A fake but accurate account
PART 3: MODERN TIMES, which are still here, more or less
The Twentieth Century Begins
The nineteenth century was a coal-fired steam age. While they weren't running out of coal they were running out of years and so began the twentieth century full of hope and promise and some leftover soot from all that coal burning. This combined with the steam to create muck which muckrakers waded through and discovered some wealthy muckety-mucks were at the bottom of it all. Though really the common man was stuck in the muck as the rich folk lived on the other side of the tracks in the heights, and everyone knows muck runs downhill. These people called themselves Progressives because they didn't like the way progress was progressing and wanted to reinvent the system. These replaced the Populists who weren't all that popular as they never seemed to get elected.
This didn't stop the century turning and while busybodies were agitating for reform, the business bodies went on to other things. Thus we have the age of steel, the oil age, the automobile age, and the air age which all lumped together made up the American Century, at least as far as Americans were concerned. To prove it they dug the Panama canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with a pass through the Caribbean added on the eastern leg just to make it pleasant. This was overseen by the first President Roosevelt, Teddy, who was called the Trust Buster because he helped break up business cabals no-one trusted to begin with, or something.
While all this canal building and system reinventing was going on, some actual invention inventing was taking place in small workshops and carriage houses because garages didn't exist yet. One of these entrepreneurs was Henry Ford who would put America on wheels, not by inventing the wheel, but with his Model T. Thereafter there would be garages for people to work out of and nowadays store a whole bunch of stuff invented since then, which leaves no room for a car.
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the phonograph, and the precursor to movies, the kinescope as well as the electric pen which isn't much in demand any more, if ever. Two brothers from Ohio invented the airplane, proving they had the Wright stuff. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and Nikola Tesla invented AC electricity which George Westinghouse used to wire America. Meanwhile Marconi unwired communications by inventing radio. Combined together, what they were unwittingly inventing was the means for pop culture.
Woodrow Wilson became president and they started inventing the national government as we understand it today, if we understand it at all. The Federal Reserve bank system was founded to regulate the money supply in circulation and income tax was established to circulate some of the supply of money towards the government. The "one man, one vote" method of electing Senators was also pushed through, though it took a little more pushing from pushy suffragettes to apply this to women as well.
War and Peace Leading up to More War
Over in Europe some relatives of the late Queen Victoria had a squabble when a Serbian shot some distant relative of theirs, the Archduke of Austria. Unfortunately these cousins were national leaders who don't settle things bitch-slapping each other on the Jerry Springer Show, but on the battlefield. Everyone started declaring war on everybody and before you knew it they were in the middle of World War I. Needless to say they didn't call it that at the time because they didn't know it was the prequel to World War II. They first called it the War to End all Wars, a more mistaken name they couldn't have come up with. The alternative was the Great War, though what was so great about it is hard to fathom, seemed rather nasty all around.
Back in the states Americans re-elected President Wilson because he wasn't related to Queen Victoria and kept America out of the war. Which was fairly easy as it was being fought some distance away in Europe. The way to get Americans into a war is to sink ships, just ask the Spanish and the Japanese. This is what Germany did as unrestricted u-boats torpedoed American merchant ships. Top this off with a half-baked German plot with Mexico to take back Texas and the US declared war just in time to get a few Doughboys in the fight before Germany collapsed. The warring parties declared an armistice, but got the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations instead. Though they did boot out the Kaiser, the Tsar, all of the Hapsburgs in Austria, and the Ottomans to boot. This made the world safe for democracy, though a lot of places like the Soviet Union went for other forms of government all the same.
Thus began the Roaring Twenties though movies were silent and so was the President, Cal Coolidge who thought the business of America was business and none of his business. Some unsilent do-gooders decided to make America safe for teetotling and Prohibition was passed outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcohol. This was largely ignored and speakeasies, blind pigs and the gangsters who operated them flourished. Folks all over were getting high drinking booze that in theory didn't exist and at the same time buying stocks with money that only existed in theory which meant stock prices got high, too. In 1929 the boom market crashed and the economy soon followed kicking off the Great Depression, which wasn't all that great for a lot of people, but it was greatly depressing.
The great men of the age believed in hands-on government and sprung to action to wrestle the wayward economy into submission and so we headed into the longest, deepest depression in history. The Dust Bowl arrived in Oklahoma and government programs arrived everywhere else as the feds helped people get over their fear of fear with government alternatives. FDR acting PDQ gave us the NRA, CCC, TVA, FDIC, SSA, and so whatever else was lacking there was no shortage of acronyms. Prohibition was ended and bootleggers joined the ranks of the unemployed, so even if you didn't have a job at least you could get a drink. Because or despite all this America muddled through without resorting to Fascism or Communism, which is more than you can say for Europe which dragged America into their troubles anyway.
World War, Too
Back in Europe war broke out again as Germany invaded Poland, then France, then the Soviet Union, and just about every other country they could get at. Italy invaded Libya and over in Asia Japan was invading China. Now, the US wasn't interested in these wars, but the wars were interested in the US as Japan attacked the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. America declared war on Japan and then Germany declared war on the US, and we found ourselves in the odd position of being allies with both impirial Britain and the communist Soviet Union.
At the start there wasn't any way for the Americans to fight the Germans directly so we sent the British ships and planes and the Soviets got trucks. This was Lend/Lease which President Roosevelt compared to lending a neighbor a hose, and worked about as well if you even thought of getting the hose back. Still, it was better than sending either ally troops considering how the Russian and British led battles had gone to date.
The US Army eventually got into the fight in north Africa against the Afrika Korps whose leader, General Irwin Rommel, earned the name the Desert Fox. He was up against the Desert Rats from Britain and Australia, where British General Bernard Montgomery also made a name for himself, which wasn't the Desert Rat but simply Monty. The Anglo-Americans chased the Axis forces into Sicily where American General George Patton made a name for himself. Afterwards the Germans retreated to Italy where the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was self-named Il Duce, was deposed without any of his generals making a name for themselves. At this point Italy quit the war, unfortunately the war didn't quit Italy which turned into a slow grind and a sideshow as all the big names went elsewhere.
This elsewhere was Normandy in France where the Allies (minus Russians) invaded on D-Day, June 6th 1944. This was Operation Overlord and became the second front supplanting the other second fronts in Italy, in the north Atlantic and the strategic bombing of Germany, not to mention Burma, China and the Pacific generally. This toehold on the beaches was expanded to a foothold and then to a stranglehold after Patton's Third army broke out of the hedgerows and swept all before it. After a series of attacks, counter-attacks and counter-counter-attacks Paris was liberated and the Germans were pushed out of France after six months or so. Which means in comparison the Germans defended France much better than the French had in 1940.
In the Pacific the Japanese were looking for a fleet action that would decide the war and they got it at the Battle of Midway. Only the decision wasn't the one they were looking for as the US naval air forces sank four of their aircraft carriers. After this the US went on the offensive and started attacking Japanese held islands in what was called island hopping. The Japanese defended tenaciously, which is to say suicidally, but were overpowered by Marines, the Army and the Navy which had overpowering firepower. This made up for the lack of American suicidalness, and anyway it's hard to make use of dead troops which the Japanese had a lot more of.
Returning to Europe, the Germans thrust into France through the Ardenne Forest creating a bulge in the Allies front line. This was the Battle of the Bulge, though it was bulging in rather than out it still sounds better than Battle of the Dent what with alliteration and all. Anyway, this offensive ran out of steam though the Panzers were diesels which ran out of gas and not steam. This debacle along with the fall of Berlin to the Russians and the suicides of the top Nazis pretty much ended the war in Europe.
While the Nazis committed suicide at the top ranks the Japanese took a bottom up approach. This was the Kamikaze, or Divine Wind which was a typhoon that saved Japan a long time ago. It's hard to win a war of attrition if you kill your own troops, but that was the method tried as the Japanese sent what pilots they had left after the Mariannas Turkey Shoot to dive bomb the American fleet, plane, bomb, pilot and all. This didn't stop the island hopping and air bases were built on captured islands so superfortresses, which weren't fortresses at all but big planes, could jump off and bomb the bejeezus out of Japan itself.
There was a lot of bejeezus in Japan apparently as they refused to say uncle until the USAAF dropped not one, but two atomic bombs on the place. At this point the Japanese Emperor saw the handwriting on the wall, what wall survived all that bombing anyway, and decided to give up the ghost. Though some die-hards who were unhappy not to have died in the war yet tried to stop the end and staged a failed coup to continue the war until everybody was dead.
Having just flattened both Germany and Japan, the US decided to rebuild them both politically and physically. This was called the Marshall Plan. The Soviets had a different tack where they would rebuild their zones of occupation politically and skip the actual building rebuilding part. This was called the Communist Plot. Since this is a history of America we'll skip all that and return to events stateside.
The Wonder Years
Having escaped the bombing, tank traffic and general messiness left in the wake of war the United States emerged from the war as the richest, most powerful country on Earth. Business and housing boomed and so did babies, thankfully none of this booming was from canon or bombs. Until North Korean Communists invaded South Korea kicking off the Korean War. This was the hotspot of the Cold War, though if you've been to Korea in the winter it's pretty cold there. The Allies drove the Communists north until the Chinese joined on the North's side and drove the Allies back South to where it all pretty much began. A cease-fire was called and negotiations began, though without much urgency it seems as they continue to this day though nobody much cares any more.
Back home homes were sprouting television antennae, cars were growing fins and Elvis was growing sideburns as Rock and Roll was invented just in time to fuel juvenile delinquency. This was the first stirrings of youth culture where everyone wanted to grow up fast and act like a kid when they did. Congress investigated Rock and Roll, fluoridated water and comic books discovering communists in government and Hollywood instead. The much more plentiful communists in Russia launched Sputnik which launched the space race and a lot of debate about a missile gap which politicians were against, unless it was in our favor. It wasn't the missiles that worried folks so much as the nuclear warheads on the top because the Soviets had also got the atomic bomb. Thanks in part to communist agents in the US nuclear weapons program Congress completely missed while stamping out unwholesome comic books.
JFK won the presidency starting Camelot in the Oval Office only without a round table or Holy Grail. With LBJ as Vice President and RFK as Attorney General acronyms were back in style though first lady Jackie Kennedy was the most stylish of the bunch. Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated by another overlooked communist Lee Harvey Oswald ending Camelot on the Potomac and starting the age of conspiracy theories and continuing the tradition of assassins with three names, like John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray and Sirhan B. Sirhan who bucked the trend slightly with just an initial.
The Blunder Years
LBJ assumed the presidency and declared war on poverty sending troops to Viet Nam to fight communists, which I suppose is one way to battle poverty but not what most people had in mind. To run the war like a business the Johnson administration hired as Secretary of Defense a bean counter from Ford, John McNamara, who counted bodies instead. He also began the Great Society, sort-of a neo-New Deal which proposed to make prosperity great rather than making a depression great. People had their own ideas of what was great which was barbequeing and mowing grass. So they moved in droves to the suburbs where they could sprawl out, settle in, live it up, and calm down all at the same time which requires more space than you get in a city apartment.
The British invaded the US not with military forces but with rock bands, the "and roll" getting lost in transit. America responded with surf music and various sounds from places like Philly and Motown which coalesced into pop. These were the mods, who after deciding personal hygiene was for squares became hippies. This rock music was growing ever louder as were the protests against the war in Viet Nam. Nonetheless, the silent majority elected Richard Nixon president who promised to Vietnamize Viet Nam and bring law and order to America. The latter took the form of ordering wage and price controls trying to overturn the law of supply and demand which rarely works out well.
Neal Armstrong landed on the moon with a little help from NASA and America won the space race. Back on Earth, inflation was growing and support for the war as shrinking. The Democrats ran an unelectable candidate, George McGovern, against Nixon who decided to use dirty tricks anyway just to be sure. This became the Watergate scandal and Nixon eventually resigned and Gerald Ford became president and the butt of jokes for falling down stairs. Ford's solution to inflation was wearing "WIN" lapel buttons, which while totally in the wishful thinking category at least didn't have unfortunate unintended consequences as there were no consequences at all.
In California a couple guys named Steve invented the personal computer which would have consequences, but not for a while. Also during the 70s America celebrated the bicentennial with long parades and long line-ups for gas because of a gas shortage manufactured by OPEC who stopped manufacturing enough gas for the gas-guzzlers manufactured by Detroit which people stopped buying.
The American electorate went nuts for a peanut farmer from Georgia and elected him president. President Carter urged Americans to conserve energy and wear sweaters because, as the newsweeklies assured us, this was the dawn of a new ice age. He also encouraged the Shah of Iran to accommodate Islamic radicals who repaid both by overthrowing the Shah and holding Americans hostage in the US embassy in a most unaccommodating fashion. This embarrassed the president who decided to stand up to the Soviets who invaded Afghanistan by boycotting the Moscow Olympics even though he wasn't actually on the team.
History Ends and Begins Again
In 1980 the American electorate traded Carter for Ronald Reagan who traded arms for the hostages who returned to America while the arms would up in Nicaragua, somehow. Voodoo economics replaced stagflation and the economy started hotting up again which started melting the Cold War, though really it was the meltdown of Communism in eastern Europe that caused it. This was a metaphorical meltdown, an actual meltdown happened at a nuclear power plant at Chernobol in the USSR.
The 80s had ups and downs, highs and lows, Savings and Loans, and junk bond traders who where sometimes lowdown and dirty. As usual government spending went up, but as unusual taxes came down. What also came down was the Berlin Wall as communists gave up being communists and decided to be free capitalists. Mostly, as some just switched to a different form of authoritarianism which doesn't really have a catchy name yet.
This was supposed to give America a peace dividend which was quickly spent on cars, tvs, stereos and all sorts of things from Japan. Others blew their dividend on blow from Columbia. Still others on personal computers which were getting better and faster and smaller and could actually do something other than balance a checkbook, which most people weren't all that interested in doing to begin with figuring peace would keep paying dividends. This was the budding Silicon Age which was waiting for Al Gore to invent the internet before it got to full swing.
America had another fling at war when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein claimed Kuwait had historically been part of Iraq even though Iraq was a fiction drawn up by the British to keep oil out of the hands of the Turks after WWI. To avoid another quagmire this war lasted 100 hours, for no reason other than it was a nice round figure. Still, that was long enough to rout the Iraqi army restoring freedom to Kuwait, which was easy as it didn't have much freedom to restore being a Kingdom.
Voters read President Bush Sr.'s lips which they thought were saying "it's the economy, stupid" and elected Bill Clinton who wasn't a stupid economist or a lip reader. There was a lot of hubbub in Washington about many things like health care, free trade and chubby interns which didn't amount to much as nobody had figured out a good use for hubbub. That is until the internet came along and turned hubbub into e-dollars for the net moguls and e-bubbles for the suckers who bought them out. The hubbub evolved into the blogoshpere and now we have more hubbub than you can shake a stick at, for what good it does.
The Brave New Millennium
This is where our story ends even though it's not the end of the story. But if you think I'm going to get sucked into the arguments surrounding what's happened lately, you take me for a fool. While I may or may not be one, even fools sometimes know where not to dare tread. Now, I admit I have overlooked a good many things in this overview, but it's an accurate narrative despite many of the facts being mixed or made up. What the future holds in store only the future knows, but the future is uncertain so even it doesn't know for sure.
Part 1: The Early Days
Part 3: Growing Pains