Jeffrey Powanda

“Though this is almost entirely lost to modern readers, the Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history.”

“[I]t was to a considerable degree the dregs of society who filled the ranks of the Continental army. These were the poor, the landless, the immigrants—mostly German and Irish—the former criminals, the wayward youths; those, to be frank, who were most expendable in respectable colonial society. It was the lowest among them who eventually won for the American side. In times since, it has always been thus.”

“To a large extent, larger than most Americans are comfortable with, the United States owes its independence to France. Without the French army, and more vitally the French navy, transforming our revolution into a global war, the conflict couldn’t have ended when and how it did—with a British army encircled by land and sea on the Virginia coast at Yorktown.”

“Indian removal was a bleak chapter in American history. It constituted what we would today term 'ethnic cleansing.'”

“In the mid-nineteenth century American politicians and soldiers manufactured a war with Mexico, sold it to the public, and then proceeded to conquer their southern neighbor.”

“The American Civil War was by far the costliest in American history. Some six hundred thousand died, if not more—equivalent to more than the American fatalities of the two world wars taken together.”

“Some of the brief achievements of [Reconstruction] (such as blacks voting, holding office, and serving in Congress) would not again occur on a broad scale for a century.”

“The Klan was extraordinarily violent, probably killing more innocent black men, women, and children during Reconstruction than the number of Americans killed in the 9/ 11 attacks of 2001. After all, from 1865 to 1968 in Texas alone, more than a thousand blacks were murdered by whites…Some three thousand blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1930.”

“Much of the land west of the 98th meridian is semiarid, and rainfall in these areas—western Kansas and Nebraska and eastern Colorado, for example—was insufficient to support agriculture. By the early twentieth century hundreds of thousands of these settlers had failed and retreated eastward. This explains why many towns in western Kansas had a higher population in 1880 than in 1980.”

“By 1860 only 30,000 California Indians out of 150,000 remained alive—a record of extermination unparalleled in our troubled history with Native Americans.”

“Why did a significant socialist movement not rise in the United States as it did in Europe?….One reason they had so much trouble was the power of the courts in America. Through the peculiar United States system of lifetime appointments of judges, the justices—especially on the Supreme Court—were a generation behind contemporary policy makers and tended to strike down social welfare provisions as unconstitutional.”

“One dream of American Progressives was universal health insurance, which they proposed back in 1912. More than a century later, the United States holds the distinction of being perhaps the last major industrialized country not to have such a program. Germany had shown the way in 1883, and the United Kingdom passed the National Insurance Act in 1911.”

“All told, the immigration acts of 1917, 1918, 1921, and 1924 reduced the overall level of immigration by 85 percent, slowed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to a trickle, and virtually eliminated migration from Asia and Africa.”

“Later Keynesian economists, and the most dedicated New Dealers in Roosevelt’s own administration, probably came closer to the mark. According to these thinkers, the reason for the 1937–38 recession was simple: the New Deal hadn’t gone far enough.”

“By the twenty-first century, the Democrats, in the interest of winning elections, would tilt so far to the right as to be nearly indistinguishable from the rising Republicans.”

“By the time the final decision was made, nearly one million Japanese and several hundred thousand German civilians had already been killed in conventional bombings. The dropping of the two atomic bombs was in a sense a non-decision; however, it is one with which the world has had to live forever after.”

“Today the United States has some eight hundred overseas bases while China and Russia combine for fewer than a dozen.”

“What is the moral difference, I’d ask, between flying passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—thereby killing almost three thousand (mostly) civilians—on the one hand, and sending hundreds of airplanes to firebomb, incinerate, suffocate, and boil ninety thousand civilians on a single night in Tokyo, on the other?”

“The United States has never ceased, in the postwar era, to have an allegedly existential enemy. Such mortal foes serve a momentous purpose for governments. They focus and unite the populace in fear of the foreign 'other' and distract from growing wealth disparity and deindustrialization.”

“Instead of FDR’s dream of a welfare state, the United States—unlike all the developed nations of Europe—built a national security state.”

“Simply put, King and other activists achieved civil rights but never conquered latent racism or economic inequality. That failure ensured that the cause and relative position of American blacks would, ultimately, change very little in the aftermath of the 1960s.”

“What the 1950s–60s movement did not do was address the massive wealth inequality and black subjection to police violence that continue to characterize urban black communities. America is just about as segregated now as it was in 1960.”

“Lower taxes and greater military spending turned out just as you might suspect. During Reagan’s two terms the national debt tripled. His administration never balanced a budget in eight years….Even more concerning was that income inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—was on the rise during the Reagan years.”

“Overall, median family incomes, which had steadily risen since the 1940s, began to fall in the Reagan years and would do so for decades afterward.”

“Bush’s presidency was one of the most disastrous ever. He was responsible for huge numbers of military and civilian deaths, both American and foreign. His policies of torture, rendition, enemy detention, drone assassination, and domestic surveillance forever stymied civil liberties at home and sullied the reputation of the United States abroad.”

“Far from inaugurating the post-racial America of popular fantasy, Obama’s presidency, and the backlash against it, ushered in a new age of reinvigorated racial combat sure to extend well past his second term.”

“Though he had been a constitutional law professor, [Obama] flouted civil liberties, stretched the Constitution, spied on the citizenry, and even executed an American citizen and his son via aerial drones, absent any transparency or legal due process.”

“Sick of the establishment style of Obama, the Clintons, and the entire mainstream pool of both parties, voters chose to 'blow up' the system and support a true outsider in the celebrity billionaire and reality TV star Donald Trump.”

“[T]he coalition that elected Trump is a standard alliance of four distinct interest groups and peoples that put Republicans in office for decades and maintained American imperialism and internal oppression long before that political party had even been founded. These are anti-taxation (usually hyper-wealthy) libertarians, foreign-policy hawks with imperial proclivities, intolerant brands of evangelical Christians, and racist xenophobes.”

“Though this is almost entirely lost to modern readers, the Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history.”

“[I]t was to a considerable degree the dregs of society who filled the ranks of the Continental army. These were the poor, the landless, the immigrants—mostly German and Irish—the former criminals, the wayward youths; those, to be frank, who were most expendable in respectable colonial society. It was the lowest among them who eventually won for the American side. In times since, it has always been thus.”

“To a large extent, larger than most Americans are comfortable with, the United States owes its independence to France. Without the French army, and more vitally the French navy, transforming our revolution into a global war, the conflict couldn’t have ended when and how it did—with a British army encircled by land and sea on the Virginia coast at Yorktown.”

“Indian removal was a bleak chapter in American history. It constituted what we would today term 'ethnic cleansing.'”

“In the mid-nineteenth century American politicians and soldiers manufactured a war with Mexico, sold it to the public, and then proceeded to conquer their southern neighbor.”

“The American Civil War was by far the costliest in American history. Some six hundred thousand died, if not more—equivalent to more than the American fatalities of the two world wars taken together.”

“Some of the brief achievements of [Reconstruction] (such as blacks voting, holding office, and serving in Congress) would not again occur on a broad scale for a century.”

“The Klan was extraordinarily violent, probably killing more innocent black men, women, and children during Reconstruction than the number of Americans killed in the 9/ 11 attacks of 2001. After all, from 1865 to 1968 in Texas alone, more than a thousand blacks were murdered by whites…Some three thousand blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1930.”

“Much of the land west of the 98th meridian is semiarid, and rainfall in these areas—western Kansas and Nebraska and eastern Colorado, for example—was insufficient to support agriculture. By the early twentieth century hundreds of thousands of these settlers had failed and retreated eastward. This explains why many towns in western Kansas had a higher population in 1880 than in 1980.”

“By 1860 only 30,000 California Indians out of 150,000 remained alive—a record of extermination unparalleled in our troubled history with Native Americans.”

“Why did a significant socialist movement not rise in the United States as it did in Europe?….One reason they had so much trouble was the power of the courts in America. Through the peculiar United States system of lifetime appointments of judges, the justices—especially on the Supreme Court—were a generation behind contemporary policy makers and tended to strike down social welfare provisions as unconstitutional.”

“One dream of American Progressives was universal health insurance, which they proposed back in 1912. More than a century later, the United States holds the distinction of being perhaps the last major industrialized country not to have such a program. Germany had shown the way in 1883, and the United Kingdom passed the National Insurance Act in 1911.”

“All told, the immigration acts of 1917, 1918, 1921, and 1924 reduced the overall level of immigration by 85 percent, slowed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to a trickle, and virtually eliminated migration from Asia and Africa.”

“Later Keynesian economists, and the most dedicated New Dealers in Roosevelt’s own administration, probably came closer to the mark. According to these thinkers, the reason for the 1937–38 recession was simple: the New Deal hadn’t gone far enough.”

“By the twenty-first century, the Democrats, in the interest of winning elections, would tilt so far to the right as to be nearly indistinguishable from the rising Republicans.”

“By the time the final decision was made, nearly one million Japanese and several hundred thousand German civilians had already been killed in conventional bombings. The dropping of the two atomic bombs was in a sense a non-decision; however, it is one with which the world has had to live forever after.”

“Today the United States has some eight hundred overseas bases while China and Russia combine for fewer than a dozen.”

“What is the moral difference, I’d ask, between flying passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—thereby killing almost three thousand (mostly) civilians—on the one hand, and sending hundreds of airplanes to firebomb, incinerate, suffocate, and boil ninety thousand civilians on a single night in Tokyo, on the other?”

“The United States has never ceased, in the postwar era, to have an allegedly existential enemy. Such mortal foes serve a momentous purpose for governments. They focus and unite the populace in fear of the foreign 'other' and distract from growing wealth disparity and deindustrialization.”

“Instead of FDR’s dream of a welfare state, the United States—unlike all the developed nations of Europe—built a national security state.”

“Simply put, King and other activists achieved civil rights but never conquered latent racism or economic inequality. That failure ensured that the cause and relative position of American blacks would, ultimately, change very little in the aftermath of the 1960s.”

“What the 1950s–60s movement did not do was address the massive wealth inequality and black subjection to police violence that continue to characterize urban black communities. America is just about as segregated now as it was in 1960.”

“Lower taxes and greater military spending turned out just as you might suspect. During Reagan’s two terms the national debt tripled. His administration never balanced a budget in eight years….Even more concerning was that income inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—was on the rise during the Reagan years.”

“Overall, median family incomes, which had steadily risen since the 1940s, began to fall in the Reagan years and would do so for decades afterward.”

“Bush’s presidency was one of the most disastrous ever. He was responsible for huge numbers of military and civilian deaths, both American and foreign. His policies of torture, rendition, enemy detention, drone assassination, and domestic surveillance forever stymied civil liberties at home and sullied the reputation of the United States abroad.”

“Far from inaugurating the post-racial America of popular fantasy, Obama’s presidency, and the backlash against it, ushered in a new age of reinvigorated racial combat sure to extend well past his second term.”

“Though he had been a constitutional law professor, [Obama] flouted civil liberties, stretched the Constitution, spied on the citizenry, and even executed an American citizen and his son via aerial drones, absent any transparency or legal due process.”

“Sick of the establishment style of Obama, the Clintons, and the entire mainstream pool of both parties, voters chose to 'blow up' the system and support a true outsider in the celebrity billionaire and reality TV star Donald Trump.”

“[T]he coalition that elected Trump is a standard alliance of four distinct interest groups and peoples that put Republicans in office for decades and maintained American imperialism and internal oppression long before that political party had even been founded. These are anti-taxation (usually hyper-wealthy) libertarians, foreign-policy hawks with imperial proclivities, intolerant brands of evangelical Christians, and racist xenophobes.”