Rod’s Reviews > A People's History of the United States > Status Update

... there is no such a thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world -by a teacher, a writer, anyone-is a judgement. The judgement that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.

Bush abandoned sanctions and choose war because his time frame was a political one set by the approaching 1992 presidential elections

Environmental regulation became more and more a victim of "cost-benefit" analysis, in which regulations protecting the health and safety of the public became secondary to how costly this would be for business

With the loss of faith in big powers -business, government, religion- there arose a stronger belief in self, whether individual or collective

By the end of the Vietnam war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, more than twice the total bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II -almost one 500-pound bomb for every human being in Vietnam

This is what they did with the march in Washington. They joined it... became part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march: Malcom X, 1963

Quietly, behind the headlines in battles and bombings, American diplomats and businessmen worked hard to make sure that when the war ended, American power would be second to none in the world

Enough help had been given to enough people to make Roosevelt a hero to millions, but the same system that had brought depression and crisis -the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need- remained.

Our democracy es but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Hellen Keller, 1911