Where and when did we go wrong?

Please answer honestly and without personal attacks. Non-US resident responses strongly encouraged.

Note that for the most part, the events listed are not necessarily intended to represent bad/good points in our history, but rather to provide a rough time scale reference.

For those who will point out that I am assuming that we indeed have gone wrong, please look at this in the context of where, when, and why other countries started to resent the US.

Hmm...I think I would've gone with the Monroe Doctrine, when we all decided that other nations would be thrilled to have us as a self-appointed scoutmaster.

== danny d.

In WWI we should have supported the "axis" powers.. and why isnt the Clinton era on there?

From the beginning.

If the Brits, French and Spanish had not come ruin things...

- There would be no pollution and we would still have spotted owls.

- Half of the USA would still belong to Mexico, so there would not be an immigration problem.

- No white men would mean no Ronald Reagan and no George W. Bush to shove their fascist doctrines down our throats.

- There would be no cars or industry, so no need to go invade Iraq for their oil

- We would be worshiping Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, the Sun, and the Moon instead of some man from Palestine

If we could only turn back time...

- T -

Tough call, Industrial revolution or Indian wars... I put industrial revolution... you definitely missed a ton of American history between inception and indian wars though....

War of 1812 (ya know, when Canada invaded the USA and burned our capitol to the ground (but hey the USA burned Canada's capitol too)) Yeah, that's right... asses kicked on home turf... by Canadians.... Sounds like the NHL doesnt it? OK in 1812 Canada was British..... http://www.multied.com/1812/Washington.html

Slave ownership....
Civil war....
Emancipation....

[sarcasm] And giving human sacrifices on stone tables mounted on the top of stone pyramids? Oh yeah, that sounds like fun... [/sarcasm]

Hey, it's fun - just not for the victim.

I voted WWI, for our (and other allies') treatment of post-war Germany. This tanked their economy, gave rise to Hitler and WWII, and after that came the Cold War. Before WWI we pretty much didn't stick our noses everywhere.

Better than murdering defenseless headcrabs!

Headcrabs have feelings too, you know?

- T -

Uh.. check your history books again.

Wilson was against the virtual economic crushing of Germany in PostWW1... The Brits and the Frogs both insisted on that. Not the US. We have made our share of faux pas... we don't need to assume responsibility for other nations' cruddy mistakes.


My vote.... I go back to Genesis. If God had wanted perfect people, he wouldn't have kicked us out of the Garden of Eden.. wait.. he just would have created us perfect. So I don't think the US has ever "gone wrong". We have instituted or carried out policies which, in hindsight, might have been poorly conceived or executed, but, the nation as a whole ?gone wrong"? Not....at least no more than any other society in history has.

If the Clinton era was on there I would have voted for that. But this obviously a liberal-slanted poll since only liberals believe that America has "gone wrong".

Lest not forget the Kennedy-Johnson era...

The world has never been as close to total annihilation as it was under Kennedy's rule.

50,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam because of Kennedy's policies.

Kennedy hired the mafia to assasinate Fidel Castro, the President of an independent nation. Johnson tried it too and failed.

And lets not even get into what was happening in the bedrooms at the White House. A great moral example to the people.



If we have gone so 'wrong' how come millions of people risk life and limb to come to this country every year? We are still the land of freedom and opportunity. Maybe that is why so many immigrants are politically conservative. Unfortunately many can't vote.

- T -

Dont forget about United Fruit and how we set up a dictatorship in south america (cant remember the name of the country where this happened >_< ) The US liked dictatorships more than communism so many dictatorships were supported and created thanks to america, just as long as they were not getting in bed with the CCCP

where is the "all of the above" choice?

Commie
After WWII we were forced to become "the protector of the world" because the United
States and the USSR were the only two countrys that had enough troops in Europe to
wage a war against eachother that one could win.

If I were the president in 1946, I probably would have dropped The Bomb on every major soviet city...

So the United States and the UK saw what communisim was, a giant political machine that was scouring eastern Europe for resources and skilled workers to fuel its war machine because "a conflict between Communism and capitalism was inevitable" - Joseph Stalin. "Uncle Joe" cut off westerners from seeing what was going on in any depth, I wont go into detail but if you want more look at the 8,000 word telegraph, (8000 word telegraph) that warned the United States about the objectives of the USSR. The forieng policy was then based off of this, responding fluidly to every advancement the USSR was trying to make, opposing the communists at every turn.

Crap, I lost my train of thought, I dont remember the point I was trying to make.
I think it was that we did not go wrong in the cold war or something, because freedom is good, and communism strips away civil and political freedom

I'll go through these one at a time....

- At its inception

Americans did pretty good here. A new democracy based on individual rights and self-rule were pretty radical ideas at the time. Remember, this was before the French Revolution. We did still have slavery, and women weren't included when it came time to vote, but it wasn't a bad start, overall.

- Manifest Destiny / Indian Wars

We're still fuckin' the Native Americans 200+ years later. Bad, bad, Americans!!!

- The Industrial Revolution

This was great!!! We exploited the hell out of the working class to get it all going, but they were getting screwed as tenant farmers and agricultural help anyway before we invented all this stuff. It eventually led to a much more leisurely lifestyle for most.

- World War I

I'm not sure if us getting into that mess earlier than we did would have stopped Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but 3 years of brutal war on the Eastern Front sure didn't help keep the Russian revolutionaries at bay. Perhaps if Russia hadn't collapsed under their weight of WWI, the Czars would have been replaced in a better fashion.

On the other hand, when we finally did decide to send our Dough Boys overseas, the war was over relatively quickly.

I'll give this one a toss-up

- Great Depression / Dustbowl

The depression was nearly a decade of despair, caused by the collapse of the Roaring Twenties and the money bosses who ruled that era. But the depression did give us a sense of a "social safety net" which, although still a pretty lousy safety net for a country of our wealth, lives with us today. The dustbowl just was plain bad luck with the weather tossed in with poor agricultural land management.

Another toss-up

- World War II

One of America's finest hours. Again, we kind of sat on our isolationist laurels for a bit too long while Hitler was conquering with his racist agenda, but once we got our butts dragged into gear with Pearl Harbor, we showed what America is made of.

- Post-war/McCarthyism

Joe McCarthy was a stain on the principles of this country and someone to be ashamed of. How we got as far as he did as quickly as he did without anyone having the balls to tell him how full of shit his whole agenda was is just as shameful.

- Korea/Vietnam/Cold-war

Joe McCarthy kind of set us up for this one, didn't he? This whole era took the goodwill we developed in WWII, and set us up to look like the world's bully with a lust for war and the imposition of our will. This view of America is what's biting us in the ass today.

- Reagan/Bush

I'll lump these two together because, for the most part, its all the same to me. They're both Presidents I didn't vote for and Presidents I don't like, but I wouldn't call either one as "where we went wrong". I got over Reagan's second term, and I'll get over GW's.

Bottom line...

Three of those items shouldn't be under consideration (inception, industrial revolution, WWII), and 2 I consider a toss-up (WWI, depression), and I'm just going to ignore the whole Reagan/Bush idea because neither is where things really got fucked up.

That leaves Manifest Destiny, McCarthyism, and the Cold War as the only 3 real choices here. I think I'll go with the earliest of the 3, because the other 2 are probably, in part, the result.

Manifest Destiny and screwing the Indians. Toss in Danny's mention of the Monroe Doctrine, which was about the same time, and you see where we didn't get off to a very good start at maintaining the high ideals envisioned by our fore-fathers. Its been a slippery slope ever since.

- Ace

If "Too Human is Error" then can we say us being created is what went wrong? *Sees from a distance incomming Cyborgs.."TERMINATION IN PROGRESS..AQUIRING TARGETS!"

o_O ??

Next poll topic:

When did you stop beating your wife? (Pick one)

Lol! Last night, tonight it's her turn to beat me.

I chose At it's inception......

Why? because bottom line, 'people' have been screwing around with mother-earth since we could scratch our ass. America is not the ONLY country or peole who have suffered do to 'humanities' reign on this good earth. The Indian nation, Americans, Canadians, British, French, Africans, ect; we have ALL messed this planet up.

However where and when did we (Americans) go wrong? Well I would have to say the Manifest Destiny/Indian Wars! This country was founded (IE: taken over) by a bunch of white slavers who tryed very hard to kill the native Americans who were already here in the first place. One must remember "what is past is prologue".


"This world would be a much better place if there were no people here to fu*k things up." - Wolverine

adam methinks you need a valium

There wasn't an "other" option, so my choice would have been: Who or what's to say the US has "gone wrong?" I personally don't think that the events of the last couple of years are anything more than a blip on a millenial roadmap.

A follow-up question. Why wasn't "The Clinton Era" one of the polling options?

Actually, I do think there is a point where the US went astray, at least from a domestic/economic standpoint. I don't think it signals the end of an age or empire, but the whole global economy/NWA thing kinda sucks big ones...

hi son!