Name: Fall 2021, 8week course

30 points possible Mr. Dohr

Note: Show your critical thinking by annotating in the margins, using SHEG thinking skills, highlighting key phrases you’ll quote and cite in your essay. Students are responsible for analyzing any documents that cannot be discussed in class. Turn in at least one (all is better!) assigned source on the day assigned (+ / – 48 hours) in the reading schedule You will turn in the ENTIRE analyzed packet of historical sources as one document with your essay for a separate grade.

Critical Question #4 in modern American history: To what extent did the laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 encourage Americans’ faith in it? Consider international, social, technological, economic, political (ISTEP) events, trends, individuals and groups.

Rewrite CQ #4 in your own words here:

Source A: Looking back at Watergate 40 years later

Watergate and Vietnam clearly sapped confidence in government institutions for a time, but it recovered smartly on three occasions: in 1984 when Americans were feeling very good about their country (a political ad for Reagan’s election declared that “it’s morning again in America”), at the end of the Clinton presidency when the economy was robust, and immediately after 9/11. Two of these coincided with strong economic growth, the third with a national tragedy.

It’s impossible to know whether the high confidence Americans appeared to have in their institutions before Watergate was itself unusual. There are only scattered polling questions from the 1950s and 1960s and no trend data before that time. Americans have always been skeptical of large powerful institutions, and government is no exception.

How much of today’s current dysfunction and polarization in Washington has its roots in Watergate is a question observers will be debate for a long time. Four distinguished observers at AEI [the American Enterprise Institute] had different views at an event last week. What’s clear from the polls from the summer of 1974 is that Americans took the momentous developments seriously, worried deeply about Watergate’s effects on the country while at the same time appreciating the resilience of our democratic system.

Source: Karlyn Bowman, “Watergate Revisited: How America Has Changed.” Forbes Magazine, August 5, 2014 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2014/08/05/watergate-revisited-how-has-america-changed/#d4e3ee27eb25

Source B: One editorial cartoonist’s view of America’s “hostage” situation

Source: Herblock, “Hostage”. Published in the Washington Post, November 15, 1979. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblock/it-gets-into-everything.html

Source C: Federal Spending, 1970 to 2017

Source: Congressional Budget Office. https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/deficit-disconnect

Source D: Reagan, Gorbachev, and nuclear missile reduction in Europe

What all these [previously mentioned] historians have in common is the belief that [President Ronald] Reagan and [Mikhail] Gorbachev were both men of their time and circumstance. They were both moral and rational and they sincerely liked one another. The absence of pretension in combination with an open style of dialogue helped foster an honest rapport between the two, which in turn helped thaw Cold War tensions from the top down. Their meeting, however, was far from inevitable, and the path leading the INF [Intermediate Nuclear Force treaty, banning short- and medium-range missiles in Europe] signing in December, 1987 was fraught [loaded] with near misses and real tragedy. From Reagan’s point of view, the Soviet SS-20 [medium range, mobile missiles] deployment during the late 1970’s was a clear attempt to tip the balance of power in Europe away from the West. Once in office, he worked to respond multilaterally through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by supporting a plan match the Soviet nuclear threat.

Source: Watson, William D. (2011) “Trust, but Verify: Reagan, Gorbachev, and the INF Treaty,”The Hilltop Review: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 5.

Available at:https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/hilltopreview/vol5/iss1/5

Source E: General Colin Powell comments on Operation Desert Storm, 1990

Context: General Powell and other military and political advisors met with President George H. W. Bush to discuss military options regarding Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait, October 1990.

Note: This is a first person account, General Powell is “I” in this excerpt.

[One presidential advisor] solemnly [seriously] said, “Mr. President, we are at a Y in the road. Down one branch we can continue sanctions [economic restrictions placed on Iraq, the current policy] and we can just be prepared to defend Saudi Arabia [Saddam’s next most likely target of invasion]. Down the other branch we start to get the necessary political authority to go on the attack . . .

[Advisors then debated how to go to the United Nations about gaining support from other nations]. The President just tired out of it after a while . . . and he said, “Fine, fine, fine. Colin, let’s hear from you.”

. . . I . . . put up another [map] and I said, “Mr. President, if you direct us to attack to eject the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, this is how we’re going to do it.”

And I rolled it down . . . active interest. Everybody leaned forward. [I described the campaign]. . . and then told them it would take a much larger force. And then I laid out the size of that force.

There were some gasps, there were some [sounds of gulping]. Secretary [of Defense Dick] Cheney . . . said he recommended [the plan] fully . . . And then finally . . when . . . the President . . . had gotten everybody’s views . . . everything, he simply looked up and he said, “Do it.”

Source: Colin Powell, oral interview. “The Gulf War.” Frontline, accessed July 14, 2019.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/powell/1.html

Source F: Rap group’s take on “The Star Spangled Banner”

Note: the original language is preserved to maintain historical context

Strangled tangled Caught in a spangled
Banner got em on dat camera
Stars I’m seein from a beatdown in a slamma
O cay can you see But you can’t

Uncle Sammy wears the pants
Toms [Uncle Tom] his bitch

When he’s swingin a switch
Rather stick da poor up

And give it to da rich
I always thought dat power
Was to the people, we the people
Ahh, see we ain’t the people . . .

The red is for the blood that we shed As a people
The blue is for those sad ass songs
That we be singin in church to blues
While white man’s heaven is black man’s hell

The stars is what we saw
When our ass got beat
Stripes is for the whip marks in our back
The white is for the obvious
Ain’t no black in that flag
Land of the free, home of the slaves

Source: Public Enemy, “Aintnuttin Buttersong.” Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age. Def Jam Recordings, August 23, 1994.

https://genius.com/Public-enemy-aintnuttin-buttersong-lyrics

Source G: The effect of the dot-com (businesses that existed only online) crash

Venture capital firms [companies that invest money in new “start-up businesses] were throwing money at any and all dot-coms to help them build market share, never mind whether they could ever be profitable. It was a brave new era, in which more than a dozen fledgling [newly-formed] dot-coms that nobody had ever heard of could pay $2 million of other people’s money for a Super Bowl commercial.

What a difference a year makes . . . Many pioneering dot-coms are out of business or barely surviving . . . Online retailers Priceline and eToys, former Wall Street darlings, have seen their stock prices fall more than 99 percent from their highs.

Woeful tales of visionary innovators failing to capitalize on their revolutionary new technology are not new. The advent [coming] of railroads, the automobile and radio, to name other watershed innovations in history, also led to many a shattered dream. The number of failed auto makers far exceeded the number that ultimately succeeded.

. . . It is not as if consumers do not appreciate shopping online. Online sales this season are expected to be about two-thirds greater than last year. But it is not the innovators who are reaping all the benefits. Online retailers are losing market share to the likes of Wal-Mart and Kmart. This holiday season, online sales of traditional retailers, initially hesitant to embrace the Web, will outpace those of the pure dot-coms for the first time.

Source: “The Dot-Com Bubble Bursts.” New York Times, December 24, 2000

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/24/opinion/the-dot-com-bubble-bursts.html

Source H: Excerpt from the USA PATRIOT Act

Context: Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001, and President George W. Bush signed it into law days later.

SEC. 412. MANDATORY DETENTION OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS; . . .

(1) CUSTODY. The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien [non-US citizen] who is certified under paragraph (3). . . .

(3) CERTIFICATION. The Attorney General may certify an alien under this paragraph if the Attorney General has reasonable grounds to believe that the alien . . . is engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States. . . .

6) LIMITATION ON INDEFINITE DETENTION. An alien . . . whose removal [deportation] is unlikely in the reasonably foreseeable future, may be detained for additional periods of up to six months only if the release of the alien will threaten the national security of the United States or the safety of the community or any person.

Source: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT Act) Act of 2001. Public Law 107–56. 26 October 2001. U.S. Government Printing Office. Web.

http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/PatriotActExcerpts.pdf

Source I: President Bush and “the snake”

Source: Peter Nicholson, untitled cartoon, August 14, 2008. No source.

http://nicholsoncartoons.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2006-01-10-Al-Qaida-Afghanistan-Iraq-Bush-snake-226int.jpg

Source J: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 1980 – 2010

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Real Gross Domestic Product [GDPC1], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1, July 9, 2019.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1

Source K: Rise of Social Media

% of all American adults and internet-using adults who use at least one social media/networking site

Year

Internet Users

All Adults

2005

10%

2006

16%

11%

2008

34%

25%

2009

50%

38%

2010

60%

46%

2011

65%

50%

2012

67%

55%

2013

73%

62%

2014

74%

62%

2015

76%

65%

Source: Pew Research Center surveys, 2005-2006, 2008-2015. No data are available for 2007.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

Source L: Presidential electoral map, 2008

Source: US Election Map. GISGeography, updated June 2, 2021.

US Election of 2008 Map

How can historical evidence be organized in a visual way? Use the graphic organizer below. Think of it as a large scale or balance. The two ends represent the most extreme views of Critical Question #4.

To the left, the claim is that the laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY encouraged Americans’ faith in it. To the right, the claim is the opposite: the laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY DID NOT encourage Americans’ faith in it.

On the upper scale, from your analysis of the SOURCES IN THE CQ #4 PACKET, place the letter and a word or two from the source title along the scale where you think it stands in relation to the other sources.

On the lower scale, from your understanding of INFORMATION FROM THE TEXTBOOK, THE MEDIA PROVIDED OR OUTSIDE RESEARCH, place information where it stands in relation to the extreme ends. Several examples will be given in class.

Doing the two scales will help those that need to visually form their thesis and help organize their facts into unified paragraphs and a cohesive essay.

Sources from packet (use letters)

The laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY DID NOT encourage Americans’ faith in it.

The laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY encouraged Americans’ faith in it.

The laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY encouraged Americans’ faith in it._____________________________________________________________________________________

Information from text reading, media, outside research

The laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY encouraged Americans’ faith in it.

The laws, policies, actions and/or decisions made by the US government from the 1970’s to 2008 ABSOLUTELY DID NOT encourage Americans’ faith in it.

_____________________________________________________________________________

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