StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Understanding America Today - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
From the paper "Understanding America Today" it is clear that America now has a choice to make, either learn from the mistakes of the past or continue to make the same mistakes that will eventually totally erase the importance of America in today's world…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER94% of users find it useful
Understanding America Today
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Understanding America Today"

Our country faces a clear direction of having to redefine our role in the world today, and to come to a full understanding of the way that America has developed as a nation through the events of the Great Depression era and our rise to power as a nuclear country during the bombing of Japan during World War II, we must first understand how these two historical events in the story of America affected and influenced our modern economic and warfare policies. During each of these events, America had to redefine its role in the international policy landscape to ensure the survival of the American way of life. How America survived and evolved into America that it is today stems directly from the impact of those 2 events.
To begin with, the Great Depression that lasted from 1929 to the beginning of the 1940s shows us the resilience of Americans in the face of adversity. Facing our modern-day recession shows us that as a nation, America learned its lesson for a time before chucking those lessons out the door during the affluent 80s - the early 00s. Just as before the first round of financial depression, America had just elected a charismatic leader to the White House who promised to fix the problems left by his predecessor. However, he failed to do so and the American people were left to pay the price. I find it quite disturbing that America seems to have a pattern of allowing history to repeat itself. As one will recall from our lessons in this class, America was enjoying one of its longest and largest economic growth spurts before the depression came along. This is a typical scenario that was again played out before the 21st-century era of the American depression, only this time, both the stock market and banking system collapsed.
With more than 15 million Americans out of work, the government chose to pull the country out of the depression era by introducing European-style social and economic reforms The New Deal allowed the government to have a more direct hand in the social and economic business of the American people. By adopting a policy of moderate currency inflation the federal government managed to jumpstart the economy and offer relief to some debtors by creating credit facilities that dealt with industry and agriculture. Banks were severely monitored and controlled so that they would not make the mistake of increasing their already existing bad loans.
While The New Deal ushered in a new era of social, political, and economic stability for the government, the events happening overseas in Europe and Asia were slowly beginning to rear their ugly head about the existence of America as a pacifist country. The American economy was at its peak when it became directly involved in the European and Asian wars of World War II. Although the United States of America managed to survive the economic effects of the war through the act of selling bonds, rationing, and other cost-saving measures at home, the country was slowly emerging as the de-facto leader in terms of international relations.
The defeat of Hitler during the European War by the Allied Forces allowed their scientists to come and work for the Americans who were still dealing with the war in the Asia Pacific at the time. Since the nuclear bombs were a Nazi brainchild, these scientists who worked on the project simply handed over their research, results, and expertise to their new masters, who in this case, turned out to be the Americans. We helped them fine-tune the weapon of mass destruction without really having a real reason to use it in the Asia Pacific war.
There is a historical belief that Japan was close to surrendering and had already lost the war by the time the U.S. forces had decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A decision that the government made, according to historical documents, on the fact that by being the first to use a nuclear weapon, the United States will have the upper hand in the nuclear arms race and shall therefore be able to set the rules by which the nuclear arms race was to be played out. That was truly the main reason for the American maintenance of nuclear weapons even after the events of World War II.
These 2 aforementioned historical events had a clear and long-term effect on the American psyche. Both events provoked Americans to believe in their strength as a nation on a level stronger than that of the ordinary citizen. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words”, n.d.)
America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/history/1468729-america-today
(America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 Words)
America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 Words. https://studentshare.org/history/1468729-america-today.
“America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/history/1468729-america-today.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Understanding America Today

Native Americans: Understanding Native American History

today Navajo tribes can be found in scattered locations in Arizona and New Mexico in houses called Hogans which are very easy to assemble.... The term Native Americans refer to the indigenous populous in North america.... he Navajo Nation Reviewed literature declares the Navajo tribe one of the largest reservations in america with an area covering an estimated 27 000 square miles.... The paper 'Native Americans: understanding Native American History' focuses on the history, culture, food, music, customs, beliefs, language, and traditional dressing of Navajo....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper

American Education on the Decline

ony Wagner agitates against the American Education System calmly: 'today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially.... today knowledge is free.... There is no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you.... america is leading the world technologically.... After 1979, all the affairs of education in the United States of america are addressed by the Ministry of Education....
8 Pages (2000 words) Research Paper

The Epic of America

Significantly, the meaning of the concept 'the American Dream has been the result of a long process of evolvement over the course of American history, and today there have been multiple opinions on the validity of the concept.... Therefore, this paper undertakes a cause-and-effect analysis of work, the American dream, society, and psychological perspectives with regard to today's economy and society in general.... (Adams, 404) Therefore, the original definition of the term had a wider meaning and it has acquired different types of meaning to different classes of society today....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

The American Utopian

The book was tremendously influential when it came out and even today it is a source of inspiration in socio-political academics.... Mills is known for his masterpieces like "The New Men of Power: america's Labor Leaders" (1948) which is basically a study of the Labour Metaphysics and how labour leaders have cooperated with the business officials to the disadvantage of the worker,while the workforce stays happy with mere "bread and butter" and has assumed a rather subordinate to role to such leaders....
7 Pages (1750 words) Literature review

[Love] American Disease & Medicine in 1980's through today (2012)

On a positive note, the period from 1980 to today has seen the invention of vaccines and the understanding of the biochemical nature of threatening microorganisms.... A American Disease and Medicine from 1980's through today American disease and medicine has been through bad and good times.... On a positive note, the period from 1980 to today has seen the invention of vaccines and the understanding of the biochemical nature of threatening microorganisms....
2 Pages (500 words) Research Paper

America

Eric Rauchway on the other hand in the book Blessed among Nations: How the World Made America gives a chronological report of how the world at large has contributed to what America is today.... Eric Rauchway on the other hand in the book Blessed among Nations: How the World Made America gives a chronological report of how the world at large has contributed to what America is today.... Rauchway gives a detailed account of how the world historical events such as immigration, financial flow and technological development in the world have lead to the development of America as we know it today (Rauchway, 88)....
2 Pages (500 words) Book Report/Review

American popular music today

There are a number of pointers of the current bad state of popular music.... The first pointer will be the lyrics that are used by the current popular music artists.... Listening to the lyrics someone can easily notice.... ... ... This is particularly true because there are a number of artists whose lyrics can easily be predicted....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Correctional System in America

But today most of the prisons are busy addressing only one of these and that is incarceration.... It has evolved from the dungeons, public torture and executions of medieval times to the courts, prisons and impartial law of today.... Yet today everyone and that includes the public, the government, the prison administrations, and even prisoners and their families agree that the prison system is failing.... This paper "Correctional System in america" discusses the present correctional system that is not working as it should be....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us