American Ideals and the Challenges of the post-WW2 Years

American Ideals and the Challenges of the post-WW2 Years
America changed quite a bit after WW2. It changed with respect to gender roles, with respect to racial issues, with respect to the economy, and with respect to politics. Everything was in flux after WW2—but it did not happen all at once. What happened first was the Cold War. Immediately the war ended, Americans returned home from the war and returned to the jobs they had held previously. The women who had been in the workforce now returned home—back to the domestic sphere, which was their traditional role. The Baby Boomer generation was soon being born and life was good. Jobs were being created and credit was easier to come by than in the past. But things were not perfect because the Red Menace reared its head and Joe McCarthy began hunting Communists in the government and in Hollywood. Tensions increased and fears of Soviets using a nuclear bomb on Americans caused children to learn to duck and cover in schools (as though that would save them). The Cold War would continue on for decades, but the American ideal of freedom and democracy would run high for much of that time—at least until the 1960s when a series of assassinations beginning with one Kennedy and ending with another fed into the Vietnam years and Americans became disillusioned with their government. By the time of Nixon’s resignation, the Cold War was still going on but the American ideals of freedom and democracy no longer seemed quite so pure or so guaranteed.
The Civil Rights Act of the 1960s had seemed like a victory for equality and fraternity and liberty—but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X shortly thereafter served as a rude awakening that no matter what legislation was passed things were not going to be fair and equal. The government came under increasing scrutiny, particularly when the FBI was accused of spying on American citizens, which was illegal at the time (today it is mostly just assumed that the government is spying on Americans).
In the 1960s gender roles started to be questioned as well. The Feminist movement got going again, this time with Betty Friedan leading the charge with her book The Feminine Mystique, which basically told women that they needed to get out of the domestic sphere and look for fulfillment as independent women. Friedan was followed by Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and Ms. Magazine. Women started entering the workforce and the idea of liberation became popular. Women’s liberation from the home; liberation theology entered the air in terms of religious expression. The Catholic Church embraced new doctrines to try to get more in step with the changing times in the 1960s. The 1960s was a revolutionary decade in more ways than one.
The killing of John F. Kennedy really made it difficult for America to seem like a pristine place any longer. The latter half of the 1940s through the 1950s had really been a kind of golden age of innocence. It was as though America had finally achieved a glorious period. It had won the war and had proved to be the most dominant nation in the world. The White House was known as Camelot because of how beautiful the President and First Lady were. Everything seemed beyond wonderful. Except for the threat of nuclear war that happened when the US got wind that Cuba had nuclear missiles aimed at the US, there was not much in the way of crises. The Civil Rights Movement was ongoing, but in terms of overall peace, things seemed relatively benign. The US seemed much freer than the Communist countries. All of that was mainly an illusion. The Soviets pointed out how America’s history of racism was now catching up with it. And then Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963 and everything turned upside down.
The assassination was blamed on Oswald, but then he was killed by Jack Ruby, who had mob connections. Kennedy had been pushing nuclear non-proliferation. Israel had been against that and wanted nuclear weapons. Fingers pointed in every which direction. Some blamed the military-industrial complex. Some blamed the mob. Some blamed Israel. Some blamed the CIA. Some believed that Oswald acted alone. The whole episode was a disgrace anyway one looked at it.
Kennedy had promised that America would get to the moon and before the decade was out, Americans did land on the moon. The Apollo missions were meant to usher in the next era of American greatness, which had been threatened by the Soviets beating the US into space. Whether the US actually landed on the moon or whether the whole thing was faked would be the subject of many conspiracy theories on up to this very day. Regardless, the moon landings continued and served as a nice distraction from the Vietnam War. And then they stopped as suddenly as the war did.
By that point the counter-culture was in full-swing. Students were protesting (and getting killed like at Kent State). Hippies and flower power were spreading. The Baby Boomers came of age and rejected the old cultural values of their parents. They embraced the sexual liberation; birth control was now everywhere. Sexual promiscuity was championed as liberating and the dance halls and rock ‘n’ roll helped to advance the counter-culture.
American ideals of family, home ownership, owning one’s own business—much of this receded as the century wore on. The Baby Boomers had their own children, Generation X. Generation X came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and their outlook was a lot bleaker than was their parents’. Generation X saw little sense in anything that existed in the modern culture. They tended to be apathetic, without goals, without passion for much of anything. They tended towards cynicism. The schools started teaching that everyone deserved a trophy and the Millennial generation was given this idea that everyone was special. The film Fight Club, which came out in 1999, tackles the subject of Generation X coming into adulthood and having no sense of identity, no sense of masculinity or femininity. The film shows why that Generation was angry about how America had sold its soul for corporate monopolies. In the movie, the protagonist tries to reclaim his own identity and assert his own masculinity. It would be called toxic today because political correctness dominates the discourse. However, the film reflects what the end of the 20th century was like for the children of the Baby Boomers and how far the American ideals—the American Dream—had fallen.
When Communism fell in Russia, the US no longer had any more bad guys to fight. Fortunately, terrorism came along and the US could once again assert its moral superiority all over the world. It was glib (Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech after the Iraq invasion and prior to hundreds of thousands being killed). It was farcical (the 2008 financial collapse and the central bank intervention heard around the world). It was a mess and it is only getting messier.
Perhaps the people in Fight Club were right to feel threatened by a culture that was insisting on emasculation. The post-war world ushered in a lot of changes. Many of them have turned the American Dream on its head. The middle class is being routed and the US is turning into a nation of renters and welfare recipients.