How America Reversed Its Path to Compassion and Understanding, and Became a Nation Controlled by Anger, Hatred, and Violence

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart

Most of you know that I am a proud pacifist. As an original Baby Boomer, born in 1946, I have been curious about history for most of my life. The most important facts I learned involved the history of wars: their origin, the loss of life, and what was accomplished.

I will not bore you with all of what I learned over decades, but I can summarize the facts in a concise manner.

WHY MEN RESORT TO WARS

Any man or woman with average intelligence is aware that any military conflict between nations must be the last resort, or a defensive measure after one of the nations wages a military assault on the other.

Early in recorded history, the three reasons for declaring war were based on acquisition of land, disputes involving personal relationships, religious beliefs, and the male ego.

THE VERY EXISTENCE OF THE UNITED STATES BEGAN WITH A WAR

[Settlements in the New World began with the Spanish in 1492/1493, followed by the English, who established Jamestown in 1607. ] Mostly from Western Europe, men, women, and children left their familial homes seeking a better quality of life. One of the primary reasons was to escape religious persecution.

By the early 1700’s, the number settlements from England dominated the cities and towns in what would become Eastern America.

Resistance began as King George III demanded taxes from his citizens living in the New World in increasingly larger amounts. When the King declared that the Anglican Church would be the one, true religion of the British Empire, wealthy men left their homes in England and moved to the cities already established in what would become America. Among these men would be those we refer to as our “Founding Fathers” today.

The Revolutionary War became a reality when settlers formed a somewhat disorganized form of government and refused to pay the taxes demanded by their former King. Thousands of British soldiers arrived on ships to control the rebels after King George III received the Declaration of Independence. The Revolutionary War was the beginning of the United States of America.

WARS CONTINUED TO DOMINATE LIFE IN THE NEW WORLD

[Between the Revolutionary War (1783) and WWI (1917), the U.S. engaged in several major conflicts, including the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the Civil War (1861–1865), and the Spanish-American War (1898). These, alongside numerous Indian Wars and smaller interventions, shaped American expansion and global standing].

SHAPING THE NEW WORLD ORDER

“The Great War” began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The lines had been drawn between , Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

The war ended on November 11, 1918. About 22 million lives were lost: that number includes 116, 516 Americans.

The world believed that there would never be another World War, a war which affected every man, woman, and child on the planet.

A WORLD MOVING TOWARDS UNITY AND COOPERATION IS FORCED TO FIGHT THE ULTIMATE VILLAIN

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1930’s Germany, there was concern but no panic. When he chose to invade Poland in 1939, all European nations were forced to face reality: another world war had begun. Known as the war to defeat fascism, it ended in 1945 with the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. This decision by President Harry Truman remains controversial today. No other nation has ever used a nuclear weapon other than the United States.

MY FEELINGS ABOUT THE DECISION TO DROP ATOMIC BOMBS ON HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

In my history of writing about the failures of our government and corporate America, my most frequent targets are the mainstream media and our presidents. Why focus on these subjects? They have caused more damage to our nation than anything else.

The truth is America is not 50 states and the District of Colombia, it is 340 million people who share their love for freedom, the guarantee of human rights, and the value of all mankind, regardless of their race, the color of their skin, their choice of religion or none at all, sex, or sexual orientation.

Truman made the decision to use the most destructive weapon ever created because this action would end the war sooner, and prevent the deaths of American soldiers fighting in the Pacific.

More than 210,000 men, women, and children lost their lives from the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945, and an unknown number of men, women, and children received serious, lifelong injuries.

I consider this decision the most un-American act by any president in history. It was an act of arrogance by an egomaniac who considered Asians inferior to whites.

Every life has value, and no one has the right to take the life of another person unless it is to save his or her own.

I believe this heinous act was the beginning of the end of American values.

TRUMAN SET THE TONE, AND OTHERS FOLLOWED

In 1952, the American people elected one of the heroes of WWII, Dwight D. Eisenhower as their president. He performed as expected and served the needs of Americans moving from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy.

On January 7, 1961, he made a 10-minute farewell speech. Its most important content was a warning about the growth of the military industrial complex. In simple terms, President Eisenhower was revealing his belief that engaging our nation in another war must be the only possible decision remaining after everything else is exhausted.

How many of our presidents who succeeded him were listening? None. The Pentagon’s annual budget has increased every year since.

In 1961, the Pentagon received 49.88 billion dollars. By 1967, it had risen to 104.67 billion. By the year 2000, it reached 320.09 billion. In 2020, it was a whopping 778.40 billion. In 2025 Trump asked for and received $954 billion for his fellow fascists in the Pentagon. He is asking for $1.5 trillion in 2027.

Our government continues to prepare for war while ignoring the needs of its people. In a study of 15 developed nations, America is last in the most important category, “quality of life.”

HOW LOW HAS OUR NATION FALLEN?

One man, who will forever be known as the worst president in America’s history, represents a new low for America. In 2024, our nation’s voters, with the assistance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, chose a fascist, a lifelong criminal, a traitor, a sexual deviate, a convicted felon, and an alleged pedophile to lead our nation for a second time. Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

Op-ed by James Turnage

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Sources: history.com; World War I

bbc.co.uk: World War II People’s War

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