Author: yanqing.wang

04/11/11

Living on Credit Cards

During the affluent society, Americans were feeling rich and wealthy. The introduction of credit card had changed everything. Americans can now use credit card to purchase cars, home,television and many accessories. Cars were a major factor in American life especially during the 1950s when president Eisenhower built interstate highway which made transportation easier. Credit card can make purchase so much easier that Americans can just swipe the card and buy the stuff they need or they want. They can live with buy now and pay later. It seems like Americans are are living with wealth. The power to purchase improved America’s economy and introduction of the credit card definitely played a major role in such improvement.

04/4/11

What If USA Didn’t Intervene

After world war II, the world emerges to two great superpowers. With one side in mostly Asia and Europe-the USSR and other side in the Americas-USA. USSR were spreading communism all over the world, including countries like Germany, China, Veitnam, Cuba, Korea and more. As USSR influenced its neighboring countries rapidly, USA stepped into the regime, trying to stop the spread of communism by using the Containment strategy.

USA was able to fight back in a demoncratic form in korea,Veitnam and Germany to prevent communism domination. If USA didn’t intervene, East and West Germany may be unified as a communist country. North Korea and South Korean may also be unified as a Communist country. USA played major role in keeping communism from widespread around the world, unfortunately, they failed to put Vietnam to unify as a demoncratic country. 

This picture depicts a clear scenario of how JFK was battling against khrushchev while they both sitting on nuclear weapons, alerting everyone that there might be a nuclear war. It clearly showed the tension between USSR and USA when USA tried to contain the widespread of communism.

03/20/11

Ventroliquist Supreme Court

The caption of this political cartoon during the New Deal Era is called “Do We Want A Ventriloquist Act In The Supreme Court?” This caption was made to mock President Roosevelt’s court packing strategy. Since we know that the president appoint the Supreme Court justice, he can appoint a justice that is in favor of his many New Deal Acts. The cartoon also showed the packed court justice are like dummies who are under FDR’s control. They can’t speak for themselves but speak for FDR when they all say ” Yes, Yes, Yes, we all vote yes!” in front of uncle Sam. It shows how FDR used America government system well to support his New Deal plan. He wanted to make sure that all his acts can be carried out to help the poor effectively.

03/13/11

Look What Great Depression has Caused

The image of waiting on line were the people who looked for food that was provided by the government and the image that has people sleeping in the public were the homeless who had no money to pay their rent or mortgage.  These two images are showing the immediate result of the Great Depression that started on Black Friday when the stock market crashed. People were jobless and they were not able to support their family because they have no money. They had to rely on government aid which was so little that they barely had any basic food for living. People who were homeless did not have a safe and warm place to live in. They have to face the cold winter outisde in the cold or on the street, and government up to that point still didn’t do much to help those poor or unemployed people. Great Depression caused more people to be jobless and homeless.

03/9/11

Corruption in the Government

Business and government were interconnected. They were helping each other.  Government officials took bride from big business and in return, they give big business the promise of  government “hands off” policy. Such corruption made business once again unregulated, many progressive era ideology were fading away and lassie faire was back in action. Most corruption occurred under president Harding when his cabinets were accepting bribes to help business leaders. Such corruption continued when president Coolidge took office. from this image, we can see that the government can not do anything to the big business people and seems like they are the one in control of the congress instead of the government officials. Such corruption eventually will hurt the economy in the long run.

03/6/11

Tightening the Tension

Imperialism played a major role for the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente to go to war against each other among many other factors. Imperialism is a way to show a country’s strength by dominating and acquiring lands in different parts of the world and make its subject follow the mother country’s rules. It is a race to gain territories to show its superiority.  Great Britain had controlled over many lands in five major continents and France took control of majority of the land in Africa. This evoked competition with Germany who started to fight for land in Africa with Great Britain and France which resulted their acquisition of small portion of the land in Africa.

Imperialism not only increased competition among rival countries but it also builds up tension among them. The point of imperialism is to show power and the less land you get can mean the weaker you are. Germany definitly do not want to be in such position and their aggression towards the Triple Entene grew stronger when imperialism continues.

03/2/11

Many Reasons to go to War

During the early stage of world war I, America was in a tight tension with Germany because of the Zimmerman Telegram that Germany sent to Mexico which got intercepted by US and decoded. The telegram asked Mexico to be allies with Germany so that when they win the war, Germany promise to give back the land that US took from Mexico such as Texas and arizona, back to Mexico. US were already in favor of the Great British and France so Germany had reason to go against USA. The sinking of the Lusitania was the on of the major sparks that gave American the reason to declare war on Germany because the ship was meant to carry passengers from New York to Britain, but Germany’s U boat nevertheless decided to sunk the ship down that gave the US determination to get involved in this overseas war.

02/26/11

A different kind of President

Theodore Roosevelt is a very important person during the progressive era. being Elected twice as president, he has different approach towards the economy. He was known as the “trustbuster” because he enforced the government to take more regulation in the ecomony rather than no control at all. He pushed for many legislative laws to pass such as the Hepburn Act that give the ICC power to examine railroads’ records. That enabled less monopolistic domination to exist. He not only helped in economy but also established the Pure Food and Drug Act to  ensure federal food inspection.  He was also a conservationalist because he pushed for protection of the environment. He was a very typical progressive because he is the man stands for change.

02/19/11

From China To US

This is a bunch of working class Chinese immigrants who came to California looking for gold.

This is a family who came to American during the 1890s. They look different from the previous picture because they look like they were ready to settle in American and they don’t look like they going to dig for gold or anything. In the first picture of how people dressed, we can see that they still keep some of their Chinese dressing style as well as the second picture. The first picture also shows that 5 people staying in one big room, maybe they will be sharing this room for their stay in America, showing the hard living environment in America during the immigration period.

02/13/11

Citizenship for All

This text is a primary document because it is the original text of the 14th amendment. It was added to the constitution at July 9 1868. It established the citizenship clause, due process clause, and the equal protection clause. Each clause was meant to give African American’s equal rights after the civil war. This text was important because it was one of the first step to let the African Americans to taste what freedom is about.

When the 14 th Amendment that was ratified during the Reconstruction Era, the main portion of the amendment was that it indicates that a person will become citizen when they are natural born in the United States. Naturalized citizens will have the same rights as American citizens. They will be protected under laws. African Americans who were born after the ratification of this amendment have gained such freedom and they will be given the rights just like an American citizen. Many African Americans have the rights to own property, to go to school, and so on. They were also gaining political powers by having the chance to work in the congress. They also had the opportunity to set up their own community for gathering and socialization.

02/7/11

Turning Point in History

This picture depicts the time during world war II when  reinforcements arrived in Normandy, France to help the allies against the axis power which became know as the D Day. It is considered a turning point because it eventually led to many major victorys in Europe.

02/5/11

not a choice, slavery must be abolished!

Civil War should be remmebered not only by its devastating affect to the country, but also be remembered with heroic soldiers who sacrificed their life to win the war and save the union despite of their race. From the David Blight’s passage, I understand many causes of descrimination in post civil war era. There were 50,000 African American soldiers who fought in the war while  only white soldiers were being monumented and remembered which showed aspects of white supremacy. Segregation will eventually take place which was the affect of white supremacy. I think the book is interesting because civil war was a war where the succesion of southern states from the union resulted in a battle that really fought over issues of slavery. I also think it will be interesting to understand how African Americans were treated after the war, if they were honored as much as the whites. Historical memory should be rememebered in the right way.

What I find ironic about later passage is that President Wilson, being a peace maker by mentioning to form a League of Nation during his fourteen points speech, he actually supported slavery by supporting the existence of Ku Klux Klan. I think it is important that history should be rememebered and told to the future generation in an unbiased form. The Vietnam war was a historical event that was being rememebered in a different way or somehow biased. It was viewed as a successful war at somepoint because the US had contained the spread of communism from South Vietnam to North Vietnam. It was also considered a failed mission because US had lost massive amount of soldiers in Veitnam, and the war lasted many years that did not unify Vietnam into a democratic country. I think with political left and right wing manipulating the American government system, there is always two sides with one side always trying to attack the oppostion in the hope of gaining more control over the other in this most democratic country.

02/1/11

reveal the Top Secrets!

I use many social network as a source of my communication such as the Facebook,but I never use the twitter and I don’t know how that works. From My experience with social networking, either messaging on AIM or MSN, I rarely chat about anything important particularly but I do spend most of my talking there. With the issue of archiving Tweets, I am sure that millions of users use that as a major source of communication and they sure will do a lot of chatting and socializing there. When government archive the tweets, they are able to track down any chat history. It can be an advantage because they may discover conversations that post a threat or do harm to the society. Well with such advance techonolgy, that invaded our rights to privacy, hypothetically, if someone really want to post a threat to the country, I think they will do in a more secret way like mobile phone or mails unless the government is tracking down those too. Overall, I think archiving the Tweets can store massive amount of people’s conversation that can tell something about these people and what is like during that period of time.

I still remmeber when US had won the war of 1812 against the

Great Britain, general Andrew Jackson kept on fighting because the army did not have any advance technology to communicate with once the peace treaty was signed. Nowadays, we have texting, internet, all kinds of advance technology that can make communications across the globe happen within seconds. With that being set, the government can take advantage of the high tech, to keep the secrets to themselves and perfom underground diplomacy or any kind of national act without the public’s realization. Like how Wikileaks trying to reveal the true story of the Irag War, the government are trying their best to contain their top secrets. I think the Wikileak still has some validity issue whether if their sources are reliable or not.