When the Second World War ended in 1945, America was forever changed. The fears of the Great Depression that had crippled the country for more than a decade were gone. Eight million men and women who had been in uniform returned home, filled with a self-confidence and ambition their parents had lost. The millions of men and women who had filled the factories had acquired new skills as well, from jobs that paid them enough to join the middle class, even enough to set aside money for a rainy day. Union membership was at an all-time high. Optimism reigned!
And a new society evolved! The Charleston had given away to Boogie-Woogie. Nickelodeons had given way to talkies and Hollywood blockbusters. Young people, born on farms, hadn’t bothered to return. They’d left the factories and the armed forces to stand inert, their images reflecting in the neon lights of the cities. They married, bought a new Chevy, and moved to the suburbs. The GI bill had enabled many to earn a college degree, the first in their family. There really was an American dream and they were going to share in it.
As Truman morphed into Eisenhower and then Kennedy, other changes crept in. The Soviet’s Sputnik ushered in the Space Race behind an Iron Curtain. Korea, another war and more Americans killed somewhere far away.. A few advisors sent to help South Vietnam grew like a cancer into a combat army. Women’s and abortion rights grabbed our attention but not nearly as much as the cherry on top of our melting society…civil rights, as millions of African Americans found themselves on the outside looking in on a burgeoning society that continued to exclude them.
Manufacturing moved offshore. The fashion industry, which had employed nearly one million workers two decades earlier now only needed one-quarter of that number. China became our go-to provider for steel, cars and much of what we’d produced ourselves. Union membership declined. Factories shuttered! Cities rusted!
By the turn of the century mechanical devices had given way to electronic tubes, then to transistors, and semiconductors. Computers became personal as data speeds multiplied and the World Wide Web sprang from infancy to maturity almost overnight, introducing us to new technologies and the internet.
New businesses thrived and executives who earned 10X the average worker now earned 100X. Income disparity further divided us.
Employments new Emerald City were Tech companies, the Microsoft’s, Apples, and Googles who were creating new worlds on an almost daily basis, along with a gaggle of billionaires, as those without the new generational skills languished.
The United States, the beacon of the world in 1945, now suffered from an ego-sated arthritis. We were either in a war or supporting regimes that professed to be friendly as our budget deficits grew…and grew…and grew. We fed the beast while allowing our infrastructure and educational systems to crumble.
We described global warming as a hoax but came to accept radical weather. We came to accept that more guns meant better safety and that it was alright for government to make decisions regarding a woman’s body. We lost much of the younger generation paralyzed by their addiction to social media. We became bereft of a moral direction. Rome never lasted for a thousand years. The sun that had shined on the British Empire set and the American pride that glistened in 1945 now waffles in the heavy winds of racism, income and educational disparities, as well as a changing world order. Whether we can recapture that glory only historians a hundred years hence will know.