How has America changed during your lifetime?
Life has changed drastically in the United States since my youth. Born and bred in Havana, where blacks were discriminated but not nearly at the level they were in the Southern United States, I was used to them not being accepted in private social clubs, to people not wanting blacks or mulattos to date white girls, and some similar acts of discrimination, but they could eat together in the same restaurants and did attend the same private or public schools as the white, would come to dinner to our homes and the other way around, were considered close friends.
Imagine then my surprise the first time I visited Miami in 1956, when it was still a small city, downtown stores had wooden floors, the Flagler Street bridge over the Miami river girated45 degrees to let boats pass, if you stood in line and there was a black person in front of you, whether male or female, he or she would cede their position and stand behind you, there were water fountains for white and for colored, they would go to the back of the buses, schools, restaurants and bars were segregated, and so many other hair-raising customs.
I was thirsty once at the wooden-floor Kresge Ten-cent store in downtown Miami, went looking for a water fountain and found two side by side, one said White and had a long line, the other one said Colored and was empty, so I approached the Colored fountain to drink from it, whereupon a white man who was in line to drink at the White fountain began yelling at me, things that I mostly did not understand, but was evident the fury that my action caused him.
Black families, then named Colored instead of Black, where by and large well behaved, peaceful, with strong family and Christian ties. It was not until after the Civil Act of 1964, when that public overt mistreatment rightly ended, that the Federal and State Governments, through ill-conceived ideas and greed on the part of the people who administered the programs of aid, that the destruction of the black family units and their Christian values began.
Before credit cards and government guarantees, credit was extended, on a limited basis, to deserving customers. The economic boon after World War II, when soldiers returned, industrial production turned to civilian instead of military products, the housing crisis prompted a strong building surge, automobile production tried to catch up with demand, credit loosened some for family homes and automobiles, that the American Dream, resurging after the Depression and War years, was again attainable. You could buy a single-family house for $10,000 and a new automobile for $2,000.
A modest blue-collar middle-class family could live with one salary, a decent home and automobile, one TV and one telephone. Nothing else was needed or desired. Stores extended credit to deserving customers only, so did banks and finance companies, albeit in a much conservative way that is the case now.
Credit cards and government guarantees, using politics instead of good sense, made credit available, to individual and businesses, beyond their capacity of repayment, creating therefore boom-bust cycles more pronounced than should be the case. Over the years, consumer and businesses debt has increased exponentially, while governments, at all levels, did the same.
It is a fact that governments never have enough, the more their intake, the more they spend and the more extra they want. They disguise taxes and tolls as to being for a specific purpose, but after the purpose is achieved, they never rescind them. They not only increase taxes and fees, but create institutions such a lottery of different types, to suck up money even from the poor, under the disguise of education or other purposes, for which other taxes are already in place.
On the political level, people of both parties, although adversaries, respected and befriended each other. The was normally elegance and respect in political campaigns, something that has degenerated into personal vicious attacks and eagerness to destroy lives and reputations.
World War II was the last war where we, as a country, including press and excluding politics, wholeheartedly supported the war effort. Our government's policies, after the publication of "Red Star Over China" by Edgar Snow and a visit of Secretary of State George Marshall to China and his favorable report of his interview with Mao Tso Tung, after the resentment of OSS General Stillwell of Colonel Claire Chenault and his success with the Flying Tigers and his friendship with Chiang Kai-shek and Madam Chang, see more here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxZSOiaG-Ko
The United States withdrew the support to Chiang Kai-shek, who went into exile on the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and provoked the Mao triumph of 1949. This, on top of the unjustified urging by the United States Government that The Soviet Union participated in the Pacific Campaign, where they did in only one battle, and later dividing Korea with them as they had done with Germany, were the causes of the Korean Conflict, never a declared war, that caused us so many casualties and sacrifice, where General Macarthur, after gaining the offensive and with the backing of 600,000 troops of Chiang Kai-shek wanted to invade all of North Korea when they and their Chinese allies where in retreat, was stopped at Parallel 38 for political reasons by President Truman, who soon fired him. Read more:
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/general-douglas-macarthur-defends-his-conduct-in-the-war-in-korea/
Similarly in Viet Nam, from where the French had to retreat in 1954, when both President Eisenhower and President Kennedy were reluctant to send troops other than Special Forces advisors, after the Kennedy Assassination of 1963, President Johnson, following the sentiment of the time and the urging of the press, began sending troops in earnest in 1965, albeit micro-managing military operations to satisfy political pressures, without declaring war or allowing the military to fight to win, forbade them from mining ports, attacking North Viet Nam railroads or Soviet air forces at their airports, and occupy North Viet Nam. Later, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, under President Nixon, negotiated a capitulating peace after we were winning the war at a heavy cost, probably because the press had turned popular opinion against the Viet Nam War, young men were dodging the draft, anti-war protests were rampant, returning soldiers were branded as baby killers and Jane Fonda committed treason. After withdrawing our troops, Congress refused to give Viet Nam armed forces the arms and support they needed to fight both the Viet Cong and North Viet Nam troops.
The Communist International (Comin tern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. It began its campaign to infiltrate every country in America during the late twenties, thirties and forties, selecting and sending young people from each country to Moscow to train for the purpose, as explained very well by the Peruvian Eudocio Ravines in his book "The Yenan Way" sold by Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/Yenan-Way-Eudocio-Ravines/dp/B0006D8Q84
and by discovering spies here in the U.S. like the journalist, graduate of Columbia University and agent of the GRU (Soviet Army Intelligence) Whittaker Chambers, read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers
and Sub Secretary of State Alger Hiss, about whom you can read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss#:~:text=Alger%20Hiss%20(November%2011%2C%201904,with%20this%20charge%20in%201950.
The infiltration of the State Department by communists was best explained by 1915 Cornell University Law graduate, member of the Cornell's Quill and Dagger Society, lawyer who practiced in Havana, supposed to also be CIA Station Chief in Cuba, author of the book "Dagger in the Heart - Policy failures in Cuba" published on 1 January 1970, see more:
https://www.amazon.com/Dagger-heart-American-policy-failures/dp/B0007DPNJS
Communism was fairly popular during the thirties and forties, both in Cuba and the U.S., FDR probably thinking of the Soviet Union as an ally against the Nazi Regime, chose journalist and politician Henry Wallace, a declared communist, as his Vice President from 1940 to 1944, when contemplating the end of the war, he replaced him by the unsophisticated but honest Senator Harry S. Truman, whom he kept mostly in the dark.
FDR, through his famous Lend-Lease Program, his way to pretend to maintain neutrality, supplied the Soviet Union with great amount of war material, such as:
400,000 jeeps & trucks.
14,000 airplanes.
8,000 tractors.
13,000 tanks.
1.5 million blankets.
15 million pairs of army boots.
107,000 tons of cotton.
2.7 million tons of petrol products.
which enabled the Soviet Union to resist the Nazi invasion of 1941, albeit with extremely heavy casualties.
Most likely due to resentment by J. Edgar Hoover of the F.B.I. and top brass of Naval Intelligence about having to report to Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), who in turn met with his friend FDR each morning, probably following ill advice by his assessors, dissolved the OSS soon after he became President, only to later realize his mistake, which prompted him to create the C.I.A. in 1947, organization that resulted ineffective, failed to predict the Korean War and the intervention of China in that war, the CIA began to be effective after hard work by General Walter Bedell Smith organizing it before his retirement in 1953 and Allen Dulles during the rest of the fifties and up to November 1961.
In 1950 Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) began a campaign to denounce the communist infiltration of government, especially the State Department. He was emotional, convincing for a time, but dissent soon began in his committee when he did not consult them on matters as hiring and held meetings galore, both in and out of D.C. with little notice, often with the help only of his assistant Roy Cohn. In 1954 he accused the U.S. Army of lax security at a top-secret facility, to which the Army responded that Senator McCarthy had sought preferential treatment to a former subordinate that had been drafted. The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"
Overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man. Read more:
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm
Eduardo René Chibás Ribas (August 15, 1907 – August 16, 1951) was a Cuban politician who used radio to broadcast his political views to the public. He primarily denounced corruption and gangsterism rampant during the governments of Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío. Chibás had accused Education Minister Aureliano Sánchez Arango of corruption, of using ill gotten money to buy extensive land holdings in Mexico and had promised to show proof in his radio program of 5 August 1951, by which time he realized he had been given bogus information and shot himself in the abdomen instead. He died on 16 August 1951 from complications from the gunshot wound. Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Chib%C3%A1s
Currency has changed dramatically, the U.S. Dollar was backed in gold and in 1922, at the Convention in Genoa, the U.S. Dollar and the G.B. Pound Sterling were designated World Reserve Currencies, that other national banks could use as their reserves, instead of gold or silver; the rate of exchange of 4.80 dollars per pound sterling attracted much money from England and the rest of Europe to the United States, the excess of cash made credit readily available, including for margin accounts of Wall Street brokers to their customers, that contributed to the stock market crash of October 1929; Read more here:
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/FRB/pages/1925-1929/28191_1925-1929.pdf
http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollhist.htm
later FDR forbade the possession of gold, voided gold contracts, kept the gold backing of the Dollar only for international exchange, until Richard Nixon removed even that in 1972, making the dollar and every other world currency fiat money since, backed only by their perceived purchasing power and the trust placed on the governments and economies on which their values depend.
Value of $1 from 1900 to 2023
$1 in 1900 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $36.11 today, an increase of $35.11 over 123 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.96% per year between 1900 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,511.46%.
Read more:
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1900?amount=1#:~:text=Value%20of%20%241%20from%201900,cumulative%20price%20increase%20of%203%2C511.46%25.
The programmed devaluation of the currency is a sneaky tax that all of us pay, about which there is nothing we can do in most instances. To illustrate, I began receiving $800 monthly disability payments from The Travelers pursuant to an individual disability policy I purchased before going blind in 1980, but the monthly payment I received then bought a lot more than the same payment I receive today. It did not, as almost all such policies, a cost-of-living increase clause.
The devaluation of the Cuban Peso was much more drastic. President Prío created the Banco Central and the Ministro de Hacienda (Treasure) had paper currency printed in London for bills of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, $20, $10, $5 and $1, all backed in gold, their value equal to that of the U.S. Dollar, there were also silver coins of 1 peso, 50, 20 and ten cents, nickel coins of 5 cents and copper coins of 1 cent, in 1953 100th anniversary of Martí's birthday, the added another edition of smaller paper and added silver coins of 25 and 40 cents in his honor. As soon as the revolution took power in early 1959, they took the $500 and4$1,000 bills out of circulation and limited bank transactions abroad, as well as the limiting the amount of currency a citizen could take out of the country when travelling abroad to $500 per person, about a year later they reduced this limit to $5 per person. When they eliminated the gold-backed peso from circulation altogether and replaced it with their Cuba peso, a fiat currency that buys little or nothing, and given the drastic drop in production of Cuban products on every product and service, even sugar, it is worth absolutely nothing out of the country.
As previously stated elsewhere in this book, communist infiltration of America began in earnest in the late twenties and thirties, with emphasis on universities; a backlash ensued, culminating with the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee in1949 and the McCarthy Era. A study was made, albeit in a small scale.
A second study, conducted in 1969 on behalf of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, was the first to be performed with a large survey sample, extensive questions about political views, and what Neil Gross characterized as highly rigorous analytic methods. The study was conducted in 1969 by political scientist Everett Carll Ladd and sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, who surveyed 60,000 academics in multiple fields of study at 303 institutions about their political views. Publishing their results in the 1975 book The Divided Academy, Ladd and Lipset found that about 46% of professors described themselves as liberal, 27% described themselves as moderates, and 28% described themselves as conservative. They also reported that faculty in the humanities and social sciences tended to be the most liberal, while those in "applied professional schools such as nursing and home economics" and in agriculture were the most conservative. Younger faculty tended to be more liberal than older faculty, and faculty across the political spectrum tended to disapprove of the student activism of the 1960s.
Smaller follow-up surveys on behalf of the Carnegie Foundation held in 1975, 1984, 1989, and 1997 showed an increased trend among professors toward the left, apart from a small movement to the right in 1984. By the 1997 study, 57% of the professors surveyed identified as liberals, 20% as moderates, and 24% as conservatives. Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_American_academics
This tendency has accelerated since and graduates from such universities have populated the TV Networks, News and social media, Hollywood and many other institutions, with accelerated efforts in recent years to reach down even to primary schools and kindergarten, as well as discrediting religion in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular, as they recognized it long ago as the only worldwide institution capable to oppose their agenda. We are living through tough times, when fascism (defined as the authoritarian joint efforts by governments and large capitals to impose their tyranny), attempts to destroy our families, our faith, our freedom.
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