized as people.  They could not vote.  They were taxed like the commodity they were.  The morality surrounding slavery was greatly diminished in the colonial days.  While we abhor the thought of slavery today, in colonial America, slavery played an important role in the establishment of the new nation.  Slavery grew with the development of the United States, but it is important to note that in colonial America, many slaves earned their freedom and made private lives for themselves after the colonies became states and expanded westward.

With the nation's independence came the need for new rules for the new nation.  The Founders did not want to repeat the egregious regulations they had fought for seven years to divorce themselves from.  They wanted a new law.  One that reflected the rights and freedoms they fought to win.  In 1787, the founders of the new United States wrote the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified and placed into law in 1789.  The Constitution became the Law of the Land and has been ever since.  The Constitution became and remains a profound composition of laws and standards expressly written for a free and independent people.  No other country has a manifest quite like the American Constitution.  By law, Americans are to be protected and served by their government, not the other way around.  No other country allows for that provision. 

Americans are allowed to protest peacefully against the actions of their government.  They can speak out against injustice without fear of reprisal.  They can maintain police forces to protect their communities from domestic threats as well as foreign.  They are not obliged to house military or law enforcement against their will.  Searching through private property, including their person, is prohibited without a warrant.  Americans are entitled to trial by jury for alleged crimes.  News of these adopted freedoms Americans enjoyed quickly spread throughout other parts of the world, prompting a desire to take advantage of this promising opportunity.  The United States population began to grow. 

 The Constitution was augmented as soon as it was placed into effect by the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments.  Since then, it has been revised sixteen times, but remains the longest national set of rules and recipe for life the world has ever known.  The Constitution became the guiding light for the new United States but has deteriorated over the years.  Today it is barely understood or followed, even though every federal employee who enters government service swears an oath of allegiance to it. 

As Americans moved west, the country expanded enormously and relatively quickly.  Following the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Treaty of Paris allowed the colonies to take possession of the new territory all the way to the Mississippi River.  In the early nineteenth century, America made the Louisiana Purchase, which virtually doubled the country's size.  Florida was acquired shortly afterward and then Texas.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States owned or occupied territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coasts between Canada and Mexico. 

The southern states were rich in cotton, and slavery made the cotton trade lucrative. As a result, the young country became wealthy, and its thriving economy financed land rushes and settlements into the western regions.  Accustomed to slavery and with little regard for the inferiors they termed Indians, Americans rolled over the indigenous peoples and their land in a rabid quest to expand and build the United States.  The conquest of the West came with an awakening in the political arena.  Slavery was becoming increasingly frowned upon, and when some midwestern states moved to join the Union, conditions included banning slavery.

The matter of slavery reform and elimination moved the southern states to secede from the Union to form their own country and maintain the slavery status quo.  The secession attempt was met with a declaration of war by Abraham Lincoln, and nearly 600,000 American men gave their lives to preserve the integrity of the United States and free the slaves.  The Civil War was unprecedented and sharply divided the country along social and religious lines.  Lincoln preserved his Union, but the cost was enormous, the toll extending beyond a hundred years later. 

The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery, but it did not provide for societal integration.  The freed slaves had nowhere to go and very little opportunity upon arrival.  They were, for the most part, uneducated and unskilled.  Many people who had lost relatives and friends to the Civil War saw the freed Negro as the reason why.  Negroes were loathed in the South, a hatred that extended well into the 20^th century.  Segregation nationwide became commonplace.  Negroes were free but hardly accepted as equals, even in the North.  The 15^th Amendment, ratified in 1870, gave Negroes the right to vote, but it did not address segregation or equal opportunity.

The Wild West experienced rapid growth following the end of the Civil War.  Many Confederate soldiers had lost homes and land to the victorious Yankees or the swindling Carpetbaggers who pillaged the South after the war ended.  Many of the freed slaves had nowhere to go, and without even a moderate education, the North offered little by way of opportunity.  The West, however, was a beckoning land of opportunity even in the face of dangerous threats from unfriendly indigenous peoples known colloquially as the Indians. 

Thanks in large part to America’s military, particularly the U.S. Cavalry, Indian uprisings were minimal, and settlements grew into towns and cities across the western plains.  As the eastern cities grew ever larger and urbanization expanded from the coastline to the Mississippi, demand for raw materials and beef increased.  Western farmers and ranchers answered the call.  Cattle were raised on ranches across the West from the Canadian to the Mexican border.  Farms spread across the fertile Midwest and plains.  Wheat became the national crop, and mineral mining supplied Eastern factories with ore for smelting that went into steel manufacture and precious jewelry.  After 1870, America’s industrial and agricultural growth and production ranked among the world’s most successful and active, sparking off its so-called Gilded Age that lasted into the early part of the following century.  The United States began banking and trading with foreign countries, and its influence extended to Europe, South America, and Australia.  In 1893, the economy became shaky due to a banking panic, but the recovery was swift until another one followed several years later.

War broke out between Spain and the United States in 1898, but it lasted only four months.  After the treaties were signed, America expanded its growth into the Caribbean and the Pacific, taking ownership of Guam, much of the Philippines, and Hawaii.  The United States of America had become the unrivaled industrial, agricultural, and military power in the West.  Culturally, the country was centered around a predominantly Christian ideology dominated by Caucasian men.  Minorities, like Asians, the Negroes, and Hispanics, were tolerated but treated like chattel.  Women had virtually no voice in government, despite decades of clamoring for the right to vote. 

By 1900, the West had been tamed, with all indigenous peoples having surrendered and been relegated to reservations. The Union comprised 45 states, as well as the territories of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, and the acquired islands of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii.  The population had mushroomed to 76 million.  In 1901, Teddy Roosevelt became president and held the office for eight years.  The economy was shaky under Roosevelt, but he managed to hold it together to everyone’s satisfaction.  He initiated the construction of the Panama Canal and laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement.  He faced stiff opposition to accepting America’s first civil rights activist, Booker T. Washington, into the White House, and Roosevelt’s pursuit of civil rights dwindled as a result.  The United States was a world power without rival.  The Navy ruled the seas, and no nation dared challenge its military.   

Oklahoma became a state in 1907, followed by Arizona and New Mexico in 1912.  At that point, the 48 contiguous states were established, and the United States led the world in both cultural and military growth.  Europe, however, was having problems.  Perhaps envious of the United States’ development, Europe experienced a test of wills among its governments.  Nations were building up their militaries, economies were shaky, and imperialism was at the forefront of European ambitions.  Hostility was on the rise.

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson became the US president.  Facing the escalating tensions in Europe, he sought to quell discontent by positing a League of Nations, a body of political representatives from the industrial world designed to negotiate settlements before resorting to violent reprisals or aggression.  It was a noble effort that but ultimately failed.  War did break out in Europe.  The United States maintained a position of neutrality while it tended to its own less-than-perfect affairs.  Race relations did not improve, and segregation had taken root.

The United States entered WWI, also known as The Great War, in April 1917 and brought the conflict to a close in just over a year and a half.  Following the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson tried to revive the idea of the League of Nations, and this time it took off.  The U.S. did not join, despite Wilson’s sponsorship.  Germany and the newly formed Soviet Union also did not participate, and without the major players, the organization fell apart.  What did ensue, however, was a worldwide recognition of the United States as an industrial and military superpower.  America’s military allowed Negroes to enlist for service, but the roles provided were subservient.  Front-line fighting was not integrated, and military accommodations for Negros remained heavily segregated.

In 1920, two significant events occurred in the United States that would profoundly change the nation’s culture and moral compass.  Women gained the right to vote, which changed national politics, and Prohibition was enacted, giving birth to American organized crime. 

The Roaring Twenties, as they were so aptly named, ushered in a new American personality.  Immigration created enclaves of ethnic-specific populations in the major cities, with Irish, Italians, and Jews being the most prominent and influential.  Ethnic populations carried with them ethnic related gangs in the cities of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia.  Violence was commonplace as gangs vied for turf in their respective neighborhoods.  Even within individual ethnic groups, gangs fought over city blocks and extorted payments from local merchants for protection.  Gangs ruled city streets, and violence was commonplace.  

After the enactment of Prohibition, illegal alcohol production, transport, and sales flourished in the big cities.  Gangs sought new goals of owning the choicest markets for private and secret nightclubs known as speakeasies.  Illegal liquor brought illegal profits, and the quest for greater profits encouraged every gang in every city.  The wider the territory occupied by any gang, the greater the profit.  Secrecy was vital.  The federal government dispatched US marshals to break up nightclubs, smash illegal liquor supplies, and intercept illegal liquor transport.  Gangs that could afford to buy off the feds continued to do business and make enormous profits.  Gangs betrayed each other to the marshals, and rivalries became bloody.  Street shootings took place with increased frequency.  Eventually, the gangs organized, entered into agreements with one another, and the violence subsided.  Criminal families formed in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia along ethnic lines.  The organized crime families became so wealthy that they began to buy off cops, politicians, and judges.  The more a crime family could buy, the more profit and influence it could generate.    

When the economy crashed in 1929 and banks failed, organized crime thrived.  The Mobs did not depend on banks and industry.  The crime families made their money illegally and kept it private.  During the Great Depression, organized crime families stepped in to replace banks, providing loans to people who could not afford the exorbitant interest rates but lacked options.  Organized crime acquired failing operations and emerged as the new business giants in retail and banking.  Organized crime families became so large, the federal government could not get near them.  Some greedy crime lords, like Al Capone, were trapped by the IRS and brought down for income tax evasion.  To avoid a similar fate, other crime family chiefs, such as Charles Luciano and Meyer Lansky, hired legal consultants to organize their conglomerates and launder their profits.  The organized crime families were forced to become legitimate, at least on paper. 

Because women could vote, they had a voice in politics, and that voice was not only loud but also demanding.  Women did not like the brazen disregard for the law that Mobsters flaunted and demanded that the government come down hard on the criminal empires.  To get elected, many politicians running for governor and mayor had to commit to cleaning up the crime in their cities.  That meant forcing the organized criminals who were never going to go away to minimize their exposure.  The street fighting had to stop.  The crime lords had to take steps to become respectable.  The outward appearance ultimately changed, but the establishment of organized crime in the United States was never going to be eradicated.  As a result, politicians became as crooked as the crime families.  They could not exist otherwise.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president of the United States.  The so-called New Deal made numerous attempts to improve the economy with job programs and industrial efforts.  Many New Deal programs helped to ease the sting of the Great Depression, but the economic disaster persisted until 1939, when FDR launched programs to build weapons and munitions that he exported to Great Britain for them to use against Hitler’s Nazi war machine, which was invading Europe.  Thanks to federal spending on munitions manufacturing and shipbuilding and the government’s Lend-Lease program, FDR was able to keep America neutral when war broke out in Europe in 1938.  In 1939, the Great Depression came to an end.  FDR was a hero, and the country was on the road back to cultural, societal, and economic stability.  The country was still racially segregated, but people were returning to work.  America’s industry turned to manufacturing armaments, weapons, and ships for export to Great Britain.  America was not in the fight, but her contribution to the war against Hitler was invaluable.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States could no longer remain neutral.  FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan, and the United States effectively entered the war in Europe at the same time.  Interestingly, Congress was still the mechanism the government used for going to war.  Per the Constitution, only Congress can declare war.  In 1941, it did, and America’s industrial complex shifted into high gear, producing weapons and military equipment.  Men enlisted in the military for both the European and Pacific fronts.  Women went to work in factories, and Rosie the Riveter became a badge of honor.  American Negros went to work in the factories and joined the military, but their military units were completely segregated.  Racism was alive and well in wartime America.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was deemed an attack on the United States mainland, the first time any such attempt had been made in the nation’s history.  Hawaii was not a state, but it was a US territory and part of the country, just as Arizona and New Mexico territories had been merely twenty-five years earlier.  As such, the attack on the military installations of the Navy in the harbor, the army at Scoffield Barracks, and the Army Air Corps at Hicham Field was taken extremely personally.  When the federal government interned the Japanese population of Oahu following the attack, no one objected.  The Japanese were instantly the enemy, and the Japanese of Hawaii were not recognized as American.  They were related to the enemy, and the suspicion that one or more of them could be collaborators with Japan was not only highly likely but also certainly to be expected.  That many Japanese Americans fought heroically in Europe during the Second World War contributed mightily to lessening the bitterness of Americans toward the interned Japanese on the West Coast, but forgiveness was slow and reserved.

When the War came to an end in 1945, the entire world recognized that the United States was the primary reason for defeating both the Japanese Empire and Hitler’s Nazi regime.  The power and reach of the American military and industrial capabilities were demonstrated by its ability to conduct the war on two major fronts, Europe and the Pacific.  One of the reasons for Hitler’s demise was his foolhardy attempt to conduct a two-front war in Europe, the western front facing Great Britain and her allies, and the eastern front against the Soviet Union.  Many scholars have reasoned that he could have won the war in Europe if he had not turned on the Soviets.  That the United States could manage such a feat was a testament to its perceived greatness.

When Harry S. Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, the world was exposed to a terror it had never known and an unimaginable military supremacy.  The United States ushered in the atomic age and changed international politics forever.  The Soviet Union, petrified of America’s greatness, was determined not to be outdone by the United States and set out to acquire a nuclear bomb for itself.  The arms race was on, and the spy game began.  The Allies’ WWII OSS, Office of Strategic Services, which provided intelligence gathering for the Allies during the war, became the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States in 1947.  The United States and the Soviet Union began an undeclared Cold War that would last for decades. 

During World War II, America remained a segregated nation along racial lines.  Negros participated in the war both at home and in the military services, but Negro soldiers were not integrated into regular combat units.  Negro soldiers performed magnificently, and Negro support services at home in factories and abroad in service organizations provided mightily to the war effort.  Negro military units served in non-combat roles, such as the Red Ball Express, which supplied the front lines with arms, equipment, food, and clothing.  The Tuskegee Airmen flew fighter planes to protect Allied bomber squadrons and contributed to the Allies’ conquest of the air during the war.  As valuable and gallant as their performance was, Negros remained a segregated part of the American population when the war ended, and they returned home with their fellow soldiers to resume their place in industry, finance, and sports.  Harry S. Truman took one small step toward ending segregation in 1948 by officially integrating the U.S. military.  The move did little to ease the segregation and prejudices of the civilian communities in the United States, particularly in the South, where segregation was violently enforced, but the integration of the military was a step in the right direction toward recognized equality for Negros.   

As victors in Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the political ownership of Germany into two parts.  The Soviets held East Germany, and the Allies held the West.  Berlin, situated inside East Germany, was declared neutral and divided into four sectors, Russian, American, French, and British.

In Asia, the Soviets and the United States made another shared claim by dividing the Korean peninsula into North and South along the 38^th line of latitude, known as the 38^th parallel.  Initially, there was no animosity between the split, and it was agreed that a unified government for all of Korea would eventually be negotiated.  The two Korean governments, however, could never come to an agreement, and the split became permanent in 1948.  Two years later, the North Koreans crossed the 38^th parallel in an attempt to take control of the entire peninsula and unify Korea by force.

General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific during WWII, engaged the invading Koreans with American military forces and, within a year, drove the North Koreans back across the 38^thparallel and continued to push them all the way to the Chinese border.  Left to his own command, MacArthur would have invaded China and established North Korea as a captured prize for thwarting North Korea’s aggression.  Unfortunately, McArthur was stopped by Harry Truman.  The president did not want to engage the Chinese, although they posed no threat to MacArthur’s forces, and the general had no interest in going to war with the Chinese.  After Truman ordered MacArthur to pull his forces back to the South below the 38^th parallel, the spunky general resigned from the Army in protest.  The war continued with skirmishes on both sides, ultimately leading to a ceasefire in 1953, which remains in effect to this day.  The Korean War, however, ended in a stalemate that proved an embarrassment to the United States, from which the great superpower would never fully recover. 

 

Peace and Development

When World War II ended, there was no return to normal for the country or its homecoming veterans.  Before the War, normal was the Great Depression and Prohibition.  At the close of the War, the bread lines were gone, as were the soup kitchens and widespread unemployment.  America’s economy was stable and expected to grow.  Wives and young women traded in their factory coveralls for kitchen aprons, bobby socks, and poodle skirts.  Soldiers came home to family, jobs, and opportunity.  Unlike most of Europe and the Pacific nations, the United States did not have to rebuild.  America suffered no physical damage to the homeland, and the country easily transitioned from a wartime to a peacetime economy. 

One of the least noticeable but largest impacts on American life after the war came with immigration.  Overall, nearly 3,000,000 immigrants came to the United States between the close of World War II and 1959.  This represented almost a 2% increase over the 1950 population of 151,325,798. 

The War Brides Act of 1945 accounted for 300,000 new spouses and dependents coming to America with military veterans returning from the war.  The British, Italians, and French initially made up 200,000, followed later by the relaxation of regulations that allowed the inclusion of Germans and Japanese.  Asians, chiefly Chinese and Filipinos, made up the remaining 100,000.    

The Displaced Persons Act, including the provisions of its 1950 and 1952 augmentations. accounted for another 400,000 between 1948 and 1952.  Clarifying and supplementing the Displaced Persons Act were the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which focused on origin quotas that favored northern and western Europeans, and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which extended to Eastern European refugees fleeing the Soviet Union

Distribution of these figures included 477,000 Germans, 185,000 Italians, 203,000 from the UK, 300,000 from Mexico, and 377,000 Canadians.  Another 1.5 million over the fifteen years from 1945 to 1959 came from Soviet Bloc countries and Asia.  The addition to America's melting pot was spread out across the great nation in large cities, small towns, and rural farmlands. 

In addition to the wave of legal newcomers to the United States was a contingent of illegal immigrants who had to be removed to make room for the returning veterans who wanted their jobs back.  During the War, Mexican agricultural workers, braceros, were invited into the United States on a temporary basis to work on harvests and railroads.  The Bracero Program was an agreement between Mexico and the United States to fill the American agricultural labor void left by men who went off to war.  When the soldiers returned home, the Bracero Program continued, but the labor force had to be scaled back considerably.  Mexican laborers who had found homes in rural America were deported under Operation Wetback, a massive deportation campaign that began in 1953 to send those migrant workers back to Mexico.  The program expelled a million migrants but also included many legal citizens of Hispanic descent.  As the Hispanics were deported, a wealth of new immigrants from Puerto Rico entered the country, taking up residence in the larger northeastern cities.  Negros began venturing away from the oppression of the Deep South to blend into the northern and western states.  Despite the federal move to deport the braceros, about a million illegals continued to cross the southern border of the United States each year in a quest for jobs in the promising land of opportunity.

The was little difference between immigration policies before and after World War II.  Pre-war Europeans and post-war refugees came to America through immigration channels at Ellis Island, New York, where they were examined for health conditions and investigated for criminal backgrounds.  The only difference was the intensity of the vetting process.  All immigrants were tested for health conditions and criminal records, but after the war, more rigorous screenings were conducted, and detentions were longer.

Prior to World War II, immigrants came to the United States to become Americans.  There were no hyphenated nationalities before the War, only Americans.  They may have clung to their home languages and some family heritage from the “Old Country,” but in America, English was the only language spoken and the only language on instruction documents and voter pamphlets.  Immigrants had to become accustomed to a new way of life.  America did not encourage new immigrants to bring their cultures with them.  Newcomers were not separated or isolated from American communities.  After the war, immigrants came to America to escape Europe.  America offered a haven for the previously vanquished.  Not all post-war immigrants sought Americanization.  Many simply came for the security of having an ocean between them and their enemies, bringing their language and customs with them.  Regardless of motive, all migrants were welcomed into the new home they embraced, if they were Caucasian, of course.

Negros and Asian immigrants saw a completely different America.  Segregation was an integral part of American society, a cultural cornerstone, and had been since the end of the Civil War.  Negros and Asians were channeled into separate communities.  Fortunately, World War II went a long way toward bringing down racial barriers.  Negros performed vital roles during World War II, both in the military and in the homeland industrial support that kept the military functional and effective. American Japanese soldiers performed gallantly in Europe.  Nonetheless, at the close of the War, Asians assembled in their isolated communities, and Negros found themselves relegated to pre-War bigotry. Racism was an unheard-of term in the years following the War, but segregation was an established way of life.  This would change in the years ahead, but only slowly, and not without resistance.    

After the enactment of the Displaced Persons Act, Europeans coming to America were allowed refugee status.  They were allowed, even encouraged, to reside with their fellow countrymen, and a slow drift away from American to hyphenated citizenship began. The collectives of thousands of Europeans and Asians, forming their own communities primarily in large cities, were lost amid the vast American-born population.  One reason for the unintended negligence was the absence of media attention.  The development of alien cultures establishing virtual settlements in America was ignored.  When these new cultures were recognized and their negative impact realized, the damage done to the American fabric would be irreversible.

Not the greatest, but a significant immigration influence on America was that of ethnic organized crime.  Beginning in the 1920s with Prohibition and solidifying after Prohibition was repealed, Many Italian, Irish, and Sicilian immigrants organized into criminal syndicates, principally in New York City and Chicago.  Former bootleggers graduated to higher crimes like prostitution, illegal gambling, and drug dealing, refining and expanding their influence during the War years.  Chicago spawned a crime consortium known as the Outfit.  New York City was divided into five crime “families,” one for each borough, organized by Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Salvatore Maranzano.  Gang violence in the cities and turf wars came to an end.  Business arrangements were made, and organized crime settled into its place in American culture. 

 Despite an effort to shrink from the public spotlight following the War, organized crime could not escape exposure.  Its presence in Las Vegas casinos kept crime bosses in the headlines, and the rising rates of prostitution, illegal gambling, and drug use around the country could only be attributed to organized criminals.  It took a major public relations effort by government-sponsored media to demonstrate to society that the exploits of the few radical criminal groups did not represent the behavior of all Italian, Irish, and Sicilian Americans. 

To push this point home, the United States Justice Department engaged in a concerted effort to corral organized crime and stamp it out.  United States Senator Estes Kefauver conducted Congressional hearings to spotlight crime lords and hold them accountable.  Throughout the 1950s, Kefauver pursued the criminal kingpins to entrap them and put them out of business.  Many of the hearings were televised, and while the effort was commendable, it ultimately proved fruitless.  Televised hearings gave faces to names, but high-profile attorneys helped the crime figures dodge incrimination.  The televised hearings became afternoon entertainment and evening news fodder throughout the decade, but unfortunately, the crime lords were not deterred.  They boldly upped their game by buying off corrupt politicians and judges to ensure continued operations.  Organized crime flourished.

Throughout the fifties, America’s leadership was decidedly Caucasian and male.  Governments, manufacturers, and industry were run by Caucasian men.  They were heroes.  They had won the War and returned home to pick up the reins of leadership for the country, where they had left off to fight.  It was an unconscious evolution that was almost universally accepted, and most of America was content with the new established norm.  Most, but not all.  Negroes were not content, but neither did they have a voice.  

It is important to note that the United States population in 1950 was less than half what it is today.  Less than half of our population filled the vast reaches of the country.  Big cities and country towns were half the size of what they are today.  Municipal streets and public transportation were only half of what they are today, but easier to access and more fluid.  Homes in the suburbs were farther apart, on larger lots.  Schools were less crowded, teachers more attentive.  Shopping was more accessible.  Most families had only one car.  Neighbors knew one another, merchants were familiar with their clientele, and customer service was important because dissatisfied shoppers took their business elsewhere. 

Internationally, America was the undisputed sole world superpower.  She had the mightiest army, the greatest navy, and no country could compete in the air.  Every nation rallied to trade with the United States.  The American dollar was the most stable exchange premium anywhere.  American manufacturing was the quality standard to which every other country was held.  Texas and Oklahoma were the dominant domestic oil-producing markets, but despite America’s wealth of natural resources, it was moving away from oil exporting toward importing.  Domestic demand for gasoline, kerosene, and home heating oil taxed domestic crude supplies.  Automobile manufacturing expanded, and nationwide travel became more popular.  Suburban home heating in the northern climates grew with suburban expansion.  Fuel demands escalated, and costs were exceptionally low.  Domestic supplies of food, fuel, and clothing were plentiful and affordable.  The post-war economy made America the most self-sufficient nation in the world.  Opportunities lie everywhere for everyone.  Jobs were plentiful, industry was solid, manufacturing and development were bustling.  It is no wonder that so many people wanted to come here.

As Harry S. Truman’s second presidential term wound down, politics shifted from defending the country to growing it. Leadership and decisive direction were required, and the Republican leadership's choice to replace Truman was without argument.  Dwight David Eisenhower commanded all Allied forces in Europe during World War II.  He made the fateful decision to invade Normandy, France, in June 1944.  He not only commanded Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and General George S. Patton during the war but also kept the heated rivals apart while exploiting their military genius to drive back and crush the German Wehrmacht and the notorious Waffen SS all the way to Berlin.  Eisenhower was a skilled tactician, a brilliant strategist, and a superb diplomat.  During the Second World War, he listened to his advisors, weighed his options, and issued commands that ultimately won the war for the Allies.  He outsmarted Adolf Hitler and the entire hierarchy of the German military command. 

In 1952, Ike was elected president of the United States, and six months after taking office, true to a campaign promise, he negotiated a ceasefire in Korea.  While the Korean conflict raged in Asia, a relatively small part of the American military was involved.  The Armed Forces had become racially integrated by order of Harry Truman, and the units in Korea included Negroes, which greatly reduced the requirement for Caucasian participation.  The military had become integrated, but civilian segregation, much to the chagrin of the Negro population, continued.  Ike did little to improve domestic racial strife, and he has long since been remanded to history, but his Korean ceasefire remains in effect to this day.  

The fifties brought population growth.  The birth rate exploded, and the Baby Boomers generation emerged.  Growing families moved from cities to the suburbs, thanks in part to the GI Bill, a government program that made housing more affordable for veterans.  The Bill allowed former GIs to seek housing loans and enroll in educational programs at all levels.  College enrollments increased, and trade school programs spread around the country.  Rural life blossomed, and the artist Norman Rockwell became an American icon with depictions of that growth and life captured in paintings that appeared in periodicals across the country.

Childbirth was not the only thing to boom in the fifties.  Industry roared.  Manufacturing soared.  Construction expanded.  Farming and ranching took off.  As families moved from cities to the suburbs, roads needed improvement, and automobiles were in high demand.  Kitchen appliances were necessities for new homes, along with furniture, and home maintenance items like lawnmowers and gardening equipment.  Life was comfortable for most Americans under the Eisenhower administration.  World War II was gone but not forgotten.  Patriotism flourished.  Military veterans were revered.  Young boys played war in backyards and playgrounds, boasting their fathers’ exploits.  Racial civil rights were ignored, and immigration was encouraged, two socioeconomic conditions that should have been addressed but were not.   

Political differences in 1952 were slight.  Republicans opposed FDR’s support of growing government but did little to reverse FDR’s policies or programs.  Democrats took up the banner of racial equality, but there were more words than action.  While the Republicans held the White House under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Democrats held the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Seventeen women were a part of Congress, but Negros were not represented in either chamber.

Television replaced the radio as the family entertainment medium.  The 1952 presidential campaign was the first to use the new technology to reach out to the American people.  For the first time in political history, voters could see the candidates, their appearances, differences, and behavior.  Personality and presentation became as important as political messaging. 

The 1950s were a decade of undisguised ideological conviction.  Americans were largely Christian.  Even atheists subscribed to the norms of public decency.  Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance were common in public schools.  Congress opened its sessions with prayer and the Pledge.  Abortions were illegal.  Marriage was sacred, divorce rare, and out-of-wedlock births were scandalous.  Promiscuity was reserved and frowned upon.  Boys will always be boys, but in general, respect was the order of the day.  A gentleman opened a door for a lady.  Men walked on the curb side of the sidewalk and always stood when a woman entered the room.  Morals were high in America.  The Ten Commandments were prominently displayed in public buildings, especially courthouses.  The invocation of God was expressed in every oath or promise.  Propriety was in vogue.  People dressed for church and sporting events, men in suits and ties, women in dresses and bonnets.  Life was good, enjoyable, and rewarding if you were White. 

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, or the Soviets, was seen as evil.  Communism was abhorrent.  Political party affiliation was inconsequential, but aversion to communism was universal.  United States Senator Joseph McCarthy gained popularity in the 1950s through television.  He was obsessed with rooting out Communism in the government and the entertainment industry.  His Congressional hearings were often televised, and the stigma of being suspected of identifying with the Communist Party ruined many careers.  The FBI investigated countless suspects, and the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency busied itself overseas, chiefly snooping in East Germany and the Soviet Union.  Their findings often tipped off FBI investigators at home, who uncovered numerous suspected espionage networks.  Witch hunts were a sad by-product of the nation’s repulsion to communism.  Two infamous FBI victims were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a pair of government workers accused of having dealt nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviets.  Their trial shook the nation.  They were acknowledged members of the Communist Party and were tried for their offense, found guilty, and executed as spies.  A distasteful undercurrent of distrust resulted from McCarthyism, with neighbors suspecting neighbors of questionable loyalty. 

Despite the Rosenberg scandal, or perhaps because of it, and the persistent efforts of McCarthy to paint some Americans as Communists based on the flimsiest of evidence, most of America reveled in the growth of peacetime America and the promise of suburban comfort.  Television provided entertainment for young and old.  Jobs were plentiful.  Business opportunities were available to anyone with an idea or an attraction.  Educational opportunities were readily available.  Elvis Presley came on the scene to introduce America to Rock ‘n Roll.  Entrepreneurs sprouted up everywhere. 

Law enforcement kept America safe for the most part.  The larger cities had their issues with crime and morality, but the suburbs were seen as a safe escape from the big-city bustle.  Crime was relatively low in the suburbs, and moving about after dark was hardly dangerous.  Drive-in theaters were a favorite family outing.  Police were universally friendly and helpful.  Their primary focus was law enforcement, of course, and in the fifties, the police were extremely diligent and enthusiastic.    

The automobile industry flourished as one decade transitioned into the other.  The family car became a status symbol.  Public transportation was regular and dependable.  Grocery stores sprouted in every town across the vast country, and whole milk and cheeses were home-delivered by local dairy vendors.  Fashion and entertainment went flamboyant.  Rock and Roll followers distinguished themselves with pompadour haircuts and blue jeans.  Young women pranced around in ponytails, bobby socks, and poodle skirts.   

 Unfortunately, not everyone was thrilled with the social or political climate of the ‘50s.  Racial tensions were stirring.  The most significant element in American immigration was largely ignored throughout American history.  The legal, although unethical and morally delinquent, importation of Negros from Africa during the 17^th and 18^th centuries to serve wealthy barons as slaves was about to bear consequences at the end of the 1950s.  While the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 freed the Negro population from the yoke of slavery, the Act did nothing to improve their lives.  From the close of the Civil War to the advent of the 1960s, America did nothing to provide for the American Negro while it bent over backwards to accommodate every other ethnicity.  Negros, or coloreds, the labels attributable to the day, who had contributed to the success of World War II and participated in the Korean conflict, were tired of being relegated to second-class status.  Segregation did not sit well with them.  Being deprived of the opportunities afforded to Europeans was unfair and undeserved.  Negros had proven themselves deserving of access to the American dream.  The segregation, injustice, and abject hatred for the colored population that permeated the deep South sparked a revolution in the advent of the 1960s, and the nation was unprepared for the reckoning it was about to face.   

 

A Wakeup Call

In 1960, the nation was still led and governed predominantly by Caucasian males.  Life for most Americans was pleasant and fruitful.  The evening news was positive and promising.  Gasoline, groceries, real estate, and automobiles were affordable.  Schools and churches, public and private, were rooted in Christianity and decency.  Crime was tolerable, the suburbs were safe, and the cities were free of graffiti and significant violence.  Suburbanites could leave their front doors unlocked overnight, and all would be well in the morning.  The American Dream was prominent, but the economy was fizzling.  The post-war economic boom had peaked, and jobs were harder to come by than they had been only five to eight years earlier.   

Eisenhower was in the last of his eight years as president in 1960, and the nation faced a political dilemma.  The campaign for the new presidency was underway, with Vice President Richard M. Nixon opposing newcomer Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy was a naval veteran, having commanded a PT boat in the South Pacific during the war.  He survived being sunk by a Japanese destroyer and kept his crew alive on an isolated island until they could be rescued.  He was a celebrated hero.  Nixon, Ike’s VP, had no military background.  The nation had to choose between new programs proposed by another notable military veteran and the expected continuation of Eisenhower’s policies.  It was a tough choice for America, but ultimately, Kennedy edged out Nixon in a very close race, and the nation embarked on a new era.  The Baby Boomers were not old enough to vote, which left the ballot box under the continued influence of WWII veterans and the women who had run the factories while the men were gone.  The contentment of the fifties lingered, but ripples of racial dissatisfaction upset the calm.

There was a vast difference between 1960 and 1950.  The CIA was ten years older, ten years more experienced, and ten years more conniving.  Organized crime was ten years more organized, elusive, and sheltered.  Immigration had ten years to expand and grow the country.  The population had increased by nearly 20%, filling and expanding rural communities and inner cities.  Technology exploded.  Television sets were in nearly every household across the country, Rock and Roll had established itself as the teenage fixation, and racial strife had ten years to fester and become more noticeable, thanks entirely to media expansion.  The idyllic life of 1950 had evolved into an uneasy, restless anticipation.  Everyone everywhere wanted something better because, for ten years, everything had improved for everyone —except the Negros.      

Racial tensions in the Deep South were at a boil.  The Ku Klux Klan was unbridled.  Racism in the northern and western states existed, but racial segregation was not mandatory or even forced on anyone of color.  Coloreds were subtly steered away from white neighborhoods, but, apart from the deep South, it was an amicable imposition.  Real Estate had two costs, one for Caucasians and another for the Negro.  In the north and west, Negroes were not forced to stay out of Caucasian community centers; it was simply easier and cheaper for them to frequent the colored markets.  In the deep South, however, segregation was a strict rule with severe penalties for violators.  Negros were hanged for making physical contact with Caucasians.  The Klan burned Crosses on the residential property belonging to White sympathizers of Black causes.  Eisenhower had ordered public school integration, but busing children from Black neighborhoods to White was met with open hostility.  At one point, the National Guard was called up to enforce the integration laws. 

By the time the 1960s had arrived, racial tensions had spread across the nation.  Unrest had not yet reached the suburbs, but tensions in the South bordered on extreme violence.  Because of strict segregation, Negro uprisings in the South occurred mainly in their own communities.  Any disturbances in other neighborhoods were met with violent Ku Klux Klan retaliation, like church burnings, beatings, and even murder, but the Negro voice would not go silent.   

When John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he appointed his brother Robert as Attorney General, but the Kennedy administration did little to address racial unrest.  Beyond the deep South, racial disturbances were not terribly disruptive.  Busing to maintain school integration was successful in the north and west.  Black demonstrations were news items for most people, subjects of social interest, something to watch on TV, but posed little to no threat to the tranquility of Middle-Class America.  The 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis dominated television news and detracted from civil rights unrest.  Apart from the Deep South, most of America was not concerned about racial complaints.  The Soviets were rising steadily to power, and the threat of nuclear war was a grave concern.  America was building bomb shelters, conducting air raid drills in schools, and waiting for that first missile to fire.  People lived comfortably, despite worldwide tensions stemming from a nuclear arms race.  The spread of communism was more unsettling than racial instability.

In the early ‘60s, people were comfortable.  The cost of living was manageable.  Gasoline and home heating oil were affordable.  The American Dream was alive and well.  A single modest income could purchase a home, put a kid through college, replace the family car every two years, and keep the refrigerator filled.  A family could go to the movies together.  Many went to church. Most households were two-parent, and Dad really did know best.  Rural life was pleasant.  Produce, dry goods, and fashionable clothing were affordable and plentiful.  Food went unspoiled by chemical preservation and processing.  Grocery freshness was a given, and whole dairy products were part of everyone’s diet. 

America experienced a pleasant side to the Kennedy administration that overshadowed Cold War drama, racial unrest, and organized crime hearings.  The nation embraced Jack Kennedy.  They found him to be a genuine leader, as exemplified by his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Kennedy was strong and resolute, but his wife won the hearts of the American people.  Jacqueline Kennedy was the first First Lady to connect with the American people.  Thanks to television and a friendly media, she hosted televised White House tours with a warmth and candor that captivated America.  Jacqueline brought personality to politics, and the country loved her for it.  The news and entertainment media supported the Kennedy administration, even in the face of apparent transgressions and infidelity on Jack’s part. World leaders respected him in large part because Jacqueline’s ambassadorship garnered admiration from most of Europe.

Then in 1963, the bubble burst.  JFK was assassinated in Dallas, which threw America into a near-panic.  The alleged assassin was captured immediately, but the days following the shooting produced insufficient evidence to absolutely hold Lee Harvey Oswald responsible for the murder of the beloved president.  Oswald was killed in a Dallas police station by an obscure Dallas nightclub owner with known ties to organized crime.  A low rumble of suspicion gripped the nation.  People began locking doors and looking over their shoulders.  The government that had replaced Kennedy’s could not definitively define the former president’s killer.  Rumor replaced facts, and as hard as the network newscasters tried to comfort America by declaring Oswald the lone insane gunman who inexcusably robbed the nation of their leader, skepticism prevailed.    Unrest swept across the cities and suburbs.  Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, ordered a thorough investigation of the assassination by setting up the Warren Commission.  The commission, however, came under scrutiny and suspicion after concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, despite significant evidence to the contrary that the commission failed to include in its report.  The nation was not placated, and conspiracy theories sprouted.  Distrust hung in the air at every corner of society, and it did not go away.

Everyone mourned the loss of JFK.  At the time, immigration was low in America, but the foreign-born here felt as attached to the president as did everyone else.  Some immigrants had come to America chiefly because of presidential leadership and what the office of the presidency meant to America.  America’s president was unlike European monarchs, chancellors, and prime ministers.  The president served as the enforcer of America’s Constitution, and the Constitution protected Americans from political abuse, which, in turn, promised opportunity to carve out their destiny. Nothing spelled freedom like America.      

While America dwelled on JFK’s loss, the Communists in Southeast Asia were making noises and rattling sabers, particularly in Vietnam.  U2 reconnaissance was quiet, with the spy planes being vulnerable to improved high-altitude missiles.  The capture of Air Force pilot Gary Powers was fresh on everyone’s mind, and the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khruschev was vocally terrorizing the UN.  The American victor of WWII was fading significantly from the international limelight.

A cultural shift was in the wind.  The Baby Boomers were coming of age and outnumbering the WWII veterans.  Technology was advancing, with more refined electronics, sharper television, and more choices.  Public Broadcasting was available, and the newscasters were becoming less objective in their coverage of the day’s events.  Walter Cronkite, America’s anchor, began speaking out against the war in Vietnam and voicing America’s inability to win it.  America’s taste for war was souring.  After Kennedy’s death, Johnson had difficulty convincing his country that the corrupt leaders of South Vietnam, whom even the Vietnamese despised, were any better suited to run the divided nation than were the communists of the North.  As the 1960s pressed on, America under Lyndon Johnson increased its presence in Southeast Asia, leading to public pushback against the policy and the news media taking a negative position with respect to Vietnam's support.  While most Baby Boomers could not yet vote, they vocally dominated the mainstream media. 

To distract America from the tensions of the Vietnam War, the unsettling Cold War, and American racial unrest, the British rock band The Beatles burst onto the entertainment scene.  They were an immediate cultural influence on teenage America.  Hairstyles and fashions changed for young men.  On the coattails of the Beatles came other British bands like The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, and many others.  The so-called British Invasion changed Rock ‘n Roll, displacing some American musicians from the charts.  The Beach Boys, California’s surfing rockers, were nearly scuttled by the new voice and sound.  Elvis Presley, the King, not only survived but also achieved the admiration of the British invaders, along with several blues artists like B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley.   Thanks to the British Invasion, the Black sound of Motown took off with the emergence of the Supremes, the Four Tops, and a multitude of black artists who might never have gotten a start if not for the British revitalization of American folk art. 

As racial issues migrated out of the South to infiltrate the entire country, the Democrat Party found a cause to wrap itself around.  Despite the U.S. Constitution’s abolition of slavery, the assurance of Black people to vote, and the elevation of Black people to the rank of complete U.S. citizens, the Democrats pushed for additional and specific legislation to address racial inequality.  In 1965, voting rights became law, and in 1968, additional civil rights legislation prohibited discrimination in housing.  Coupled with the civil rights legislation was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  Before the Act, immigration quotas favored northern and western Europeans.  The Immigration and Nationality Act broadened immigration qualifications to include Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans.  In effect, Congress ineptly attempted to legislate love, respect, and racial equality, when all it really did was increase resentment and scorn.  The increase in immigration stirred discomfort among those already here, who were struggling to maintain livelihoods and pursue self-improvement. 

Democrats began constructing a voter base by publicly championing the cause of oppressed people.  The Democrats publicly took a stand in support of minorities but privately did little to enforce their own rules.  United States Senator Robert Byrd, a leading Democrat who advocated for racial progress, was actually a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan!   President Lyndon Johnson, after sponsoring the 1968 Civil Rights legislation, prophetically proclaimed, “I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” 

The 1968 presidential campaign was a turning point in the United States' socio-cultural landscape.  Lyndon Johnson was eligible to run for office but announced on nationwide TV that he would not.  His failed policies in Vietnam and the lip service he sponsored for the civil rights movement had caught up with him and the hypocrisy that was beginning to define the Democratic Party.  The presidential race came down to a choice between Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, and the Republican the voters had rejected in 1960.  Richard Nixon, loser to Kennedy by a slim margin, beat out Humphrey in a landslide victory that signaled America’s distaste for the Vietnam War and its dissatisfaction with societal and economic breakdown.  The cost of living was rising, and international respect for the United States was waning.  A new voice was on the horizon, shouting for change.

The free love movement that grew out of San Francisco, and opposition to the Vietnam War, joined forces with Negro civil rights protests, and America found itself widening a gap between the liberal Left and the Conservative Right.  In the summer of 1969, young people from around the northeast gathered in the tiny hamlet of Woodstock, New York, for a rock concert that would define a new generation of American philosophy.  Drug abuse and moral decay swept across the social structure of the country.  Much of the debauchery went unnoticed by vast segments of society, but a great deal took hold.  The country was large and spread out, with room for everyone and shifts in ideology.  The Cubans and Central Americans who had flocked to southern Florida did not stir discomfort in Texas, New England, or the West.  America was still of the mindset that taking in refugees and unfortunates seeking freedom and opportunity was progressive.  A little social and cultural change here and there could do no harm.  After all, America still had its history, respect, and promise of liberty.  She was Christian and tolerant.  At the end of the decade, the American Flag continued to hang in public offices, and prayer opened most public gatherings, albeit fewer than in only ten years earlier —a slight alteration to society that few noticed. 

The Liberals advocated for peace, love, a halt to the war, and appeasement of the Black cause.  Terms like Negro and colored were rejected.  Black was in vogue.  The conservative Right sympathized with the Black plight but was not yet ready to change social or political standings to advance racial equality and sided with Johnson’s push to increase the war effort.  The nation's love affair with the warmth and flamboyance of the Kennedy administration soured under Lyndon Johnson’s cold supremacy and Richard Nixon’s pragmatism. 

Fashion changed in the late sixties.  Music became bolder and more electric, and messages of rebellion and dissociation filled the airwaves.  Dr. Timothy Leary gained prominence with advocacy of drug use, particularly LSD, and encouraged his disciples to tune in, turn on, and drop out.  Morality began a slow decay that not only allowed for a more permissive lifestyle but also encouraged it.  The divorce rate rose, and infidelity was less shameful.  Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance began a slow exit from public assemblies. 

Lost in the turmoil of the 1960s was the matter of continued illegal immigration.  The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 sought to change legal immigration by ending the quota system that had been in place since the 1920s.  The Immigration and Nationality Act was designed to curb immigration from southern and eastern Europe, particularly Catholics from Poland and Italy, and Russian Jews.  Immigration shifted from European to Asian and Latin American. With the increased numbers of Latin American immigrants, the illegals who were already in the country and those entering were lost among the legal entries.  Operation Wetback managed to deport some illegals, but not as many as had been intended.  In the wake of misguided attempts to even out America’s ethnicity, the road for illegal immigration had been repaved.  America was changing but not necessarily improving. 

 

Leftward Ho!

Twenty-five years after the end of World War II, 1970 arrived, and the economy was tanking.  Immigration continued even as unemployment numbers rose.  The economy, which had been stalling, was now deteriorating.  Thanks to the pending 26^th Amendment, pushed through by Democrats hoping to win the youth vote, many baby boomers would be able to vote in the 1972 presidential election.  The hippie movement, founded in San Francisco, promoted a new music style that was highlighted in mainstream media and spread from the West Coast to quickly dominate music stations across the country.  As the sixties concluded, there remained sufficient conservatism in the country to write off the hippies as a passing fad, but within only a few years, a new influence in American culture had taken root that was anything but temporary.  A drug culture advocating the use of marijuana and LSD descended on America, and Flower Children were born.    

In 1970, as the war in Vietnam raged on, the memory of the JFK assassination remained fresh in people’s minds, but the government was still without explanation beyond Oswald.  The government promised to end the war in Vietnam but did not.  Almost unnoticed, a widespread distrust of government swept across the land, fueled by a mainstream news media increasingly aligned with the nation’s Leftist political tenancies. 

Vietnam War resistance became so intense that even some Conservatives expressed anti-war sentiment.  Young men fled to Canada to avoid the draft.  Soldiers deserted.  During Nixon’s campaign for re-election, Jane Fonda shamefully visited North Vietnam to demonstrate support for the North Vietnamese.  As badly as America opposed the war, Fonda’s sympathizing with the enemy crossed the line.  She was heavily criticized for her actions then and is still resented for it to this day.  Only political activists like Tom Hayden, Bill Ayers, and the underground extremist groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers applauded her.

Racial issues rose with arguments being made that Blacks were being unfairly exploited to fight in Vietnam over privileged Whites (Caucasians had been done away with as well) who could escape military commitment by attending college or buy their way out of the draft with generous contributions to political interests.  Illegal immigration rose steadily.  Legal migration shifted away from Europe to include African, Caribbean, and Latin American countries.  Diversity was the new lexicon.  Hyphenation crept into citizenship identification.  As Black people increasingly became African Americans, Latin Americans pushed for their own lexicon to move away from White inclusion. 

The United States withdrew troops from Southeast Asia after Nixon took office in 1973, essentially marking the end of the war, with America suffering an embarrassing loss to what many military experts considered an inferior enemy.  Had China not replenished Vietnamese forces with its own nationals, Vietnam could not have achieved victory.  In 1975, the Vietnam War officially ended, and the United States bade a discreditable exit, much akin to the escape from Afghanistan in 2021 under a far more disgraceful president.

The humiliating loss of the Vietnam War not only diminished America’s greatness, but it also came on the heels of a political debacle that should never have happened.  In the spring of 1972, Richard Nixon’s bid for re-election was in full swing.  His popularity was healthy.  His foreign policies brought the United States worldwide respect, despite a failing war in Southeast Asia.  Manufacturing was high, unemployment low.  The Nixon economy was not booming, but it was healthy.  While protest movements against the war dominated the mainstream media, America’s comfort level with domestic tranquility was stable and rising.  Racial tensions continued, and awareness of racial inequality was keen, but appeasement was being addressed.  Immigration continued seemingly unchecked, and ethnic based populations expanded.   

Illegal immigration picked up steam.  The discontent that accompanied the resentment of the Vietnam War and the rise of the overall protest and free love movements overshadowed an almost completely neglected escalation in immigration.  Significant numbers of Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean migrants, legal and illegal, drifted into the country, ignored entirely by the mainstream news media.   

The Bracero Program, which brought Mexican laborers into America on a temporary basis, ended in 1964, but that did not stop the illegal entry.  Illegal immigration surged in the 1970s and went largely ignored by the federal government and the mainstream media.  Public reaction was widespread and loud.  Illegals were stealing jobs, sucking the welfare system, and straining law enforcement.  The government passed the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1976, which was designed to curb illegal immigration and empower the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but it only served to increase illegal immigration and bypass the INS.  Illegal immigration could not be stopped by federal legislation, and the influx of Hispanics continued out of control.   

To further disguise the influx of migrants, an almost unnoticeable event found its way into the news.  A group of burglars had been caught breaking into the Democrat National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.  The trespassers were arrested and charged, and the news story almost went away.  Nixon was re-elected in a landslide victory, and the nation settled down to wait for the Vietnam War to end.  With news stories covering the war and Nixon’s plans for a second term, the media found itself cruising along on day-to-day coverage of a strong economy, with little to spark the American public's interest.      

Early in Nixon’s second term, however, a story broke that rekindled the Watergate Hotel break-in flame.  It was discovered that the apprehended burglars were not simple plumbers as had been previously reported, but low-level CIA operatives hired by White House staff members.  Nixon’s presidency plunged into a defensive mode from which it never recovered.  To make matters worse, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew had earlier been found to have taken bribes and used his position to promote personal gain.  While the president tried to convince the American people that he was not a crook, the Vice President was found to be exactly that.  Agnew resigned in disgrace and was replaced by an inconsequential Republican Senator, Gerald R. Ford, a former member of the discredited Warrant Commission.  A year later, Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment, and Ford served out the balance of the term.    

One of the greatest blunders in American politics was the Congressional effort in 1974 to force Richard M. Nixon from office.  He had committed no crime.  Contrary to the allegations proffered by the mainstream media, Nixon had not sanctioned the Watergate break-in.  Acting alone, and without the president’s knowledge, several White House staff members conspired to use CIA assets to uncover Democrat campaign strategies going into the 1972 re-election finale.  As it turned out, the plot was unnecessary, and the conspirators ultimately faced criminal charges and prison.  Nixon, whose only crime was not condemning his staff for the unethical behavior, was a credit to the White House in his day. Nixon established relations with China that no other president could and was instrumental in negotiating nuclear arms treaties with the Soviets.  He ended the draft and, later, the Vietnam War, and restored respect for the military.  The American economy surged under Nixon.  Had he not been crucified by a dishonest media, Nixon likely would have gone on to secure the White House for a subsequent Republican president that would have sidestepped the debacle that became the Carter administration and prevented the socio-political pendulum from swinging irreversibly to the Left.          

After Nixon, the country rolled along for two years without incident.  Society did well, but not great, under Ford.  War protests faded with the fall of Vietnam, and Nixon’s policies kept the American economy stable for Gerald Ford.  Suburbia continued to grow, and the entertainment media advanced technologically, providing color television to most households and spectacular motion pictures on ever-expanding screens.  The music industry took off electronically, becoming louder and more flamboyant.  Fashion was colorful, hairstyles were lengthy, men's shirt collars were huge, ties were wide, trousers were belled, and skirts were skimpy.  Black entertainment artists became widely popular in music and film.  Morality was overcome by a wave of permissiveness, and a free-love atmosphere became the norm.  Prayer and the pledge of allegiance departed public schools and Congress, and abortion became legal with a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973 that had no basis in US Constitutional law.

Immigration continued, and the nation began an unhealthy trend toward diversification by ethnicity.  The Immigration & Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 brought the focus of immigration to the West.  It set a 20,000-person limit on each country of North America and Asia.  The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1976 opened the doors for widespread migration from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  During the decade, nearly five million people came to the United States legally, but what went unreported was the influx of illegal immigration.  Refugees received federal assistance, and the numbers were too large for the government to manage effectively.  Illegal immigrants took advantage of the chaos.  Floods of illegals from Mexico and Central America scurried into the United States to join the multitude of destitutes who entered legally.    

The great melting pot that had once defined America’s culture was becoming a collection of distinct races and nationalities, more concerned with self-recognition than with Americanization.  Bilingualism became commonplace.  South Florida was overtaken by Cuban and South American refugees.  Mexicans and Central Americans populated everything from Texas to California.  Despite public outcry, the courts sided with the illegals, declaring they could not be denied social services, and children could not be held out of schools regardless of residential status.  With the undocumented population growth came an increase in unemployment and a dip in the economy.  Demand began to outweigh supply.

In 1976, voters, now well represented by Baby Boomers with a sour taste in their mouths from the dishonesty of the Nixon administration and the ineptitude of Gerald Ford, turned to the Democrats for relief and a new direction.  Jimmy Carter, Georgia’s peanut-farmer governor, won the Democrat nomination and entered the White House by barely squeaking out a victory over the ineffective campaign of Gerald Ford.  It soon became evident, however, that Jimmy Carter was ill-prepared to govern an entire nation and assume a place of prominence on the world stage.  Overall, Jimmy Carter’s presidency was a disaster.  Carter’s one shining accomplishment while in office was the Camp David Accords, which brokered a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. 

Carter expanded government by creating the Department of Education, which accomplished little when it was established and achieved even less as it matured.  He foolishly returned the Panama Canal to Panama, endangering the future of American shipping.  He deregulated trucking and airline travel, resulting in higher consumer costs and a shrinking economy.  Unemployment rose under Carter, and he was helpless to do anything about it.  He managed to secure diplomatic relations with China, but destabilized American trade with the Chinese.  

Carter’s greatest failing came when he was unable to prop up the Shah of Iran and maintain that country’s Western-friendly government.  An internal coup d’état toppled the Shah and returned the exiled theocracy to the country.  The new Islamic government turned violently against the United States by seizing the American embassy in Tehran and taking 52 American hostages.  Carter’s diplomatic skills broke down in the Middle East, doing nothing to ease the oil embargo that drove American gasoline prices to nearly three times their normal level.  America was outraged.  To make matters worse, Carter’s attempt to use the military to free the hostages collapsed in the Middle Eastern desert due to poor planning and inadequate military training.  Jimmy Carter made America an international laughingstock, leaving Americans desperate to save face.

In the 1970s, the United States was so embroiled in domestic and international political catastrophes that it failed to recognize the need for immigration controls.  New arrivals were not finding the opportunity afforded those who came before them a decade earlier.  Dependence on government assistance was transitioning from the exception to the norm, and the government was unprepared to manage its overbearing immigration programs.  This oversight would prove to have long-reaching and irreversible impacts.

 

Too Little Too Late

By 1980, the economy was the primary topic of political policy.  Carter’s economy was in the tank.  Gas prices were over a dollar per gallon, home heating oil was through the roof, and everyone’s favorite V-8 was parked because no one could afford to fill the gas tank.  Japanese imports that boasted double-figure miles per gallon were all the rage, despite their small engines and limited seating.  There was no letup to the oil embargo imposed on the U.S. years earlier by the OPEC nations, and Iran continued to hold the American hostages.  Morale in the country was at rock bottom.  Jimmy Carter was powerless to improve the economy, and by the presidential campaign’s final months, Ronald Reagan’s popularity was nationwide.  He swept to victory in November on the simple campaign slogan, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”  On Inauguration Day, Iran, unconditionally but unquestioningly in fear of Ronald Reagan’s retaliation, released every American hostage

Reagan burst into office with the promise to improve everyone's lives and secure freedom for the American hostages held captive in Iran.  The country breathed a collective sigh of relief, and everyone felt like the future was on the rise when the Iranian hostages came home.  Gas prices remained high, but the oil embargo eased.  Japanese cars grew in popularity, darting around freeways where speed limits had been lowered to conserve fuel.  Speed and comfort on the road gave way to quickness and ease of parking.  Unemployment remained high, but Reagan promised reform and delivered with tax cuts that spurred the economy and put many people back to work.  Jimmy Carter went away like a bad dream, and the 80s became a period of national rejuvenation.

Immigration soared to unprecedented numbers in the 80s.  More illegal immigrants were in the country than ever.  Immigration services were overwhelmed by deportations and could not keep up.  By the middle of the decade, nearly five million immigrants had been added to the population that had now grown to nearly 240 million people, an increase of 80 million people in thirty years.  The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens, mostly Hispanic, and penalized employers for hiring undocumented workers.  Immigration was completely out of control.  Latin immigration soared.  Ronald Reagan's measures to improve the economy and raise the standard of living only served to encourage illegals, largely from Mexico and Central America, to cross the southern border and take advantage of potential job opportunities and government subsistence. Latin American immigration was further encouraged and supported by American Latin American communities, churches, and sanctuary activists.     

Racial tensions softened as Latin immigration increased.  Blacks enjoyed greater social and political opportunities through efforts by Black activist organizations like the NAACP, Affirmative Action, which expanded access to higher education, and an overall public awareness movement that emphasized acceptance and appreciation for Black culture.  Blacks held twenty seats in Congress in 1985, the KKK was fragmented and, while active in the South, ineffective throughout most of the nation.  Black bigotry overall was easing.  Racial integration nationwide was commonplace.  Blacks were influential in the entertainment industry.  Many motion pictures featured Black leads, and television offered significant Black programming. 

Black athletes were commonplace in amateur and professional sports.  Many became role models for student aspirants, both Black and White.  Overall, conditions for Black Americans had improved dramatically over the past twenty years.  Racial stability was taking root.  Interracial relationships sprang up.  Genuine integration blossomed, only to be obscured by a new kind of racial strife.  Blacks, currently doing well, began a campaign of resurrecting the sins of the past, blaming Whites for Black slavery in the 18^th century and Black oppression in the 20^th.  A new, vengeful Black voice took to the airways, and it was not pleasant. 

Internationally, the damage caused by Carter’s total incompetence was being repaired by Reagan’s diplomacy and commitment to building up America’s military and industrial resources in the face of Communist aggression.  Reagan’s domestic message was one of confidence and encouragement.  He spoke for everyone and supported growth across all sectors of society, from race-based relations to immigration to the preservation of the establishment.  Reagan was a president for all Americans, and all Americans, White, Black, Asian, and Latin, admired and appreciated him.  His popularity won him every state in the nation except Michigan in his 1984 re-election bid. 

In 1988, the presidential reins were relinquished to George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, and the result was abject disaster.  Bush failed miserably in maintaining the Reagan doctrine.  Thanks to Reagan’s policies with the Soviet Union and that nation’s failing economy, the USSR finally collapsed in 1989, but Bush failed to take advantage of a golden opportunity to intercede in Russia and influence the new country’s direction in international politics.  Carelessly, Bush permitted a new group of immigrants to come to the United States.  The Russian criminal mob bosses fled the dilapidated Russian economy to plunder America’s burgeoning one.  Bush was not alone in ignoring the Russian invasion.  The Democrats encouraged Russian immigration and completely ignored Russian sponsorship of drug smuggling and human trafficking.  The Democrats began an earnest effort to support anything backed by or promoted by Republicans, regardless of the effect on American social and economic stability.  As a result, the establishment of the Russian mafia in the United States went without interference.   

Bush wrecked the American economy by caving to Democrat pressure to raise taxes and expand government programs.  He signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which sought to limit the number of visas issued per year, but in effect, it only added to the waves of illegals entering the country seeking jobs and social opportunities.  Employment of illegals resulted in widespread unemployment for minorities and the poor.  Bush’s popularity plummeted like a falling rock, and his bungling efforts to manage a country on a successful economic and military track would lay the groundwork for political programs that would diminish America’s greatness, both internationally and domestically. Halfway through Bush’s presidency, his popularity bottomed out, and national politics took a disastrous turn.  In 1990, the Berlin Wall fell, and the U.S. welcomed refugees from behind the former Iron Curtain, which mostly served to reinforce the ranks of organized Russian crime in the U.S.

  

A Deeper Hole

In November of 1992, the country elected what would be erroneously termed America’s first Black president.  William Jefferson Clinton, governor of Arkansas, emerged to capture the Democrat nomination for president, dragging a wealth of scandal with him that would haunt America long after his retirement from office.  Bill Clinton’s contribution to Black causes was minimal, but a progressively left-leaning media credited Clinton with championing Black cultural advances.  In reality, Clinton’s political policies had little to do with advancing racial equality.    

The entire Clinton administration was so crooked, corrupt, and scandalous that no one could focus on racial issues or immigration.  The entire mainstream media, protectors of their darling Clintons, busied themselves by sidestepping criminal accusations, insider stock trading, and sexual misconduct.  The Clintons were a political embarrassment for the country.  The entire world came to recognize the United States as another example of corrupted power.  The American presidency was no more respectable than some third-world juntas. 

In 1994, the Clintons initiated the Ukraine fiasco that the United States is still engaged in today.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia and the United States came together to map a plan for moving forward and limiting nuclear arms threats to each other.  Ukraine was disarmed to lessen the threat against NATO in Eastern Europe, and a pact was entered into by the United States and NATO to defend an unarmed Ukraine against aggression.

Bill Clinton proved to be an adequate president, albeit an irresponsible one.  Racial tensions around the country eased under his administration, largely due to favorable press coverage anointing Clinton as a champion of civil rights.  The truth was, his policies were no more beneficial to Blacks than had been any president’s before him, but the mainstream media painted Clinton as a civil rights warrior.  He was charismatic and appeared on Black programs and at Black assemblies, but he did nothing legislatively to improve Black lives.  By painting Clinton as a social justice advocate, the media distracted the public from the corruption that permeated the Clinton White House.  Hillary had engaged in insider stock trading prior to Bill’s run for the presidency, cashing in on advice that turned a $1,000 investment in Cattle Futures into a $100,000 return by the end of the same year.  There was also the White-Water Real Estate scandal in which Clinton was involved while governor of Arkansas.  He and a group of cronies, with the help of Hillary’s Rose Law Firm, duped hundreds of buyers out of their investment in a bogus land deal.  The Clintons skated on that swindle, but the government was out over $70 million, and some members of the scam, of lesser importance than the presidential nominee, went to jail.  Bill Clinton’s shamelessness did not stop with land schemes.  Several women accused him of rape and sexual assault, but all of them, thanks to Hillary’s influence, were discredited.  And, of course, there is the infamous Monica Lewinsky nonsense.

To make the Clinton administration even more ridiculous, Vice President Al Gore launched an idiotic campaign to promote Global Warming and the threat to the environment posed by American industrialization and fossil fuel consumption.  None of Gore’s foolish rhetoric ever produced viable facts, although the banner of Global Warming was picked up by numerous environmental groups, and later the crisis was changed to Climate Change after research and scientific studies failed to produce any significant global temperature increases.

Throughout the Clinton administration, one very important impact on American life was the surge in immigration.  More illegals came into the United States under Clinton’s watch than under any other administration.  The mainstream media, now heavily aligned with the Democrats and irresponsible with their presentation of facts, covered up the widespread damage caused to the economy and job markets by illegal immigration.  Unemployment rose, particularly among Black people, and the housing market struggled to keep up with demand.  Because illegal immigrants dominated the low-income ranks, underprivileged Blacks were driven to accept lesser-paying jobs than they could have otherwise been entitled.  This kept Black people out of the housing market by eliminating them from adequately qualifying for home purchases.  This inequity would become a debilitating real estate nightmare in the next decade.

Bill Clinton served two terms, shadowed in controversy, and escaped legal prosecution only through the defense perpetrated by an extremely biased mainstream media.  The Democrat Party was so left-leaning in the 1990s that scholars compared it to European and Soviet socialists.  While immigration was irresponsibly out of control and the economy could not sustain the popular growth or the strain placed on the nation’s debt by financing failing subsidy programs, the mainstream media continued to paint a portrait of economic stability and opportunity.  The illegal immigration glut was barely mentioned.  The United States had become a bilingual nation, and the Latin American population had ventured well beyond the southern border states to the Northwest, Northeast, and upper Midwest.  As opportunity grew for Hispanics, the quality of life diminished for Blacks, and the penalty the American people would ultimately pay for this incredible blunder could not yet be imagined.      

By the year 2000, the nation’s population had ballooned to over 280 million, an increase of over 50 million in only 20 years, 17 million of whom were predominantly Hispanic immigrants.  This growth, by itself, was not catastrophic by any means for a nation with more than enough room to accommodate twice that many.  The problem was that this growth was not self-funded.  Many immigration programs, particularly for Europeans, required personal financing, but those immigrants coming to America under refugee status did not have to be self-sufficient.  The federal government provided, and continues to provide, numerous programs to finance and care for Immigrants who cannot care for themselves or their families. 

Due in large part to irresponsible government immigration policies, the decade from 2000 to 2010 saw 16 million immigrants come into the United States, a large portion of whom were under refugee status.  Because of spatial accommodations, this population growth had little impact on the lifestyle or living standards of most Americans.  The United States is a huge country with vast unoccupied space.  The country prides itself on being an immigration nation, the world’s melting pot.  As depicted on the Statue of Liberty, the United States welcomes all immigration regardless of personal status.  Nonetheless, there is a financial impact to absorbing millions of people unable to provide for themselves or contribute to the economy, but the government does not seem overly concerned about the cost of growing its population. 

In the 2000s, life was comfortable for most Americans.  The Middle Class was managing, buying homes, financing college educations, enriching agriculture and manufacturing.  The economy was relatively stable, and unemployment was manageable.  Racial tensions were respectable, and integration was widespread.  Bigotry between Blacks and Whites was virtually erased, with the exception of the perpetually lingering collection of hatred that could not be mollified regardless of racial disposition.  The United States had come a long way in fifty years toward establishing racial equilibrium.  Blacks were popular in the entertainment industry, advancing professionally in corporate, medical, and legal fields across the board.  Interracial relationships were common.  Segregation was a choice, not an imperative. 

On September 11, 2001, national unification swept over the country like a tidal wave.  Eighteen Muslim terrorists conspired to hijack four jetliners and attack targets in New York and Washington, D.C.  Two of the jets crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, collapsing both buildings, and killing nearly 3,000 businesspeople and first responders.  Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, causing significant damage and loss of life, but nothing compared to the New York Loss.  A third jet was thought to be destined to take out the White House, but it was neutralized, and the hijackers believed to have been overtaken by some of the passengers.  That jet crashed into the vacant countryside, causing no more damage than the loss of life on board.  The shock of the attack left the population stunned across the country.  American flags flew from commercial trucks and private automobiles on every highway and city.  Schools and businesses displayed the flag, and the Pledge of Allegiance was reborn.  America came together as a united people, unlike any other time in history.  The explosion of patriotism and camaraderie dissipated after about six months, but the sense of unity across races lingered far beyond.   

That brief interlude of peace, love, and understanding came crashing down in 2008.  After nearly 250 years of racial intolerance, the nation had finally come together to accept all races and nationalities as Americans, and to exemplify that acceptance, overwhelmingly elected Barack Hussein Obama to become the genuine first Black President of the United States.  In return, the loathsome Obama undertook to announce that his officially stated goal as president was to fundamentally change the United States.  He made no effort to disguise his intent and set about accomplishing his mission immediately upon taking office.  Obama took everything good about America, all that had been achieved in the past fifty years, to achieve racial harmony, and turned the country upside down.  He reestablished racial hatred with the intensity of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, but he did it in reverse.  He stoked the fires of racial hate in the Black population.  He encouraged Blacks to turn against Whites in every facet of society.  He persuaded Black leadership to look at Whites as the cause of Black oppression over the years, even though that oppression had been nearly eradicated.  Obama gave hate new life, and the predominantly left-wing mainstream media rallied to promote him as something Messianic.

One of Obama’s most critical blunders, or perhaps intentional infliction, was the opening of immigration to Middle Eastern nations, particularly Muslims.  Islam had been invading Western Europe and Britain for years, creating disharmony in those countries with alarming ease.  Obama allowed that same infiltration to come to America.  The nations that supported and protected the vial extremists that had murdered over 3,000 Americans in September 11, 2001, were invited to enter the United States, and the immigration officials’ unwillingness to investigate the migrants for fear of being identified as racists, allowed a culture of hate and evil to take root in America.  

The political slant adopted by the news media overall was one of anti-Americanism that boldly exposed itself after the dust settled on the 9/11 tragedy.  Not one element of the mainstream news and entertainment industry dared speak out against the catastrophic policies and convictions of the Satanic Obama.  His seed of hatred was planted and grew like a cancer instantly, overtaking social media, federal and state politics, journalism everywhere, and polluting higher education.  He gave birth to the violent Black Lives Matter movement and founded the Antifa organization that sponsored race-based hatred demonstrations across the country. 

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanual, in a criminal effort to empower America’s enemies, undertook to transport arms to Mexican cartels to make them stronger and more effective in their drug smuggling and human trafficking activities.  The news media, in its misguided allegiance to a false god, completely covered up Emanuel’s treacherous activities even after it was exposed.  Wikipedia and similar sources outright lied to protect the Obama administration from endangering America’s national security.  Today, Fast and Furious, as Emmanuel’s cartel empowerment was labeled, is denied as a misrepresentation promoted by conspiracy theorists, but the damage inflicted on the United States by these motivated and armed cartels has not come about accidentally.  Since Fast and Furious, the Mexican cartels have been responsible for millions of illegals violating the southern border.  Enormous expenses have been expended by the federal government to combat the flow of drugs and humans from Mexico into America.  Obama’s promise to fundamentally change America was met, and Americans will be paying for his treason for years to come.   

Thankfully, Obama was replaced in 2016 by Donald John Trump, but Obama’s legacy could not be altered substantially.  By 2016, so much damage had been caused by Barack Hussein Obama that the trend of shifting of American politics and journalistic integrity to the ultraleft intensified.  Before Obama, the mainstream media and the Democrat Party entered a collective ambition to move away from not only conservatism or even unbiased objectivity, but to engage in a set of beliefs and practices that was substantially socialist.  American values were attacked as anti-American.  Christianity was ridiculed.  A tolerance for the absurd had emerged from the Clinton administration, and George H. Bush was portrayed as an inept buffoon, although there was probably significant truth to the accusation.  A concerted move to the far left by the mainstream media portrayed socialist-advocating politicians as advancing the American agenda when exactly the opposite was the case.  The resulting “Swamp” of corrupt D.C. politics became a target for the remarkably conservative Donald Trump.  Unfortunately, Trump’s overwhelming support from the American people was maliciously impugned by the dishonest Left as a whole. 

Hillary Clinton, who bitterly lost to Trump in the 2016 election, used her extensive influence in government to channel the Department of Justice against Trump.  False allegations of collusion – their word – with Russia that never occurred were leveled against him.  Hillary, behind the scenes and shielded by deceitful members of Congress, engineered a campaign of personal and professional attacks against Trump to defame him and set him up as a national traitor.  Contrary to assertions against him, Trump launched economic development that benefited the national economy, lowered unemployment, especially among minorities, and restored American manufacturing.  He quieted tensions from China and North Korea.  Overall, despite negative publicity from the Left, Trump brought prosperity to America and international respect.  His approval ratings from the Black community exceeded Obama’s by substantial margins.  Some traditionally Democrat supporting Hispanics shifted their preference to Donald Trump, but their approval was misrepresented, if not totally ignored, by the mainstream media. 

Trump’s policies, both domestic and foreign, benefited the lower ranks of the employment market.  Manufacturers hired unskilled labor, something Obama, Bush, and Clinton could not drive.    Because of Trump and his domestic economic programs, housing became affordable again and available to the first-time buyer, many of whom were Black and Hispanic.  The media purposely ignored Trump’s efforts and would not credit him with helping the poorer classes or spurring the economy.  Nothing Trump did throughout his term was applauded by the Democrats or their collaborative media.  The working-class poor, however, worshipped the man.  Their approval would have a significant impact on his future campaigns.    

In 2020, the nation experienced the most controversial presidential election in its history.  A tremendously popular Donald Trump received 11 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016, yet lost the election to Joe Biden, who did not campaign due to a COVID-19 panic.  The election outcome immediately reversed every single Trump policy.  That is to say, the economy that had been rising steadily and the unemployment numbers that had been reducing reversed.  Biden opened the borders to unlimited immigration and immediately destroyed the job market for Blacks and the working poor throughout the country.  Biden lifted all restrictions on immigration, which allowed a vast criminal element to enter the country and wreak so much havoc that the Biden-friendly anti-American left-wing mainstream media could not cover up the damage.  Thousands of illegal aliens crossed the border every month.  By the end of Biden’s only term in office, over 30 million illegal aliens had entered the country, most of whom were criminal in nature.

Not only did the Biden administration remove immigration regulations, but it also provided air transportation for thousands to enter the country and settle in areas north, south, east, and west.  The Biden administration subsidized these illegals with driver’s licenses, cell phones, subsistence income, and housing.  Illegals were bused and flown from border crossing cities to locations throughout the country.  Some were transported to New York City, where they were provided with housing in government-confiscated hotels.  Many of the illegals understandably ended up in homeless camps in large cities.  San Francisco became a sewer of drug use, defecation, and escalating crime.  Seattle and Portland followed.  Unreported by the anti-American news media was the influx of millions of gang members, terrorists, and a host of other criminals expelled from countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Mexico, and Cuba.  The United States, for four straight years, became a dumping ground for the world’s human waste.

During that time, Donald Trump held campaign rallies to rail against the irresponsibility of a federal government that ignored national security.  In Trump’s audience were countless Blacks and Hispanics that the mainstream media could not disguise.  Minority support for Donald Trump was overwhelming because his domestic policies for the poor and underprivileged were generous and unprecedented.  Trump did more for the working poor than any other administration ever, and the mainstream media, the entertainment business, and the Democrat party hated him for it.  His opposition, so rooted in hatred for Trump, twice attempted to kill him.

Because of irresponsible and unchecked federal spending, the national debt ballooned to over $33 trillion, devaluing the American dollar relative to the Chinese Yen, lowering private property values, and endangering American investments.  No administration in the country's history inflicted as much economic damage as the Biden presidency, not even the atrocious Obama administration.  

By 2020, the mainstream media and the entire Democrat Party had moved so far to the Left as to be indistinguishable from any Communist regime anywhere.  Illegal voting was so widespread that anti-Americans were voted into office at all levels of government, and many were elected to seats in Congress.  News outlets, late-night talk shows, and even motion pictures depicted America as a Utopia for free people by ignoring the crime waves.  Entertainment celebrities spoke out in support of the anti-Americanism that swept across the country.  Support for the Biden administration was so pronounced that scandalous criminal activity, like blackmailing foreign officials, drug use, and human trafficking, all sourced in the White House was completely swept under the rug.

Immigration was a mess.  Illegals, supported by state and federal government offices and programs, took over immigration offices.  The corruption in immigration policies was so widespread that legitimate immigration was lost in the chaos, and nothing of legal immigration was reported anywhere.  The mainstream media had gone so corrupt that it concentrated soley on fabricating cover stories for the Biden administration’s transgressions.  The damage inflicted upon America by the Biden administration and the mainstream media’s enormous effort to cover abet him will not be fully appreciated by the American public for years, if ever. 

After a disastrous four years of Joe Biden, Donald Trump returned to office in January of 2025.  He immediately shut down the border and set about tracking down as many illegals as possible.  Unfortunately, so many millions of them were camouflaged by Democrat protectorates that only a fraction of what came in illegally could be apprehended and deported.  Sanctuary cities in states run by misguided Democrats allowed illegals to blend with the legitimate population, much the way the Viet Cong blended with Vietnamese citizens during the Vietnam War, and the way the Taliban intermingled with innocent Afghan citizens during the hapless American effort to root out America’s enemies in the Middle East.

 

What Now?

America’s adopted responsibility to care for those who could not or would not care for themselves is raising government spending to intolerable levels.  The nation’s national debt in 2000 was just under $6 trillion.  The spending trends the nation has embarked upon have raised that ceiling by six times over the last twenty-five years, not all of it due to immigration spending, but a sizable portion to caring for newcomers.  The problem with analyzing the nation’s spending programs is the unavailability of responses to honest statistical inquests. 

America is no longer the melting pot of foreign flavors and ideals.  Today, America has become corrupted and tainted with the bitter taste of what most of our citizens, or their parents and grandparents, sought to escape.  The haven that America promised for the world’s destitute has been infiltrated by a colossal collection of dysfunctional and dangerous parasites. 

We have arrived at a point in our nation’s life when important decisions must be made about our future.  Some seriously dangerous elements have seized our culture and threaten to steer it in a direction that will rob previous, current, and future generations of a glorious legacy that no other country in the world can claim.  In the prophetic words of Ronald Reagan, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”   We are at a crossroads, and decisions must be made about which route to take.  We have three options:

• We can continue along the road we are on. This means extending our lives and those of our offspring into a future of appeasement and uncertainty.  It means entrusting everything we have to an unqualified future, influenced by outside agencies that may or may not want what is good or bad for America.  Our government has become bloated, incompetent, and entirely corrupt.  We have no idea what lies ahead on our current path because it has no definition.  It is bridled with only hope and best wishes.  Good luck is not my preferred travel path for the next millennium.
• We can turn Left and go the way of Globalism that Joe Biden introduced during his four disastrous years in the White House. This road is one of absolute certainty.  We will enter the cultural sphere of Western Europe.  People like George Soros, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama will decide what is best for you and your children.  That will mean a return to open borders and unchecked infiltration into the country by the dregs of the earth.  It will spell the end of Christianity and the beginning of a secularism that will open the door for Islam and a rewriting of our US Constitution.  The Constitution will have to be rewritten to justify what the government and the courts will perpetrate upon America.  Ultimately, this leftist utopia will lead us into deeper fiscal debt, elevated inflation, and a crashed economy that will make the Great Depression look like a cornucopia of blessings.  Democrats and the Left will grow government to heights that will crash in on itself.  We will become Europe, Cuba, and China.  Eventually, the U.S. dollar will collapse.  The American dream will cease to exist.
• We can turn Right and recoup lost values and our hijacked culture. We can reject the call of the rest of the world, resurrect our Constitution, impeach the corrupt judges who reject the Law of the Land, and return to a society of law and order.  This will require embracing Christianity, rejecting Islam, and shrinking government.  Make no mistake; Christianity and Islam are not compatible.  That has been proven through the ages and continues to be illustrated in Western Europe (with the exceptions of Poland and Hungary).   Western Europe, for the most part, has rejected Christianity, which is why Islam can thrive.  What’s happening to Europe sickens Europeans, but they are powerless to do anything to stop the influx of Islam and cultural chaos because they do not have rules or laws resembling our Constitution.  With our Constitution revived and our government officials and judges held to account by its provisions, we can end the anarchy strangling our nation.  We can go back to the 1950s, believe it or not.  We can hold the corrupt accountable, punish the crooked, and expel anti-Americans from America. 

The best thing America can do for Americans today is option 3.  We need to come together as a unified society of sanity and conservatism.  We need to bring God back into our lives.  We need to bring our military troops home from overseas bases and leave the world to care for the problems that it created for itself.  We need to end our ridiculous commitment to funding the United Nations and NATO.  The United States has no productive future saddled with those catastrophes.  We are a nation of unparalleled and collective cultures.  We need to embrace our diversity and grow our nation together as one unified caldron of human nature with no hyphens and no prejudices.  That is not a pipedream.  That is America.