Events That Made an Impact: United States in the 1950s to 1990s Essay

After the globe warfargon II fizz lead bug out, people around the humanity had no choice besides to pick up the pieces of what has been left of the unrelenting devastation that the international was has brought to them. However, the noble-minded triumphs achieved during the war were point slight because numerous ch eitherenges had sprouted because countries established the inevitability of the Nuclear Age, which triggered fear amongst the people as they realized a grim scenario that a genius bomb could decimate cities in seconds.What have transpired beyond the events between the World struggle II to the mid-nineties are essential elements that do up what monastic order has release in our present. Naturally, it paved the mien for a future purchase order that could learn from all the mistakes made and use it to settle all inequities that could mold action among nations and people.In the get together States, the epoch from 1950s to the mid-nineties has been crucial in s haping democracy, equality and technology that all Ameri corporations enjoy today. From the stinting boom that sparked the line up of in the altogether markets in the 1950s, to the jump-start of urbane rights drive in the mid-sixties, to the concern rough the Vietnam fight in 1970s, to the end of the insensate War in the eighties and the issue of globalization in 1990s, all of these major events have etched their mark in separately decade that brandished the saga of what modern Ameri washbowl civilization has become. And disdain all challenges that abound, what is important is that Americans have become much than tolerant and the government has understood from heeding the call of generation during these unforgettable events.The events from the 1950s to the 1990s h mavend a lodge that put the people at the forefront of all priorities, as defense policies were institutionalized to protect them from the boisterous realities of war eyepatch humanitarian causes are dumb considered appropriately to bring strive headway to the greater unafraid of Americans and to other people from the rest of the public. Clearly, the fast-changing time at present can be daunting, however the events that happened in the 1950s to the 1990s had prepared us to be stronger in facing all the odds that repose beneath. Through breaking barriers among nations around the beingness, people can make things possible and could definitely make our lives go bad in the future beforehand.1950s The Emergence of a Post-industrial Society After the white flags has been raised during the closedown of World War II, nations around the world dusted polish off the embers of war and began working on to build nations that would benefit people (Gaddis, 1997). Despite the unwarranted fears that the inhuman War between the joined States (US) and the pairing of Soviet Socialists re cosmos (USSR) could trigger another war in the future, it is believed that what brought the sup erior impact during this decade is the renaissance of the impale-industrial rescue that led to the emergence of the suburban culture Davidson et al. (2002) observed that during this period, suburban growth accelerated sharply and the suburbs grew 40 times faster than cities, so that by 1960 half of the American people lived in them.The return of prosperity brought a baby boom and a need for new housing. Davidson et al. (2002) indicated that birth rates in the United States in 1952 had spiked to 25 per thousand to reach unrivalled of the highest fertility rates in the world. immature brides were in like manner younger, which translated into unusual fertility. Americans chose to have larger families, as the subprogram with three children tripled and those with four or to a greater extent quadrupled. Because of the economic growth, automobiles made the suburbs accessible. But the spurt in suburban growth took its toll on the cities, which suffered as the middle(a) class fled ur ban areas.Famous sociologist Daniel Bell indicated that the rise of the so-called post-industrial economy can benefit American people. For Bell, this never meant the complete annihilation of American manufacturing, but it did mean that white-collar work within the sectors of pay and banking, leisure and tourism, corporate research and development in technologies, in federal and local government bureaucracies and in retail would supersede manufacturing industry as the major structural bases of the American economy (Waters 1996, p. 112). Furthermore, the development of amend computing and communications technologies facilitated suburbanization by making it behind for companies to decentralize as the man shape upments were able to control their operations more efficiently.American culture besides changed in the 1950s. American families began to take the form of the sitcom families e genuinelyday during the era. Hayden (2003) indicated that American streets and families became simi lar in age, race, and income to the depicted objectly touristy sitcoms of the 1950s including Leave It to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father inhabits Best (p. 128). Also, legion(predicate) corporations advertised in the 1950s became a ethnical consensus just as much as the products they sold. They praised prosperity as a reflection of an American way of life.However, not all Americans were persuaded of the virtues of consensus and good dealiness leadership. Intellectuals and artists found in corporate culture a stifling residency that crushed individual creativity. On the fringes of family, artists flaunted traditional behavior and values. Closer to the mainstream, a new generation of musicians created disputation and roll, which became the sound of youthful rebellion that sparked in the decades ahead.mid-sixties Seeking Equality and the Emergence of the Civil Rights sweatAs the United States enjoyed quite an amendment in economy during the 1950s, turmoil began to spr ead in its genial arena in the 1960s. Fact is that the civil rights case was triggered by the capital of Alabama jalopy concomitant in 1955. Mrs. Rosa Parks, a menacing seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a city jalopy to a white man. Mrs. Parks was arrested and subsequently, she was bailed out of lock by E. D. Nixon, the Montgomery representative of the Brotherhood of quiescency Car Porters and a local leader of the subject field Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). later(prenominal) that evening, Nixon was struck with the idea of having Montgomerys black citizens boycott the citys segregated bus system.According to Loevy (1990), the major accomplishment of the Montgomery bus boycott was that it turned a non-violent demonstration for racial integration into a national news story. elevated Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected to lead the bus boycott. Montgomerys forty thousand blacks stayed off the city buses for more than a year, vowing not to return until the buses were totally desegregated (p. 22).The emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the mid-1950s was a key event in the escalating fight for civil rights. Through the experience bring forwarded during the Montgomery bus boycott, King learned that the northern and westbound United States were most likely to press for civil rights reform when a dramatic instance of racial segregation was presented on the news media, particularly video (Branch, 1988).Two of the massive racial protests in the 1960s brought about by the Montgomery bus incident in produced major civil rights bills. The impetus for telling to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which banned racial discrimination in public places) occurred following barbarous white suppression of racial demonstrations led by Dr. King in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963. An ein truth bit brutal reaction to a voting rights bump into led by King in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 produced the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in which gave the U.S. political relation the violence to register blacks to vote in southern states (Loevy,1990).It was chairman Lyndon Johnson had worked assiduously for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Only months by and by its adoption he added muscle to the demand for nondiscrimination by issuing Executive Order 11246. The racism that had infected federal employment (and also the work forces of clannish firms with which the federal government did personal line of credit) was no longer to be tolerated.The words of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave specificity and concreteness to the constitutional imprimatur of the equal protection of the laws. In employment, in education, in all spheres of public accommodation, there was to be from that time forward no official favoritism for one and only(a) race or ethnic group at the expense of others. The intentions of the members of the Congress in adopting this law were clear and emphatically expressed (Cohen & Sterba, 2 003, p. 10). This is why, to this really day, that American society learned to frown upon all sorts of racial gustatory sensation and discrimination.1970s Iniquities of the Vietnam WarWhen more than half a million American troops were sent to substitute in Vietnams civil war, there was a widespread dissent in United States. Campaigns were directly to denounce the US governments legions conquests in sulphureast Asia, particularly in Vietnam. though war is a decision that is entered into by governments, public opinion plays a significant role in its execution. By 1971, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam had surpassed 50,000, and antiwar sentiment became very strong. As war was occurring in Vietnam, bloody protests sparked also sparked in the United States.Vietnam War was a relatively young mans war, with the average age of soldiers serving in Vietnam was 19 (Davidson et al., 2002). The wages of remnant and survival of these soldiers are also complicated. In Tim OB riens The Things They Carried (1990), he featured his experiences in the Vietnam War and how he struggled to fight the feeling of isolation afterward returning home from the war.Instead of forgetting the occurrences during the Vietnam War, OBrien approach to confront the ghosts of his terrible experiences during the war. His life is caught up in the web of his past experiences as he seeks comforter to get rid of his unfavorable traumas that haunt him after the extreme experiences he encountered in Vietnam. He slake feels the chaos even it is thirty old age later. He wanted to get rid of denial, but his store of the terrible experiences still traumatizes him greatly.Because of the war, US also suffered pauperisation because wars annual cost soared to more than $50 billion a year as it fueled a rising inflation. This is why in 1973, the Congress passed the War Powers Act, which required the president to touch on with Congress about military action and forbid spending in South east Asia for more U.S. military action.Coupled with congressional cuts in aid to South Vietnam, the presidents war powers were severely particular(a) (Walsh, 2007). Many people felt that the involvement of Americans in the Vietnam War was a losing battle both in the battleground and at home. In the 11 years of the US involvement in Vietnam, it did not tho bring humiliation to the US as it failed to gain control of a small nation but also it brought a tremendous detriment in social and economic costs in its very homeland.1980s Closure of the Cold War FearsThe placid conflict of United States and Soviet Union last ceased in the 1980s. With the democratic reform that swept crosswise Eastern Europe, this ended the four decades of communist govern and Soviet domination of the region. Germans, divided since World War II, dismantled the Berlin Wall, which long had been the symbol of Soviet-American confrontation and reunified their country. patriot groups within the Soviet Union de manded greater self-direction and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev desperately worked to reform a disintegrating economy and to hold the Soviet state together.With the Soviet Union no longer a threat, Americans felt less(prenominal) a sense of triumph than an uncertainty about the role of the United States in a less predictable and perhaps less stable world (Hess 2001, p. 153). The United States and Russia initiated to end the Cold War and hold to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. In 1991, the Strategic build up Reduction Treaty (START) concluded and surpassed the limits negotiated in preliminary SALT talks. By June 1992 US President scrubbing and Russias Boris Yeltsin had agreed to even sharper cuts.However, American foreign policy had been defined by the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its communist allies. not just Americas relations with the rest of the world, but also its domestic political and social life were shaped by the overriding national imperative of contain ing the expansion of communism. But the end of the Cold War made it more difficult to devise what exactly constituted the American national interest.With the terrorist attacks of family 2001, Singh (2003) argued that a new era was ushered into being, although most of the contours of US policy were in fact unchanged by the tragedy. Not least, the fundamental predicament for America since 1945 whether to learn a role as global ships officer while being castigated abroad as a global bully remained inescapable (p. 263).1990s severance the Barriers Through globalizationThe trend of globalization has become one of the most critical factors that determine the alley for changes that occur in many an(prenominal) economies worldwide in the 1990s. It had triggered enormous changes in various sectors in society and had pressured everyone to ride the waves of change that globalization has brought about. As a concept, McGrew (1992) captured the complexity of the current view of globalizat ion in a concise and balanced way.He defined globalization as the multiplicity of linkages and interconnections between the states and societies which make up the modern world system it describes the subprogram by which events, decisions, and activities in one part of the world can come to have significant consequences for individuals and communities in quite distant parts of the globe (p. 23).United States entered into several trade agreements to ease out doing business around the world, like the North American let loose Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Also, US became more intertwined to a global community via the Internet. The rise of the Internet also construct new economies and opportunities. The revolution in microchip technologies contributed advantageously to the economic expansion of the 1990s. In 1998, e-commerce alone generated or so 482,000 dividing lines (Davidson et al., 2002).However, globalization is not without cri ticism. Lobeda (2006) argued that the growth theory in globalization failed to take into account distribution of wealth and income. For instance, economists point to a 22.2 percent growth in average home base charge in the United States from 1983 to 1998. Yet the number of homeless people increased, more and more people were unable to obtain healthcare, and many citizens experienced severe economic insecurity and job loss. The growth indicators dont spell out that the wealthiest one percent experienced skyrocketing increases in income, while middle- and lower-income families saw their incomes shrink. So while the average household wealth increased, the median household net worth decreased by 10 percent in the same period.Conclusion What we could deem from the era of post World War II to the 1990s are essential events that shaped our history. These are events are very colored with numerous triumphs and some failures in divers(prenominal) aspects. Triumphs because of all the achiev ements gained within this period that led to improve American society as a whole.Failures, on the other hand, will serve as lessons where we can earn our credit from learning the past mistakes so that these will be never repeated once again in the future. It can, indeed be daunting that lies ahead might trigger newer challenges, like the rise of technology, act of terrorism and other new innovations that might have a serious impact to our future. But, with a renewed opinion as one nation of multicultural origins, American people can surely take a stand in working as one nation and take advantage of what the future holds for them.ReferencesBranch, T. (1988). office the Waters America in the King Years, 1954-1963, New York Simon and Schuster.Cohen, C., & Sterba, J. P. (2003). Affirmative Action and Racial Preference A Debate. 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