Essay on the Political History of Modern America.

11/25/2013

Laura Coltello

History of Political Ideas

On the Formation and Development of the Revolutionary and Liberation Parties of America.

1929-1930s: The Whispers of Dissent

The early decades of the 20th Century had been turbulent ones, not only for America, but for the world at large. World War I, the biggest armed conflict in modern history, had laid claim to millions of lives. The Ottoman Empire, once the specter of the Mediterranean, collapsed on itself, the rotten foundations that had held it no longer able to support the corpse’s weight. The Russian and German Revolutions, too, heralded a massive change in the stability of Northern Europe. Where the Cretan Republic had established itself as hegemon of the Mediterranean, the rest of the continent was taking, and observing, the first steps that would eventually lead to a deadly match that would soon encompass every corner of the world. 

But, for now, let’s re-focus back home. The United States of America, the undisputed ruler of the American Continent, was riding a high. Having managed to deal with the cries for reform and modernization of their own populace, the country was experiencing a steady level of economic growth and an increasing stature as a military power. Culturally, the country was also experiencing growth. Not for nothing is the decade of the 1920s known as the “Jazz Age”. America was on an upswing, and it was clear to the world at large. 

The fact that this growth came alongside a massively interventionist and imperialist policy towards Central America and the Caribbean, often brought about because of the… interests of certain corporations in the American heartland was, of course, a coincidence that had no correlation.

Still, whatever the injustices inflicted on the United States' neighbors, the fact that America was growing at a pace no other Major Power in the world could match was undeniable. Had things continued in such a way, then perhaps the world as we know it today would not exist. 

Alas, it was not to be. 

Beginning with The Great Crash of the New York Stock Exchange, the United States suffered the first blow of what we today know as the “Great Depression”. The United States lost billions in one week, more money than it had spent in the entirety of World War I, more than ten times the money that the entire Federal Budget had. 

And things continued to get worse. 

Helped along by the misguided and undeniably foolish attempts of President Hoover, unemployment in the country soared. Thousands upon thousands of banks were forced to close, international trade contracted severely, and confidence in the economic future of the country dropped to the floor. The fact that President Hoover, despite seeing the ineffectual results of his plans, refused to use federal intervention only exacerbated the issue. America was in trouble, and its president was useless. Something had to give. 

And so, something did. 

While the Republican Party kept squandering their control of Congress and the White House, a certain wing had grown exasperated in the Democratic Party. They saw the continued deterioration of the country, how the policies enacted by those in power failed to do anything but put a band-aid on a gaping chest wound, and chose to do something about it. Gathering the smartest, most committed minds of the party, this coalition began concocting a plan that would help save America from the woes that attacked it.

And in 1932, they put it into action. Led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the “Revolutionary Democrat” wing of the Democratic Party launched itself to the streets with the ferocity of men possessed.

Promising a New Deal, a declaration of war on the illness that had brought the United States to its knees, the Revolutionary Democrat wing won the Democrats one of the largest victories in its entire history.

A slew of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations were enacted by the Revolutionary Wing, stemming the worst parts of the Depression, and leading America to begin taking undeniably wobbly, but nevertheless determined, steps to once more reach the highs that they had coasted on during the 1920s. Roosevelt was leading the country into what could be called an economic miracle, and public support soared, allowing him to win a second term with a noticeable majority and an increase of Democratic seats in both houses of Congress. The United States was once more on the upswing. 

A pity, then, that the conditions to bring this success would not repeat themselves. 

Beginning with the introduction of what’s known as the “Second New Deal”, many cracks began to show in the coalition that the Revolutionaries had formed. Business-aligned politicians distanced themselves from Roosevelt, and the Democrats and the Republicans (or, at least, the majority of the Republicans) had found common ground in other topics. 

The Late 1930s: Fire Begins to Spread. 

While the United States focused inwardly, the rest of the world was marching headlong into conflict. The Second Sino-Japanese War had just fired off, Adolf Hitler had taken control of Germany and transformed it into a clear fascist state, espousing insane beliefs of racial purity and the formation of “a Thousand Year Empire”, threatening to supplant Britain and France as the masters of Europe. 

Roosevelt and his coalition saw the writing on the wall. War had come to Asia, and soon enough, war would consume Europe. America needed to prepare itself, to re-forge itself, to stand ready for the conflict that would soon come. 

Too little, too late. 

Roosevelt, and the Revolutionary Wing, had committed a fatal flaw in their administration. While it is undeniable that the recalling of American troops that had been sent in “peace-keeping” missions to Latin America was the correct move, both for humanitarian and practical reasons, Roosevelt’s party (and it could truly begin to be called a party now, as its size had more than quadrupled from the original small group) allowed their ‘enemies’ to do what no commander in war, or in politics, ever should. 

They allowed the Republicans, and the other half of the Democratic Party, to steal public perception away.

Isolationism in the United States has always been a fact of life, known both locally and globally. Not for nothing is Crete nicknamed “The Little America”, so similar are the positions of isolation held by their populace from the outside world. Still, whatever the baseline, the United States had been hoisted by their own petard. 

Beginning with the refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, American isolationism started to take hold of the populace. And while Roosevelt himself carefully avoided any chance of stoking the sentiment, politicians like Gerald Nye took over the national waves, and began presenting anti-war and isolationist sentiments. This position was further emboldened by the withdrawal of US forces from Latin America, which led many to believe that President Roosevelt agreed with keeping America from intervening in the rest of the world. From becoming the “world police”, if you’ll allow me a small joke. 

Still, this belief in isolationism led Congress to pass the Neutrality Acts, a foolish attempt to keep the United States from intervening in foreign conflicts, as it made no distinction between aggressor and victims, and limited America’s ability to help its allies in the lead-up to World War II. So clearly ineffective were these acts, that even the oldest of them lasted only six years before being entirely repealed. 

Regardless, the reality was that American Isolationism was the leading position, and had it remained the position of the Republicans alone, then perhaps we’d still be voting for the Elephant and the Donkey. But it was not meant to be. 

The Conservative Wing of the Democrats saw this isolation as the perfect chance to reclaim their party from the dangerous radicals that had taken control, and they turned their attacks to the “war-mongering” and “destabilizing” policies of the Revolutionaries. With this, bitter infighting took place in the Democrat Party. Only the most general of agreements managed to be achieved in Congress, and most of them purely because of public sentiment, such as providing aid to Britain in their deadly war with Germany, as the Nazis’ inhumane treatment of Jews and other captured POWs reached the eyes and ears of the American public. 

Indeed, so blatant was the conflict in Congress that, had the Republicans been united, then the House, the Senate, and the Presidency would have been theirs to claim in a land-slide. 

But the Republicans were not united. If anything, they were caught in just as vicious a war for control. The news of Nazi Germany’s claim to power, the designs of Imperial Japan in Asia, and Britain’s inability to contain both, had tipped off certain members of the Republicans that war, true war, was coming, and nothing could avert it. The only choices were whether to once more pick up their guns and prepare for it, or to remain supine for whoever would be the one to attack.

And so the “Liberation” wing, as it would come to be called due to its positions in “liberating” European and Asian countries from the grips of dictators and strongmen, threw itself into political battle with the isolationist members of the Republican party. 

Thus, American democracy was deadlocked. The parties could not agree, and they were doing nothing but clawing at their own throats. Roosevelt’s victory in the election of 1940 was possible only because of the man’s popularity and his personal charm, as he asked Americans to trust him to solve the political fighting, “just as you trusted me to bring the economy back from ruin”. 

But Roosevelt’s promises were empty. He could not end the fighting in Congress, not alone. He needed something, something massive, something gigantic enough to draw America’s attention back to that which truly mattered. For nights, he prayed that such a thing would come soon, as America would be brought to its knees again if nothing did. 

On December 7th, 1941, his prayers were answered in the most infamous of ways.

The Honolulu naval base of Pearl Harbor was attacked by Imperial Japan, claiming the lives of over two thousand American soldiers, serving as Japan’s unofficial declaration of war… 

And the awakening of the American Giant. 

The response to the attack was immediate. Public outrage soared higher than it had ever before. The sea of fury that washed over the country putting to bed even the harshest of grudges among the politicians. America had tried to leave the world alone, and in exchange the world claimed their children. Just a bit over 24 hours after the attack, war was declared upon the nation of Imperial Japan. What little isolationist desire still remained in the country was stomped out by Nazi Germany’s declaration of war three days later. 

1945-1950: Gone are the Embers, Gone is the Unity.

The events of the Second World War are well-documented. The United States of America, in conjunction with its Allies and the mysterious Seeker, won a smashing victory against the ‘Axis of Evil’. Nazi Germany was destroyed, Hitler claiming his own life before Seeker could get him. Fascist Italy, too, destroyed from the inside, revolutionaries hanging Benito Mussolini from lamplights. Imperial Japan, the first target of American fury, had their actions paid back with interest, the death toll of the Atomic Bombings reaching no higher than 100,000 only due to Seeker’s mad rescue of the civilians. 

Yes, America won its war. It won it in a grand enough manner that it became the hegemon of the West, having led the New World to the rescue and liberation of the old. 

The only price paid was half of Europe. 

Total war, on its own, is an already incredibly destructive affair. A war that encompasses so many people, so much territory, even more so. A war that contained powered beings from every corner of the European Continent, well, the death toll shows the consequence. 

France, Germany, and much of Western Russia lay in ruins. The Axis may have died, but it died hard, and long before doing so, it had reaped a massive harvest of blood. 

The United States, being the Allied entity that had come out the healthiest of the war, and now had to contest with the Red East, had a choice to make. It could close its doors again, having come out of the conflict victorious, or it could fully step into the position they had inherited from the British Empire, now nothing more than a shadow of its strong self. 

The Republicans and the Democrats chose the former. The Liberators and the Revolutionaries chose the latter. Coming together one last time, these two counted among themselves a tenuous majority in the House and Senate. A lucky matter for them, as the death of Roosevelt months prior meant they no longer had the charismatic devil to whip up popular support in Congress for their plans. 

Still, an idea was had, and a strategy was concocted. The “European Rescue and Recovery” Act, more commonly known as The Marshaling Aid Plan,  would pump billions upon billions of American dollars into the war-torn Western Europe, in order to rebuild and modernize the region, so that it would once again hold the splendor that it once had, before the conflict swept it all up in the wind. But that was not all of it. 

A small provision in the Act allowed for the increased immigration of thousands upon thousands of refugees from Europe into America, as they would be “trained” and “educated” in a way that would eventually help revitalize their countries. 

As anyone who actually lives in America today can attest, only half of that ended up happening. 

The assumed figures of thousands was a wildly low estimate. By the end of the 40s decade, over two million people had come to America in search of a better life. By the end of the 50s, that number had quadrupled. 

And once someone whose life has consisted of a fierce struggle for survival comes to a place of peace, a place of opportunity, a place where one is once again allowed to dream, it is a fool’s hope to think they’ll ever leave. 

To their eternal credit, the Liberators and the Revolutionaries did not balk at the challenge. While the Democrats and Republicans appealed to the base, bigoted desires of the conservative American base, the Libs and Revos, as they have come to be known today, steadfastly held true to the promises they had made, just as they always had. 

And when the Democrats and Republicans set a line in the sand, and decried that they would no longer accept the actions taken by these two wings, a choice was made. The Revolutionary Party, founded by the best and brightest of the Democrats, and The Liberation Party, full of those Republicans who had not- who had refused to forget what they once stood for, nearly an entire century ago, came to be, leading America not shackled with the fears of the past…

But with the hopes of the future.