HISTORY

HIST BOOK SUMMARY, MOVIE REVIEW, 1 Discussion Comment & 2 brief Responses to comments

PART ONE

3-5 page Scholarly Book summary of both No Way Home, by Natalia Zaretsky, &/Movie Review of Three Days of the Condor?

PART TWO Original create original answer to discussion question & response to 2 comments

Early Warning Signs

 Require ORIGINAL COMMENT See Print out word Document, to base post on?

In hindsight, based on what you have learned this far, what moment signifies to you the emerging sense of downfall? List one or a few moments that demonstrated the end of optimism and emerging sense of doom and failure in America, explain your reasoning and offer evidence.

1st response Please use title in response

EARLY WARNING SIGNS WD Requires brief response comment

There are several moments, mentioned in this assigned unit, that signified and displayed the collapse in confidence and optimism of the United States during this period. To begin, the balance of payment problem from the late 1950s, was the initiator to a plateau and downfall. The operating expenses to maintain all the military installations internationally, cost the United States in the 1950s estimating to have spent around 35-40 billion, which in turn, is equivalent to current day market value of 200-250 billion dollars. American business investments abroad (outsourcing), higher consumption of foreign goods and a positive socialization of foreign goods with signs of affluence, foreign aid to other countries for strategic alignment or simply gifts, and tourism to foreign countries was socialized and popularized as signs of wealth and fun. By having a dramatic increase in foreign tourism, American vacationers would invest and spend hundreds of millions of dollars and leave them in this foreign economy. 

Vietnam by far, weakened the international image of the United States as a world power, even the citizens of America, were against the war. The war was neither won or lost, one fact remained though, North Vietnam remained communist and the United States lost over 58,000 servicemen and 500-686 billion dollars in this unresolved conflict and there alone lies the problem. Once the Great Society plan of Lyndon B. Johnson failed, this shortcoming laid the ground work for the economic problems of the 1970s. 

RESPONSE TWO, Requires brief response comment, Please use title on response?

Early Warning Signs- "The Receding Wave" MR

Vietnam was definitely a sign that America was not the strong power house it had once believed itself to be, it also caused Americans to be distrustful of their own government. The OPEC oil embargo would prove that America had an energy consumption problem that began back in the 50’s, when house hold appliances started to became a social norm and convenience consumption became a necessity.   

We can also look at Hunter S. Thompson’s work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and we see that as early as 1971, Thompson had a sense that America had peaked, “the kind of peak that would never come again” (p. 66). While Thomson’s work introduces a new, “Gozo,” style of journalism, the “wave” speech shows us how history works and gives us a glimpse of the nostalgia felt by Thompson. He claims that history at times can be hard do understand because of the, “hired bullshit.” This is true in the sense that history is always distorted by different perceptions and certain agendas that are always being pushed, without taking an immediate snapshot of the times, there is always going to be an altered view of what really happened, therefore one must have the “right kind of eyes” to view history. This aspect is represented in a good analogy with the character of Lacerda, the photographer assigned to Thompson for the Mint 400. The wave speech illustrates a time where despite what was going on or the lack of understanding of what was taking place there was sense that they “were doing right and that they were winning” (p. 68). Thompson demonstrates a sense of down fall in the closing lines of this well-known speech.

“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” (p. 68)

The down fall is the wave rolling back and the troubles that inevitably always occur with the ups and downs of history. The hope and confidence that was once present with the ones who were, “there and alive in that corner of time and the world,” (p.67) had now disappeared almost as quickly as it had happened.          

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