There's No Way To Poll This... So I'll Just Ask, And Invite Your Input...

[WillyT]

When Did The Concept/Idea Of The United States Of America Begin To Unravel ???

I'll begin with the first unraveling:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

Was it the Supreme Court deciding that Corporations had the same rights as people?

Was it WWII and the advent of the MIC/Security State?

Was it Bush v. Gore?

Was it 9-11?

Anybody?

[Scuba]

1. The day after the Constitution was signed.

Keep fighting.

[Politicalboi]

2. I think for me it was JFK's assassination

Even though I was only 2 at that time. As a teen, we finally got to see the Zapruder film and the head go back instead of forward, and the rest is history. We'll NEVER be told the "whole" truth about JFK or 9/11.

[gopiscrap]

21. That's part of it

[tblue]

3. Reagan: "Government IS the problem."

The US has never been the same. Our standing has never been the same. Our trajectory has never been the same.

[Freddie]

15. 100% correct

Saint Ronnie started this country down the path of no return. "Government is the problem", busting unions, embracing the religious right in order to get folks to vote against their own interests. Once we were all in this together, then Reagan started to divide and conquer.

[Trailrider1951]

4. Willy, I think it really took hold with two things.

First, the signing of the National Security documents by Harry Truman in 1947 that created the CIA. That was the beginning of the takeover. The end of the takeover was cinched by the events of November 22, 1963. It's been a gradual dismantling of our rights as citizens ever since. I was born in 1951. I have seen the changes unfold. It's going to take a hell of a fight to dislodge the octopus.

[Fumesucker]

5. If you put a gun to my head I'd say Nixon was the turning point

It seems that America was at least nominally a nation of laws until then.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and a host of other wastes of pus came straight outta' the Nixon administration with a huge chip on their shoulder, honed their chops during Reagan and Poppy and then gave us the business during the Dubya fustercluck.

[steve2470]

6. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was a major step on that road

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

[Drew Richards]

20. THREAD WINNER! although all the barons of industry prior did the same it never went to court

And become national news as this one did.

[patricia92243]

7. When Free Trade was signed.

[NYC_SKP]

8. Didn't happen all at once, could have been turned many times. I'd say post WW2 was when...

...the idea of "War is REALLY GOOD for the economy, etc." and we became pretty full of ourselves.

We started acting imperialistic and invented reasons to go to war.

Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex and he was right.

And that from a Republican!!!

[Shandris]

9. It is human nature to try to be 'better' than someone else; this holds true even in the concept of..

..'of the people, by the people, and for the people'. So from before the moment the first paper was signed, the idea of this kind of governance was already under attack. It was always more of a platitude than a reality in the first place anyways; remember, this speech is coming from the man who didn't really want to see 'all' men equal at all. He didn't want to free the slaves so much as he wanted to affect the Southern war economy. It's just empty talk, although very few people in his day knew that.

No matter how you lace republicanism and democracy, no gathering of people is ever going to be truly, completely concerned for each others needs. There will be those who are true to those words, certainly, but for each of them there is a conniver waiting to usurp their voice. Until you find a way to completely alter fundamental humanity, this will be a problem (and I'm not so sure altering fundamental humanity is such a good idea in the first place, although I'd -love- to modify through teaching some of their more base impulses). It's always been nothing more than a dream, with as much chance of being reality as a dream.

Edit: Note though, that that doesn't mean we just toss our hands up in the air and give up. We do what we can, where we can, when we can. To do any less is, imo, morally repugnant.

[randome]

13. Wow. Well said!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[Egalitarian Thug]

23. Neither platitude noe reality, a goal. They were keenly aware of their hypocrisies and

multitude of shortcomings, they compromised more than they wanted to and worried that what did happen, would. But, they created the chance to do better, a reality that had never been seen before.

[Shandris]

24. An interesting analysis, and one I can somewhat understand.

They definitely did create a reality of potential or possibility where one didn't exist before; they gave motion and life to a new idea, and those can be more powerful than any amount of temporal wordly power in the long run if it becomes strong enough.

However, I'm not convinced that, as a generic collective, the goal of our formative leaders (or even the leaders during Lincoln's day) was to create that goal, that idea, that drive. I think the true recipient was, from before the very foundation of this country itself, the moneyed interests who came from England to join us. We brought the seeds of that mentality, that 'money is all' belief with us when we formed the first colonies; it was apparent when we traded with the Indians until we couldn't trade anymore, and then started taking by force. I don't think we ever managed to remove that illness at the heart of our nation's foundation. Once upon a time, the power of the idea might have been able to challenge the moneyed interests. In a perverse way, the Civil War was almost just that, except that it was money versus money with a subtext of the idea of slavery (not exactly our best idea, thats for sure!). But afterwards, would there ever be a time when even an incredibly powerful idea could challenge the moneyed interests? I don't know for certain...but I'm hard pressed to think of one.

How can we be government of, by, and for the people when the people are crushed by the desires of the moneyed (or, even more horrifying to my mind, the -apathy- of the moneyed)? Yet, I believe that whether by intent of some few or by accident, there are those moments where even the vaunted moneyed ones leave open the doors for change that you alluded to. Each of those doors does leave a new reality, but I see it as more likely to be accidental than intentional in most cases.

[Turbineguy]

10. I think it happened during the

Brezhnev Administration.

[Doc_Technical]

11. Abraham Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus during the Civil War

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/historicdocuments/a/lincolnhabeas.htm


And the Espionage Acts passed during World War One.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917

[TBF]

12. Eisenhower warned us

back in the 50s so it's gotta pre-date that ...

[moondust]

14. On the Mayflower.

Last edited Tue Jan 14, 2014, 02:18 AM - Edit history (1)

One alternate history is that Europeans didn't come here for religious freedom, etc., as the history books would have us believe. They came here so they could become wealthy kings and queens--which they knew they could never be in Europe because they weren't born into royalty. And most everything done since has been designed to create wealthy kings and queens: killing Native Americans and taking their land (Manifest Destiny), slavery, wars, you name it. There were a few decades of broad prosperity after WWII but with Reagan it reverted back to the wealthy serving themselves in their quest to become kings and queens with boundless wealth.

In other words, it was never meant to be egalitarian; it was always about accumulating massive wealth at any cost.

[blkmusclmachine]

16. No, it wasn't 9/11, which is the excuse they give for enacting their prior agenda. Look back to the

early 1960's, when high ranking officials in the U.S. Military hatched a plan to cause widespread terrorism and fatalities across the U.S., and pin the blame on Cuba, who they wanted to go to war with. Kennedy resisted, and I believe they had him killed for it. Read more about their nefarious plan, codename "Operation Northwoods," here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

[Warpy]

17. I'd say the late 60s

Young people were starting to join Young Americans for Freedom and The Ripon Society while their elders were mostly liberals of one form or another.

Some of it was a reaction to the scruffy hippies and some of it was because they thought the country had been radicalized and had been offended that civil rights had been extended to blacks and women, at least partially. They were all bent out of shape because the Southern Baptists were no longer allowed to proselytize to school children during school hours.

The rise of the reactionary conservative movement started then and they're the ones who triggered the present Unraveling by allying themselves with the rich and giving up the New Deal to get all the things they wanted back.

Well, they managed to gut the New Deal but few of their social ideals have been put into operation.

What we have now is simply not sustainable, a well funded, vocal minority trying to force their will on the majority and the majority finally waking up that they got screwed without getting kissed.

Will we get out of this one non violently? I have no idea. I hope so. We don't have clear battle lines drawn between states in certain geographic areas, so we're unlikely to have a civil war like the 1861-1865 war, although some hotheads can always be counted upon to take pot shots at their neighbors.

I know how we got here and I have a hazy idea about how to get out of it but no one sensible is going to listen to me.

[KoKo]

18. Yes...but, think it was after WWII when we became World's Policeman and Caregiver...

and the 60's and the Draft and Vietnam were where the "stuff started to hit the fan" and JFK/Bobby/Dr. King and Kent State and Women and African-American Rights all came to a head.

But...we need to fight to keep our Democracy as one of the Founding Fathers warned us.. It wasn't ever gonna' be easy.

[Warren Stupidity]

19. For me it started with the JFK assassination, and went into complete unravel

between 1967 and 1969.

[gopiscrap]

22. I'd say it was with fucking reagan

his whole campaign was about "me" "myself" and "I"