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title: American Dreams and Realities Final Review

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# American Dreams and Realities Final Review

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## City on A Hill Myth

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## Overarching themes

- the myths are durable because they are flexible
- changing paradigm in beliefs
    - Much of the intellectual history of the 20th century has centered around the attempt to slay the dragon of absolutes
- "Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes" - Jimmy Buffet

## 1910s Challenges to the Myths 

### Modern Times
- Paul Johnson: May 19, 1919 - Einstein General Relativity
- Atoms are not irreducible, Heisenberg's uncertainty - human knowledge has limitations
- Pragamatism - William James: what is good and true is what works.

**Result of the shifts**
- Loss of the world of absolute truths
- Loss of faith in an ordered universe
- Lose optimism - Environment issues
- Lose self-confidence that humans can do anything

### Shift from Victorian Age to Modern Times

1\. Move from a personal moral code to impersonal and complicated ethnics - the Good Samaritan
2\. Move from absolute belief in free will to belief in determinism
3\. We move from absolute faith in reason to a new awareness of the power of the irrational in our lives
4\. We move from an absolute faith in progress to a fear that history may be regressing
5\. We move from a great deal of faith in the future to fear of the future
6\. **We have moved from a productive economy definition of self to a consumptive economy definition of self**

### Theodore Roosevelt - Symbol of the Time
- Use Victorian virtues and use them in modern context
- William White: "Roosevelt has to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse  at every funeral."
- embodied frontier and success myths

### Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
- "What we mean by the history of America is the history of the immigrant people"
- Northern, Western Europe $\Rightarrow$ Southern, Eastern Europe
- Immigrants move to the cities
- Melting pot $\Rightarrow$ Salad bowl $\Rightarrow$ Gumbo (all keep their own characteristics, but all contributes to the flavor)
- Each new immigrant group looked down upon by the previous
- Stanford Professor: 
        - > They are illiterate, docile, lacking in self-reliance and initiative, and not possessing Anglo-Teutonic conceptions of law, order, and government
- 3 stages:
    - Selection, Restriction, Exclusion
- Nativist Groups: regard immigrants as threat, not contributing to their American dream.

## 1920s Clash of the Myths: from Poor Richard to Jay Gatsby
### Major Themes
- **1920 Rural and urban population reached equilibrium**
- Rural Fundamentalism: **halt change** through legislation - today?
- A move from a productive to consumptive society
- A time of disillusionment that followed WWI

### Tensions in the 1920's
1\. Rural Fundamentalism and rise of anti-evolution crusades
    - halt change through legislation
    - Scopes Trial: Scopes taught evolution in school
    - Butler Law (1925, Tennessee): No evolution in classroom
2\. Growth of Nativism and Intolerence
    - William Simmons (KKK, 1915) 5 million members by 1925 Purify America via violence
        - against Catholics and foreigners (foreign devil myth)
    - Sacco and Vanzetti: Accused of robbing because they were from southern Europe (anarchists)
3\. Nobel Experiment
    - Based on the naive faith that fundamental change can occur through legislation
    - The South went to the Civil War with belief that God is on their side
        - blamed the loss on corrupted lifestyles (liquor, horse racing, dancing)
        - Prohibition: didn't work, only encouraged bootlegging, growth of gangs $\rightarrow$ 21$^{st}$ amendment legalized the sale of light beer
> In summary, the anti-evolution crusade, anti-immigration restrictions, nativism, and prohibition all had in common: Rural protestant fundamentalismâ€™s hostility to the city and desire to halt change through legislation. This was rural protestantsâ€™ last standing cause against urbanization.

### Life and Society: Significant Trends
1\. The impact of science on religion
2\. The rise of materialism
    - â€œPeople lose their fear of hell, and at the same time, they have less interest in heaven; they made more demands for material fulfillment on earth" 
3\. Loss of faith / disillusionment with ideals 
    - the Lost Generation, cynicism among intellectuals
    - Menkin: *Pearls of Prosperity* $\Rightarrow$ sarcasm
4\. Obsession with Freud and Sex 
    - contraceptives, automobiles, and pop culture
5\. Changes in the status of women
    - WWI led to higher status of women in society
    - Moved out of house for career
    - Feminists argued for equiality, extremes argued against sex
6\. The revolt of youth
    - less parental control and more freedom/independence, consequence of (5.)
7\. The American family underwent structural changes 
    - no longer nuclear, mother no longer the only homemaker
    - increase in divorce and decrease in births
    - children are burdens
    - no longer an economic unit

### The Great Migration - Early Black Right Movements

- African American moved to cities in the North and became a workforce
- "Black Codes":
    - No marriage between races, no land owning etc.
    - South tried to adjust to the abolishment of slavery by defining the role of the free black. The rights for the freed blackes were compromised
- Neo-negro nationalism: Marcos Garvey - United Negro Improvement Association
    - Claimed racism was so ingrained in the brains and lives of white Americans
    - The only hope for equiality for plack people is to leave the country and start their own black nation.
    - Marcos was found guilty of mail fraud
- Booker T. Washington
    - Black should focus on establishing the economic foundation (address at the Atlanta Exposition)
    - Endorsed segregation
    >"Cast down your bucket: concentrating your attention on practical work and life, take whatever talents and abilities you have and develop them. In all things that are purely social, we, the black race and the white race, can be as separate as the five fingers on the hand, yet as one hand in all things essential to progress."
- W.E.B Dubois
    - Attack on Washington's argument ("Atlanta Compromise")
    - More radical than Booker T Washington
    - editor of NAACP magazine
- NAACP (National Association for Advancement of Colored People) \
    - Main thrust was legal action by freeing Blacks and attain voting rights based on 14th & 15th Amendments (chartered slaves to wage slaves)
- Harlem Renaissance
    - literary and artistic movement where African Americans find their identity and presence

### The Screeching Halt

- By 1928 the economy was carrying the entire economy. The stock frenzy began in **March of 1928**. **October 1929** stock market crash, **November 1929**, reaches the lowest point

#### Underlying Causes of the Depression
1\. Over-expansion of credit at both public and private levels
    - people didn't understand the concept and believed that they could pay off in the future
2\. Weak banking system
    - tied to Gold Standard
3\. Relationship of the US to the world economy
    - US poured surplus money into Europe
4\. Disproportionate distribution of wealth
    - 1/3 of all personal income went into 5% of the population
5\. Depressed State of American Agriculture (Increased supply, decreased demand)
    - The European farming industry began recovering from WWI, market shrinks
    - Technology advancements led to over production: supply > demand

## 1930s: The Dream Falters, and the Myths Fade (Temporarily)
### Background
- The great depression was so severe that it essentially affected essential structures of American life and reshaped significantly many of the structures of our basic institutions
- Essential changes in the structure of American life and basic institutions
    - Dominant personality/symbol for the changes: Franklin D. Roosevelt
    - great communicator: reinstilled warmth and regained confidence in the American Dream, was able to put ideas into simple terms, ultimate pragmatist, collect others' ideas and put them into use
    - 1932 election: Hoover tried to blame on outside forces for depression
- Eleanor Roosevelt: The conscious of the New Deal

### Large Government
- Federal Government became Protector and Guanrantor of Access to American Dream. The shift of government role came under FDR.
> Leuchtenburg says that prior to the New Deal, you hardly notice the presence of the federal government. After the New Deal, the federal government gains importance
- Relationship to "Standing Jefferson on his head"
- "Rooseveltâ€™s New Deal was an attack on the free enterprise system"
- New Deal represented new departure from progressivism
- Essential question: How much should the federal government be involved in the economy and the lives of the people?
### Family Trends
- Old trend of people moving out are reversed because they couldn't afford rent in cities. Extended families now live together
- Marriage/divorce rate dropped because people couldn't afford
### A Decline in Numbers and a Change in Nature of Immigrants 
- from the poor and uneducated to intellectual and sophisticated (because job opportunities for uneducated are gone)
- Einstein fled from Hitler Germany
- Decline in number of immigrants due to fewer jobs & opportunities
### The Effect of the Depression on Black Americans
- The New Deal helped some people since it has a minimum wage, yet many black sharecroppers suffered
- Federal Executive Order 8802: No discrimination in the hiring of workers for federal projects
- shift in the majority of African Americans from Republicans to Democrats
    - FDR's New Deal provided them with access to the dream
    - both Blacks and Whites refused to accept the status quo in race relations
### Faith in Progress became less faith and more hope
- In 1933, world fair in Chicago named â€œThe Century of Progressâ€ 
    - Unveiled the fundamental belief in the US of menâ€™s ability to control and use natural forces
    - Outside is the contrasting slums of Chicago: humanâ€™s failure to control social forces
### The Decline of Faith of the Success Myth (Horatio Algerâ€™s idea)
- Rags to riches becamse riches to rags
- Challenged the idea that if you work hard you will be successful (Calvinism and Darwinism)
- Comeback of Agrarian Myth
- Diminishing upward mobility
- Roman Catholics remain a foreign devil, until 1960s, and a new foreign devil, communism, came in
### Old South and New South
- During the 1920s, the US had reached a historical watershed; it stood between two worlds, the dying world of tradition and the modern commercial world struggling to be born.
- Paul Gaston & Henry Grady: the New South creed
    - The old South rested on slavery and agriculture, the new south created a perfect steam of growth/opportunity, racial harmony, industry/business
- Vanderbilt Agrarians (12 agrarians) - "I'll take my stands - The south and the agrarian tradition"
    - reinterpretation of the Civil War not as a defense of slavery, but as a resistance against the evils of industrialism (Yankees)
    - argument that the workers in the North was modern slavery, blamed science for all the evils
    - argued for a traditional society that was stable, religious, more rural than urban, and politically conservative, a society in which human needs were supported by family, blood kinship, customs, folk ways, and community
    - monumentalism: measured unsatisfactory present against a glorious past
- The Chapel Hill Regionalists
    - Rather than romanticizing the past, they promote future: a future of industrialized agriculture
    - Saw the past as a burden
    - Consider themselves as Americans first, Southerners second.
    - Advocated carefully planned future involving reconstruction of industry and agriculture
### The rise of mass communications (radio)
- Provide a way to escape reality and promulgate the myths
- Fireside chats
### The Intellectuals Return Home, Both Literally and Physically
- they came back because they ran out of money 
- With the depression and the crash of the success myth, they felt less alienated
- success myth is prominent in prosperous times while agrarian myth dominates during depression
- Social critics flirt with communism
- *The US Trilogy*: Left-wing history -> Conflicts in history
- American labors have been conservatives because they donâ€™t want to kill the goose which laid the golden egg, **they just want a larger piece of pie**.
- Proletarian novels in the 1930s are like the Horatio Alger novel, but on revolutionary success.

### 6 Points About the South
1\. Burden of Southern history
2\. The South has had a complete inability to face up to unpleasant truths
3\. The South is not so much Christ centered, as Christ-haunted
4\. The South is more on appearances than morals (elephant under the carpet)
5\. The Deep south is not built on a model of educational ahievement or even economic development, but a social model.â€
6\. "Bless his heart"
> Thomas Nelson Pages: "distance means nothing to these people and time is of no consequence to them. They desire but a level path in live, and this they had, though the way was lonely and the outer world strode by them as they dreamed"

### Conclusion
> In the 1930â€™s, the dream faltered and the myth seemed to fade temporarily, but a changing economy and a war from which we emerged as the greatest power in the world revived the dream, reinvigorated the myths and elevated them to new heights in the postwar era. 

## 1945-1963 The Myths: Recovery and Triumph (For Some) in the Post-War Era

### Background
- In the 1950s, it was the best time in the history of the world to be alive if you were white, male, and you lived in the United States
- Homogenized society: conservative politics, economic prosperity, social conformity
- Retreat from public issues: people want security rather than challenges
- The growth of suburbs, TVs, shopping centers
### Conforming Culture
- Silent Generation
- Religious Revival
    - Growth in church membership but (in 1960 65% of Americans indicated that they attended church regularly, but only 35% of the people can name the four gospels)
    - Religious belief enhances material prosperity
- Young people want to grow up to be like their parents, no one want to stand out. (Red scare? McCarthyism)
- Women stay at home again, nuclear family
- "To be young is not to have your own sense of self, but to learn to be what others have scripted for you." - *Rumble fish*, play in 1954

### "Stirrings Under the Surface, Cracks in the Picture Window"
- Metaphor: The window symbolizes the wonderful society, the cracks are the hidden conflicts
- Criticism of conformity
    - _Nature and Destiny of Man_ by Niebuhr: the Church should challenge people to transcend these middle class virtues and transform society rather than conforming to middle class virtues
    - Gibson: How churches are absorbing the cultures and the suburbs
    - Riesman, _The Lonely Crowd_: shifting from inner-directed to outer-directed
    - Sloan Wilson, _The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit_
    - William Whyte, _The Organization Man_
    - John Kenneth Galbraith, *The Affluent Society*: Solving economic problems does not resolve pressing social issues.
    - *Catcher in the Rye* - Young man searching for meaning, youth rebellion
    - â€œWe gotta go and never stop till we get there.â€ (other person) â€œWhere are we going?â€ â€œI donâ€™t know, but we got to go.â€ _On the Road_ by Jack Kerouac
- Youth rebellion
    - youth language Bebop, listened to a different type of music than their parents
    - these undercurrents became dominant trends in the 60's

## 1960s: The Fabric of Society â€œRent Asunderâ€
- "Rent Asunder": The American society is torn apart
- -	The anatomy of revolution: Move from conversative $\to$ Move to the most radical point $\to$ fall back to somewhere in between

### Background
- With the move into 60s there is the belief that everyday, everything was getting better. This belief was challenged as time moved into the 60s.
- Increased urbanization $\Rightarrow$ emergence of ghettos
- DDT - Rachel Carson - "Silent Spring"
- Began questioning society and realized that men are irrational creatures
- Decline in belief of progress - question authority
- New desires for equality: women, African Americans, young people
- By a large accessibility to the dream was for white males only and people were realizing that, Hemingway:
    > It was a time of rising expectations in an era of increasingly limited opportunities

### Foreground

**JFK**
- JFK's inaugural address raised hopes of what could happen. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
- Created opportunities for groups that were marginalized
- In **November 22, 1963**, JFK was assassinated 
    - A disillusion and loss in faith in progress
    - Increase engagement in Vietnam
- Appoint African Americans to position $\Rightarrow$ but he never recognized the moral dynamism of the Civil Right Movement
- Goals of black citizenship:
    - legal barrier in the South
    - Social and economic barrier in the North

### Climax
I. The Civil Rights Movement - African Americans
1\. Stage 1 - MLK
    - Combined the ideas of civil disobedience (Thoreau) with sacrifice/redemption (evangelical Christianity) and non-violent resistance to authority (Ghandi)
    - Revolution is begining
    - "We shall overcome", "I have a dream" (1964)
    - Black people find their place in society and achieve the dream, don't do bad things for achievement of the dream
    - Civil Rights Act of 1964: prevent discrimination of the distribution in the public fund in the public facilities
2\. Stage 2 - Malcolm X
    - Black Muslim movement - Militant movement
    - Challenging MLK philosophy
    - By 1964 Malcolm X broke from militants: "I don't see any American dream, I see an American nightmare"
    - Burn Baby Burn
3\. Stage 3 - Stokely Carmichael - black power movement
    - The time of involvement for white is over
    - "We reject an American Dream defined by white people, and we must work to reconstruct an American identity defined by African Amercans"

II. Women

- Aggressively challenged the Cult of Domesticity
- In 1942, *A Generation of Vipers* â€“ American men were secretly controlled by women
- In 1963, *The Feminine Mystique* by Betty Friedan $\Rightarrow$ Equal access to opportunity. 
    - Middle class women had been in "a comfortable concentration camp where women suffocated in an atmosphere of mindless consumption and affluent banality"
    - legalized abortion, political power, child welfare, workplace discrimination

III. Native Americans

- Often neglected 
- Eisenhower: Relocate Indians to cities $\Rightarrow$ failed
- 1961: 60 tribes signed the Declaration of purpose

IV. Rebellions of Youth
- Young people revolted against the roles the society set for them
- romanticism of sex and drugs (hippie movement)
- The new left in American politics emerged
    - Riots at Berkeley, Columbia
    - Impacted universities, which were ironically the freest of institutions
    - They wanted to dictate the curriculum

### Conclusion
> As the decade of revolution came to a close, the idyll-the Age of Aquarius-was turning sour. The decade that had begun in exhilaration and hope was descending into bitterness and hate. Those who had been denied access to the dream made gains to be sure, but in challenging those who had access to the dream, they had seen the fabric of society rent asunder.

## Our Vision of Ourselves as Good, Wise, Benevolent was Drained Away in the Jungles of Vietnam

### Background
- **City on a Hill Myth: Nationalism vs Communism**
- Americans ignore the power of nationalism, but grab hold of communism
- Idea of communism monolith
    - Failure to distinguish the European communism and Asian communism
    - communists in Europe was doctrinaire, while those in Asia were nationalistic: they regard communism as a way to improve their country
- Battle of Dien Bien Phu (**May, 1954**): End of French presence in Vietnam
- Geneva Accords: Divide Vietnam into two parts 17â€™ parallel: North Vietnam (Ho Chin Minh) and South Vietnam (Boa Dai under French)
- America supported the government of Diem and Nhu $\Rightarrow$ Nhu did not make any reforms and did not support elections
### Context for Policies
- JFK asked Pentagon for plans to get out of Vietnam
- After assassination, LBJ took over
    - got Senate to pass Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
        - allows the President to take all necessary steps, including arms, to assist South Vietnam and prevent aggression
    - containment policy: Restrict the spread of communism anywhere in the world
    - Domino theory: a communist takeover anywhere in SE Asia would result in adjacent nations falling to communism
    - Two Myths:
        - Communism as the foreign devil
        - City on a Hill: save people from Communism and build them a democracy
### Growing of Opposition at Home $\to$ Hawks vs Doves: Militant vs secure 
- TV war shows the cruelty of the Massacre of Milai and the disorganization in the army $\to$ drugs and alcohol

### Tipping point: **June 31st** - TET was launched â€“ America lost the embassy in Saigon
- Walter Cronkite from New York Times: â€œWe are losingâ€
- March 31, 1968, Johnson announced:
    - New initiatives for negotiating cease fire
    - Halt bombing in Vietnam
    - He would not be a candidate for re-election
- the quest for military victory has ended (although US would be in Vietnam for 5 more years)
- Why did we fail?
    1\. The triumph of will of the Vietnamese over American power
    2\. Didn't understand Guerilla Warfare
    3\. Failure to find a South Vietnamese leader
### Further into the quagmire
- Nixon elected President in 1968
- Nixon and Henry Kissinger (his secretary of state) decided to slowly wind down participation in Vietnam
- Nixon said he had a secret plan (not true)
- Kissinger made 13 secret trips to Paris in efforts to negotiate peace
    - point of contention was control of South Vietnam
- Simultaneous withdraw from North Vietnam to South Vietnam: If you get your troops out, Iâ€™ll get ours too
- In order to gain a stronger negotiation hand, Nixon on April 30, 1970 ordered an invasion of Cambodia to clear out North Vietnamese sanctions
- Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
- Unworkable pieced signed â€“ South Vietnam was in North Vietnamâ€™s hands

### Lessons Learned
- In America
    - War divided America
    - The war weakened the executive branch's power (which was up since the New Deal)
    - Respect for military diminished
- Internationally
    - Domino Theory is not true (China invaded Vietnam, Russian went against China)
    - Democracy is not transferrable to areas with no experience
    - Our self-image as good, wise, and beneficent was drained away in the war (lost confidence and pride)
- Ray Dalio, _Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail_: â€œWe are now in the era of **twilight warfare**. A conflict with no clear geography or victory.â€ â€“ Nothing is clear, and the enemy is often invisible
- Henry Luce called 20$^{th}$ century the American century

## Whither the Myths?
- We have seen that the myths reached their apex in the 50's but declined in the 60's
- It is our contention that the dreams did not die but rather entered a new stage
- The Americans had been struggling to decide which version of myth do they prefer
    - 50s: peace, prosperity, and progress. America is the god chosen people against the evil forces outside, and success myth was unfettered
    - 60s: reveals the 50s were the dark years of racism, sexism, and homophobia with constant fear for civil liberties and freedom of speech. Many lived in fear until the "joyous protestors" of the 60s came with their message of liberation.

### Progress of Myth Since 1970s
- David Frum, _How We Got Here_: Conservative author claiming we are here because of the 70s. Since 1965, technology and economic did not change much, but social and cultural changes were drastic. (Rip Van Winkle)
- The dizzying pace of change since 1965 did not change American tools as much as American habits
- Senator Muskie: "We live in a world made anew not by new medicine, but by new feelings, new thoughts, manners, new ways"
> *The Week*: America has been edited by back-sided democracy. America had fallen into authoritarian tendencies. -> Donald Trumpâ€™s anti-democratic model followed by political actors in Brazil, Peru, etc.
> *The New York Times*: â€œWe the people lose appeal of the people around the world. The impact of our oldest constitution is waning.â€ -> 163 nationâ€™s constitutions modeled the American constitution, but things change. Democratic constitutions become more like the American constitutions only to reverse course in 1980s and 1990s. There exists a steep plunge -> Far less than WWII
- Resurgence of the Americans Myth
    - Agrarian
        - For years, people asked when will the South become more like the rest of the nation
        - In the last 35 years, the rest have become more like the South
    - Success
        - replaced the 50's conformity ideals by individual and small group entrepreneurship success
- Probably the next challenge will not come from abroad, but from within; how can we form a common good of shared, civic values which nourish both cultural pluralism and yet individualism? Can we continue to live up to our national motto "E Pluribus Unum" (One out of many).
    - Bill Clinton in 1995: "weâ€™ve reached the point where we see each other as enemies."
- Cultural politics and ideological warfare
    - Will the myths continue to be shared in the future?
    - The US was added to a list of â€œBacksliding democracyâ€ in 2020 by a Stockholm think tank.
    - Losing its appeal to the world

- Can this course be taught as anything but a history course 50 years from now?
    - as the majorities became the minorities, will the myths survive?
    - will the reactions to the myths be a centrifugal one or a centripetal one?
- Levinson in 2016: Our undemocratic constitution is most difficult to amend in the world today. 
- Only 2% of the world constitutions protects the 2nd amendment â€“ Gun holding rights
- New constitutional power: Canadian laws serve as an inspiration around the world â€“ More influential than the US constitution

### The Future of the Myths
- The success myth will always be with us
- We combine agrarian myth with success myth
    - People in the new generation are likely to start their own business as a way of keeping personal individual freedom while gaining monetray success
- The Foriegn Devil Myth is very much alive right now
- The City on the Hill
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