MoMA Exhibit on the 60's

I recently went the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Almost a whole floor was dedicated to art from the 1960's. The exhibit was organized so that each room was about a single year within that decade. They had some older television sets set up with footage from the Women's Liberation movement, showing famous feminists leading protests in big cities, just as we learned about in history class. I learned about this one woman (I've forgotten her name) who was super daring. She basically went around in public with everything below her navel exposed. In another room, I watched part of a fictional film made about the arms race. One of the last rooms had a really short film that basically showed men sitting in/driving really nice cars. The description of the video explained that the film was actually about homosexuality, but it was done in a very subtle way. I thought that was really interesting, especially since we've learned about how homosexuals had to hide and put up with all the discrimination that was coming at them.

Vietnam and Afghanistan

After watching the documentary on the policy of détente in the 1970’s, I started to see some parallels between the US extracting itself from Vietnam and the US removing itself from Afghanistan.
“Vietnamization” was the strategy used by the American government in removing their troops from Vietnam. The purpose was to get the Vietnamese to fight their own war while slowly extracting US troops. This would be done by supporting and training the Vietnamese army so that they could hold their own against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese army.

In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were drafted. The plan was for the US troops to leave Vietnam, with Southern Vietnam being occupied by North Vietnamese troops and governed by the Saigon government. However, the Vietnamese did not want to sign the accords because if the Americans left, the Southern Vietnamese economy would completely collapse.

I connected this to the United States’ involvement with the war in Afghanistan. I don’t know all the details, but from what I’ve understood from the news, it took the US such a long time to completely pull out of Afghanistan because the Afghani army was not ready to fight on its own. If the US had just left without providing any assistance to prepare, the country would have been left in an even worse place.

I feel like these two examples in our history point to the fact that when the US gets involved in other country’s problems, those countries come to depend on the expertise/mere numbers that the American fighters supply. This makes it hard to quickly get troops in and out of foreign countries.

Cold War and Friendships

Today we learned about how Cold War foreign policy is quite analogous to modern friendships. At the Moscow summit meeting, the Russians yelled at Nixon for 3.5 hours, but they were just yelling at him because they needed to show their support for Vietnam. They sent the tape of the yelling to North Vietnam, and after the transcript had been sent, they had a party and drank together like buddies. If the Soviet Union didn't show support for North Vietnam, they feared they would turn to China or another enemy. It's kind of interesting because this is reflected in the way we support our friends. For example, sometimes you just have to lend your sympathy/support even if you don't really agree with what your friend is complaining about. This obligatory sympathy generally happens when you want something from someone else, and that can only be accomplished by showing you are totally on their side.

Civil Rights in the 1950s

One could say that the Civil Rights movement began to take root in the 1950s. In 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus to a white man. This led to a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery public buses. The Brown vs. Board of Education court decision reversed segregation. Arkansas’ governor ordered the Arkansas guard to surround the Little Rock high school so that the black students couldn’t enter. A white mob surrounded one black student who had been separated from the other seven students. One of the witnesses described the mob as dogs nipping at her; when she would try to move between them, they would close in on her. The question was “Do the states have the right to impose their social order in defiance of federal court orders?” and Eisenhower said no. He sent the 101st Airborne troop to send the Little Rock Nine to school safely. Melba Beals said that it was the first time she felt hope. It was the first time she felt proud to salute the flag.

War in the Pacific

We recently watched a documentary about how the US fought Japan in the Pacific during World War II. I knew basically nothing about it before watching the documentary, so it was pretty interesting to learn about a smaller section of WWII. At first, the Japanese were better equipped and trained. They were "battled hardened" from their battles with the Chinese. However, the US started "leapfrogging," a strategy in which they overtook island after island. The US military learned several lessons from their attack on Tarawa. The attack planners hadn't properly done their job, so when the attack took place, the tides were so low that the boats couldn't get past the coral reefs. The soldiers had to get through a quarter mile of chest-high water to get to shore, and all along the shore, Japanese machine guns were shooting at them. It was obvious that they needed to have significantly detailed plans and reconnaissance for these types of battles. Iwo Jim was an important island because it used radar to give Tokyo a warning that the B29's were on their way. When the American planes fly up to Tokyo, Iwo Jima alerts Tokyo, and when the American planes are flying back, Iwo Jima sends up Japanese planes to shoot the enemy.

The Depression in Germany

          The Depression in the US actually contributed to the depression in Germany at the same time. This was the second depression that the German people were going through in the last two decades. We can only imagine how frustrated and angry the people must have been with their government. There's also the whole psychological factor- being blamed for the first world war does do some damage to the country's state of mind. There was mass unemployment, protests and demonstrations at this time in Germany. The German people just wanted someone who would fix the problem and restore Germany to its former power. Change is always hard, but especially when it means you have to struggle to feed your family when this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
         This is where Hitler comes in. He capitalized on the mass frustration expressed by the German people at this time. They were looking for another option- their current government clearly wasn't working- and Hitler presented them with another option. He was charismatic, he was exciting, he was passionate in his speeches. Of course he didn't tell them he was planning to purge the country of Jews and that his methods of doing so would be absolutely incredibly horrific. He only presented the people with this amazing image of him: a strong, smart man who would lift Germany up out of the hole it was in and lead them out of the depression.
         Of course, this brings the question: if someone like Hitler had presented the American people with an option like this during the Great Depression, would they have taken it and met the same fate that Germany did?

1936, Propaganda and Syrian Refugees

         The Nazis used the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a huge propaganda platform with a wider audience than just its own population. The German athletes' success could be transmuted into the success of the Nazi government and socialism as a whole. The Nazis intentionally used the Olympics as a symbol of how great they were and how far their government had come. Anti-Semitic policies, part of the uglier side of Nazism, were hidden from the world's eyes. During the 1936 Olympics, there were no visible signs that said "No Jews or Dogs."
          However, the American government actually displayed some anti-Semitism when it didn't let two Jewish American track runners compete for fear of offending Hitler. This is just one example of huge world powers' appeasement approach to the problem of Nazi Germany.
          The American government (meaning President Roosevelt) also didn't accept the ship the Saint Louis, which carried Jewish refugees to Cuba, where they were rejected. They sailed north to the United States, thinking good old FDR would accept them. But he turned them away, fearing that whatever political capital with Congress he had left would be wasted on a mere few hundred Jewish refugees. I thought that was awful. These people were suffering incredibly horrible treatment in their home countries, and one of the world's greatest powers cannot muster the empathy and human compassion to save them. 
        This immediately reminded me of the Syrian refugee crisis. Some European countries are completely "shutting their borders," so to speak, and rejected refugees. They feel that they need to focus on their own country's problems instead of providing humanitarian relief to these refugees. Sometimes the lack of empathy is seriously astonishing, but when I learned about how Roosevelt turned away the Saint Louis, the reactions of European countries this past year only make sense because history does repeat itself. 

Banking & the Stock Market Crash: How things have changed

Today in class we discussed how things have changed for banks and what they can do with their customers' money. Before the stock market crashed, banks were able to take the money deposited in their bank and invest it in the stock market. When the stock market crashed, all the money that the banks had invested was gone. Even if you were a customer of the bank that hadn’t invested in the stock market, your money was totally gone. People also individually invested in the stock market, so when the market crashed, all their money was gone. If they had a loan with a bank, they now wouldn’t be able to pay that bank back- because all their money is gone.

Even worse- people borrowed money to buy stocks. People could not borrow money after the crash because nobody could lend them anymore money. The whole situation during the 20’s was really messed up. Everyone in the chain of stocks/borrowing/ lending was very interconnected. If someone borrowed money to buy stock, they think that they can sell the stock for a higher price. Then they can pay back the lender and make a profit. However, this only works if the stock price goes up, and when it doesn’t, everything goes downhill.

School Stress (reflection on presentation)

I do think that for some students, mental health issues are what drive them to hurt themselves (in small and large ways), but I don't think it's fair to say that all the kids who have committed suicide were driven to do so because of their mental illness. Academics and all the high expectations that come with it are part of the problem; they may not be the sole stressor in a student's life, but I think it's fair to say that for a lot of students, school is the biggest stressor. Part of this is not the administration's fault- naturally, we spend most of the hours of our day at school dealing with school-related things, so of course it is usually the major stressor. But more than that, it's the actual problems and pressure that students receive from teachers, parents, counselors, all relating to academics- that's the crux of the whole issue.

Muckraking Projects

For our Muckraking Project, we learned more about the affordability of preschools in the Bay Area. We emailed about 15 different preschools and got responses from 10 of them. It's obvious that private preschools are incredibly overpriced, especially when considering that annual tuition for some private high schools in the area is lower. It's ridiculous to think about, but it really is an issue that is impacting local families. Head Start programs and city preschools (i.e. Mountain View) are great solutions but should be implemented on a larger scale so that all families who can't afford private preschool are able to enroll their kids in pre-K classes. Chiara also suggested the solution of having public school districts provide preschool classes as well, like the City of Mountain View. This would be a good solution because they would be adding a preschool program to a preexisting school district, instead of creating a whole new system to solve the problem. The downside to this solution is that taxes and bills would have to be passed in order to create the funds for a preschool expansion in a school district.

Roaring 20's

The 1920's was a decade of huge prosperity and wealth in the United States. The optimistic song "Blue Skies" reflected the overwhelming aspirations and seemingly limitless possibilities. Americans reached a whole new level of wealth, urged on by the new idea of credit and borrowing money in order to "keep up with Jones."  By 1927, 75% of all household goods were paid for on credit. Women had shorter hair, wore makeup, danced, and went to clubs and bars. Some people felt that these changes were for the worse; they felt like the women were being too daring and immodest. Cities were “breeding ground for alien ideas." The Ku Klux Klan gained popularity dramatically because it claimed to stand for true American ideals. It gained political power in seven states. Americans who were attracted to the group wanted the new freedoms for women and other marginalized groups to go away. 

Sacco and Vanzetti and the Justice System!

A few weeks ago, we learned about the Sacco and Vanzetti case in class. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two known anarchists, were accused of the paymaster and a guard of a shoe factory and stealing $15,000. In the years that followed the trial and conviction of the two men, there has been much controversy about whether the two men were really the murderers, or if they had been falsely convicted. Many people think that Sacco and Vanzetti were, in fact, innocent and that whoever had shot the paymaster had gotten away with their crime. They point to the fact that the incident seemed like an amateur robbery. It was done in broad daylight, in the open, and they killed two people to get the $15,000. This didn’t match the style of anarchis violence at that time. Additionally, the ballistics evidence was very weak. The cartridges found at the site of South Braintree did not match those found in possession of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco’s “bullet 3” was shot sometime between May and December, and was not the one actually linked to Sacco. Furthermore, the serial number of the guard’s gun did not match that of the gun found in Vanzetti’s possession. Judge Webster Thayer was also known to be opposed to anarchists. He made a very biased statement about the case to a professor at his alma mater university, and the professor made this remark public.

After Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted, another anarchist committed to the crime. Medeiros provided new information about the trial about the cars, etc., but his partner, Morelli, refused to confess. Judge Thayer denied the request for retrial.

Those who believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were indeed guilty point to their background as “militant revolutionists.” They were known to have participated in anarchists bombings. At their first interrogation, both men lie about being anarchists and deny knowing Boba. The prosecution used the behavior of the men the night of their arrest as evidence. Using the term, “consciousness of guilt,” the prosecution said that a person who is innocent will speak openly and truthfully about where they were when the crime was committed. Following this line of reasoning, Sacco and Vanzetti’s lies were designed to hide the truth about what they were doing. The prosecution also exposed the fact that the pair fled to Mexico to avoid the draft; this made them seem “unpatriotic” and obviously did not win them the support of the jurors.

The justice system is supposed to be about exposing the truth and punishing the guilty for what they’ve done, but it almost feels like it’s about Sacco and Vanzetti’s beliefs (anarchism) and the fact that they are immigrants.

The Doughboys

Some young men signed up to fight in the first World War because of family military traditions and community expectations. Others were bored and saw no prospects around them at the moment. These men were asked to join a crusade and “make the world safe for democracy.” These new soldiers underwent lots of training to prepare them for this war. They learned to march, build trenches,  and fight other soldiers. The belief that their country came before self-protection was deeply ingrained through this training as well. Overall, the training provided them with the basics of “modern soldiering.”

The European allies wanted to take the US soldiers and break them up within the European armies. They wanted American soldiers to fight as part of their own armies. General Pershing opposed this, and wanted his men to fight as their own entity. If his men couldn’t stop the German assault, the war would end badly.

World War I veterans say that they didn’t know if they were going to be alive or dead the next day, so they adopted a “fatalistic attitude.” Of killing other men, one veteran said that you didn’t think about whether he was someone’s father or son; this was your job and it was what you were trained to do. Towards the end of the war, soldiers became conservative in their actions. If the war was going to end soon, why go “over the top” into No Man’s Land and risk being killed? No one wanted to be the soldier who was killed right before the war ended.

After the war ended, there was a sense of disillusionment among the soldiers. They questioned what their and their peers’ sacrifices had been for. One veteran just blatantly said that war is stupid. He felt that people should discuss problems reasonably, “give and take a little”, and come to an agreement.

Wilson in the Aftermath of World War I

President Wilson created his Fourteen Points in the aftermath of World War I.  The first five points laid out rules for international conduct. For example, it asserted freedom of the seas, arms control and no secret negotiation. Points 6 through 13 talked about self-determination, which led to the creation of many new European nations after the Paris Peace Conference. Point 14 organized the League of Nations, an organization of countries to encourage collective security. At the Paris Peace Conference, hundreds of countries were present, but only four were considered big players: Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. The British wanted to maintain their empire; they did not care if other countries accepted self-determination, but it was not to happen to their own empire. They also wanted to fortify their own position and punish Germany to some degree. The French wanted to punish and weaken Germany to an extreme, while Italy just wants land. The British and the French want Germany to formally accept “war guilt,” as outlined in Article 231. Wilson’s major victory in this conference was the acceptance of the League of Nations. His fourteen points were not accepted by the other nations as they were not representative of reality.

Trying to Stabilize the South

After the government realized that black Americans were being brutally treated in the South, they set up a system called the Freedmen's Bureau. This group was responsible for protecting the rights of black Americans. The bureau was set up in the South, where they dealt with civil rights violations and established schools for black children. The assistance that was being given to blacks was met with backlash. Race riots broke out across the South. Hundreds of people were killed, property was looted, and Freedmen's Bureau's were burned down. The violent situation in the South was just horrible, but as always, money and politics get in the way of everything. The Panic of 1873 and the Compromise of 1877 shifted the nation's focus to the failing economy and disputed election results. In the Compromise of 1877, a couple Southern states submitted two different sets of results for the national election. They tell the federal government that if Reconstruction is ended, we'll fix the voting problem. The president at the time withdrew the federal troops and other aid for the black Americans. These resources had been there for over a decade after the Civil War, and now the government was taking them away because a few states were being petulant. Now, the black Americans were basically left to fend for themselves in a society where whites were literally out to trap them into sharecropping and take advantage of their lack of education. And this all happened because some states refused to just be honest. The persuasive power of money and politics is disgusting at times.

America, Post-Civil War

America after the war and after Lincoln's death could be described as a mess. Though the Union had won and the slaves were free, there were still problems to be resolved. For example, though the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment made slavery illegal, it did not give black Americans any rights or protection under the law. Southerners plantation owners suddenly lost their labor force, but they were not going to let an amendment with loopholes stop them from continuing to make profit. The former slaves were free, but some Southerners found ways to keep them "slaves." They passed laws that practically put black Americans back in the cotton fields. For example, one law said that if a black person broke a law, they could be punished with a work period of "undetermined" length. That basically just created a new system of slavery. Black Americans weren't equally protected under the law, and the federal government realized that just declaring, "All slaves are free!" really had not changed much. In fact, one political cartoon labelled the situation that the black Americans were in as "worse than slavery."