Class Of 2004 - Jackson Liberty High School: Fill & Download for Free

This is an excerpt from the Filmography of Documentaries in my book Making Documentary Films and Videos. My favorites, or films I think are important are in bold italics. Additions since the book was published are in bold underline..89mm from Europe(1995) Written and directed by Marcel Lozinski, thisbeautiful short film received a 1995 IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award. Distributed by Studio Filmowe Kalejdoskop (Poland) and Direct Cinema Limited.9/11 (2002) The definitive film of the World Trade Center disaster by Jules and Gideon Naudet and James Hanlon [DVD]An American Family(1973) Shot and directed by Susan and Alan Raymond, this series for PBS was a landmark event in the evolution of direct cinema. The Museum of Television and Radio has some episodes. IMDb showsa DVD release.Baraka (1992) Directed by Ron Fricke. Pure visual. [DVD]The Battle of Midway(1942) The most decisive sea battle of World War II, filmed as it happened by John Ford. [DVD]Battleship Potemkin (1925) Classic reenactment documentary directed bySergei Eisenstein. [DVD]Benjamin Franklin (2002) Miniseries for PBS directed by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer. [DVD]The Berkeley Rebels(c. 1964) Directed by Arthur Barron, this early-sixties documentary appeared on CBS. I have found no distributor.Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) A classic silent film, directed by Walter Ruttman, which has become a model for all city films. [DVD]The Bridge (1928) A beautifully realized, classic documentary directed by Joris Ivens who gives a clinic on how to observe an object with a camera. Available from the Museum of Modern Art.Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain. . . Begins to Die (2004) One of three rebuttal films to Fahrenheit 9/11,directed by Kevin Knoblock. [DVD]Chronique d’un été(Chronicle of a Summer) (1961) This is an early and exciting example of cinéma vérité in France from Rouch and Morin. I saw the film in French with English subtitles. As of this writing I have been unable to find a distributor.The City (1939) Willard Van Dyke directed this classic American city film, which follows the format established by Ruttman with Berlin. Look for it on VHS or at the Museum of Modern Art.The Civil War (1990) The PBS series that made director Ken Burns ahousehold name. [DVD]The Cliburn: Playing on the Edge (2001) Documentary follows the performers in the prestigious piano competition. Produced and directedby Peter Rosen. [DVD]Connections(1979) An incredible series of programs, starting in 1979, written and hosted by James Burke and directed by Mick Jackson. [DVD]Crumb (1995) Terry Zwigoff conceived and directed this offbeat theatrical documentary about underground artist Robert Crumb and his family. [DVD]Devil’s Playground(2002) Amish teenagers experience life outside the Amish community in a documentary directed by Lucy Walker. [DVD]Dialogues with Madwomen (1994) Director Allie Light’s documentary of emotion is available through Women Make Movies, 225 Lafayette Street, #207, New York, NY 10012.The Education of Shelby Knox (2005) A 15-year-old girl's transformation from conservative Southern Baptist to liberal Christian and ardent feminist parallels her fight for sex education and gay rights in Lubbock, Texas. directed by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, [DVD].The Endless Summer(1966) Bruce’s Brown’s classic film about surfing, shows how to tell a story with good footage and no sync sound. [DVD]Eyes on the Prize (1987) Award-winning PBS documentary about the civil rights movement, Henry Hampton, executive producer. [DVD]FDR (1995) This four-and-a-half-hour documentary, made for the PBS series American Experience was produced and directed by David Grubin. [DVD]Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) The film Michael Moore made to prevent the election of George Bush. Failed at that but made Moore a millionaire. [DVD]Fahrenhype 9/11(2004) One of three rebuttal films to Fahrenheit 9/11, directed by Alan Peterson. [DVD]Flock of Dodos: The Evolution––Intelligent Design Circus (2006)Documentary at its best; a marvelous investigation of a controversial issue, written and directed by Randy Olson. Prairie Starfish Productions, Los Angeles, http://www.flockofdodos.com. [DVD]Frank and Ollie(1995) This theatrical documentary directed by Theodore Thomas looks at the lives of two of Disney’s legendary animators. [DVD]The French Revolution (2005) Directed by Doug Schultz. [DVD]Harvest of Shame(1960) An early award-winning television documentary for CBS Reports from the team of Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly. [DVD]High School(1968) A spontaneous cinema documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman, filmed at Northeast High School in Philadelphia. Wiseman’s films are distributed by Zipporah Films, Cambridge, MA, http://www.zipporah.com.The Hobart Shakespeareans (2005) Praise for a hero teacher, directed by Mel Stuart. See it. [DVD]Hoop Dreams(1994) The most talked-about documentary never to get an Academy Award nomination started out to be a TV half hour, and became instead a longish theatrical documentary and PBS special. [DVD]Hospital(1970) Fourth in a series of spontaneous cinema documentaries about institutions directed by Frederick Wiseman, filmed at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. Wiseman’s films are distributed by Zipporah Films, Cambridge, MA, http://www.zipporah.com.In the Street (1952) An early experiment in concealed photography,by Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee. Available from the Museum of Modern Art.It Was a Wonderful Life (1993) They were women with a comfortable middle-class life. And then they were homeless. Directed by Michèle Ohayon. [DVD]The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt (a.k.a. Missing Peace) (2003) A first documentary by Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, who triumphed over everything going wrong. Shown on Cinemax.Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001) A behavioral documentary about a family living in poverty in the Mississippi Delta. Directed by Deborah Dickson, Susan Frömke, and the legendary Albert Maysles.[DVD.]Liberty! The American Revolution (1997) Documentary miniseries directed by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer. [DVD]Lonely Boy (1961) Wolf Koening at the National Film Board of Canada set the mold for films about entertainers and musicians with this direct cinema study of Paul Anka. Various distributors including the Museum of Modern Art and the National Film Board of Canada.Mad, Hot Ballroom (2005) A delightful film about kids in several NewYork elementary schools learning ballroom dancing and taking part in acity-wide competition. Directed by Marilyn Agrelo. [DVD]March of the Penguins (2005) A nature documentary directed by Luc Jacquet under incredibly harsh conditions. If you haven’t seen it, go get it. [DVD]A Married Couple(1969) An early direct cinema behavioral documentary directed by Alan King. I have found no distributor.Mystery of the Megaflood, (2005). A marvelous use of animation as explanation in the story of a startling hypothesis that the deeply pockmarked terrain of eastern Washington was not the result of slow weathering but rather of a catastrophic flood that engulfed the area thousands of years ago. NOVA [DVD]Nanook of the North(1922) Robert Flaherty’s classic film is arguablythe first behavioral documentary. [DVD]Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) (1955) Alain Resnais’s documentary of the Auschwitz death camp. [DVD]October: Ten Days that Shook the World (1927) Sergei Eisenstein’s re-creation of the Bolshevik Revolution. [DVD]The Plow That Broke the Plains (1934) Pare Lorentz made this film about the drought in the Great Plains and its causes at the height of the great depression. [DVD]Primary (1960) Robert Drew thought there had to be a better way to document unique events than the standard show-and-tell documentary, andthis film was the visual evidence. [DVD].The River(1937) Another Depression-era documentary directed by Pare Lorentz, showing a flood on the Mississippi and its causes. [DVD]Roger & Me (1989) Director Michael Moore uses his quest to bringGM chairman Roger Smith to Flint, Michigan, as a metaphor to show hard times in his hometown. [DVD]Salesman(1968) Albert and David Maysles filmed this behavioral documentary about door-to-door Bible salesmen and shared thedirecting credit with editor Charlotte Zwerin. [DVD]San Pietro (1945) John Huston directed this classic documentaryabout a single battle in the Italian campaign during World War II. IMDb shows it available on VHS.Sex in a Cold Climate (1998) Documentary about Irish girls interred in various Magdalene asylums and/or orphanages because of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, being sexually assaulted, or just being "too pretty" (believe it or not). Directed by Steve Humphries. This documentary led to the feature film The Magdalene Sisters and is included on the DVD for that film. [DVD]Sinking City of Venice (2002) An outstanding science film in the NOVA series and a primer on visual evidence, produced by Marco Visalberghi and Julia Cort. Available only on VHS at time of publication from http://shop.wgbh.org/. Also check PBS Video.Six Days to Sunday(1995) Documentary of a unique event with the outcome unknown as the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings prepare for Sunday’s game. NFL Films.The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) Marcel Ophuls directed this landmarkdocumentary that explored anti-Semitism in France during World War II. [DVD]Spellbound (2002) Unquestionably the film that should have won the 2003 Academy Award for documentary. Directed by Jeffrey Blitz, it follows eight youngsters headed for the 1999 National Spelling Bee. [DVD]Staffers ’04 (2004) This was a TV series following staffers for Democratic presidential candidates. [DVD]Titicut Follies(1967) The first and perhaps the best known of Frederick Wiseman’s spontaneous cinema documentaries. Filmed inside the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater, a prison hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman’s films are distributed by ZipporahFilms, Cambridge, MA, http://www.zipporah.com.Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) (1935) Docuganda for the Third Reich, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. [DVD]Unzipped (1995) Douglas Keeve directed this theatrical documentary about fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. [DVD]Victory at Sea (series) (1952) The story of the U.S. Navy in World War II, compiled from archival and combat footage. [DVD]The War Game(1966) Peter Watkins directed this speculative documentary about the effects of a future nuclear war. [DVD]The War Room (1993) A film by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebakerthat follows the Clinton campaign from the New Hampshire primary to theelection. [DVD]Watermarks (2004) Yaron Zilberman’s loving portrait of the Hakoah Vienna Jewish women’s swim team of the 1930s. [DVD]Winged Migration (2001) Where do the birds go? This beautiful film shot over three years follows migratory patterns of birds. Proof that you don’t need interviews to tell a story. Directed by Jacques Perrin with co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats. [DVD]Woodstock (1970) The first of the great concert films, directed by Michael Wadleigh. [DVD]

The Rothschild Coat of ArmsINTRODUCTIONIt is currently estimated that the Rothschild net worth is worth more than $350 billion when each member's personal fortunes is combined.[1] Their rise to power is somewhat indistinguishable from the rise of the financial industry they spearheaded.[2] For that, they've been both venerated and vilified. They've inspired both eager financiers and conspiracy theorists. For the latter, they've become the very embodiment Jewish evil for Europe's rampant anti-semitism of the 19th and 20th centuries.Here is a supercondensed version of their history. There are much richer narratives on the web, though they are interspersed with the aforementioned speculation. I've endeavoured to filter that as much as possible, leaving the reader with only the facts and for him to speculate to his heart's content.I did include, however, along with the text, quotes from various sources, some directly about the Rothschilds, some indirectly, others about the financial industry they spearheaded, and some from the Rothschilds themselves. Some are from primary sources, others are attributed. The quotes illustrate how the Rothschilds were - and still are - perceived, the sourced ones by their authors, and the others by those who attributed to them.As noted below, much of what follows has been used to justify anti-semitism. Indeed it has. It is nonetheless informative to consider both the facts and their narrative to understand their interplay, and how much the Rothschilds influenced the world around us as well as the world within us.Without further ado...THE ROTHSCHILDSLate 1700s till early 1800s"Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet."Heinrich Heine, poet, close friend of James (Jacob) Rothschild [3] and of Karl Marx (and also his cousin).[4]Mayer Amschel Rothschild started out in 1763 as a rare coin dealer. In 1769 he was appointed Crown Agent to the Principality of Hesse-Hansau. In 1785 he became a banker for Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and handled Britain's payments to Hessian mercenaries during the French Revolution."Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!"Mayer Amschel Rothschild, attributed by Gertrude M. Coogan (1935),[5] or maxim of the House of Rothschild as attributed by one Mr. Daniel (1914).[6]In 1812, Mayer sent his youngest son Jakob to Paris, where he opened the Banque MM. de Rothschild Frères, which later became a finance giant in Paris. By that time Mayer's third son, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, had already established himself in London since 1798 with one of Europe's most powerful banking institutions: N. M. Rothschild & Sons. From 1813 to 1815, Nathan almost single-handedly financed the British Crown and its continental allies in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1815 alone, he lent US$10.1 billion to Britain's continental allies (indexed by average earnings).[7]"Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."Napoleon Bonaparte (1815), attributed by Robert McNair Wilson (1933).[8]Nathan learned a day ahead of everyone else that England had won the Battle of Waterloo. To capitalise on the victory, instead of buying more Crown bonds from traders, he dumped his onto the market, misleading the street to infer that England had lost. A fire-sale ensued, and Nathan bought them all back at 95% discount, multiplying his wealth 20-fold in 3 days."The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York (1863) attributed by Senator John Sherman.In 1822, along with his four brothers, Jakob was bestowed the hereditary title of "Freiherr" (Baron) by Emperor Francis I of Austria, and adopted the name James de Rothschild. That same year he was appointed consul-general of the Austrian Empire, and in 1823 was awarded the French Legion of Honor.In 1825 Nathan bailed out the Bank of England, establishing himself as Britain's lender of last resort, and in the same year, he enabled the independence of Brazil from Portugal by lending it the £2 million Portugal required to accept the independence.[9] Of that amount, Portugal owed £1.5 to Rothschild himself on a previous loan of 1823.[10]"Who hold the balance of the world? Who reignO'er congress, whether royalist or liberal?Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain? [*](That make old Europe's journals squeak and gibber all.)Who keep the world, both old and new, in painOr pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?The shade of Buonaparte's noble daring? --Jew Rothschild, and his fellow-Christian, Baring."- Don Juan, George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1823.In 1835 Nathan secured a contract with the Spanish Government giving him the rights to the Almadén quicksilver mines in southern Spain, effectively gaining the monopoly of mercury in Europe. In 1845, the French government awarded the Rothschilds the contract to build the Nord line, the coutry's first major railway. Nathan's son, Lionel de Rothschild, was elected London's MP in 1847."It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, Unsourced.Late 1800s till early 1900sThe Rothschilds became increasingly involved in ever larger transactions:1871 Loaned France $1m thaler to cover part of its war reparations to Prussia.1873 Bought out loss-making Rio Tinto copper mines.1875 Financed Britain's £4m purchase of 44% of the Suez Canal.[11]1886 Founded the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company.1887 Financed the establishment of De Beers.1894 Baron Mayer de Rothschild's son-in-law, the Earl of Roseberry, became British Prime Minister.In 1897 Gustave de Rothschild financed the launch of the feminist newspaper La Fronde, featuring columnist Clémence Royer, whose translation of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of the Species 31 years earlier, its first ever to French, was the first to use Darwin's theory to justify eugenics:“The data of the theory of natural selection can no longer leave us to doubt that the superior races have been produced gradually, and that consequently, by virtue of the law of progress, they are not intended to supplant the lower races by progressing, and not to mix and to be merged with them, at the risk of being absorbed in them by crossings which would bring down the average level of the species. In a word, human races are not distinct species, but they are very distinct and unequal varieties, and it would be necessary to think twice before proclaiming political and civil equality among a people composed of a minority of Indo-Europeans and a majority of Mongols or Negroes.”Clémence Royer, De l'Origine des espèces, ou Des lois du progrès chez les êtres organisés, 1866.[12]At that time, J.P. Morgan, America's richest man at the time, financed John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Edward Harriman's railroads and Andrew Carnegie's steel mills."Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing."Ralph M Hawtry, former US Secretary to the Treasury.In 1895, at the depths of the Panic of 1893, the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold. President Grover Cleveland accepted Morgan's offer to join with the Rothschilds and supply the U.S. Treasury with 3.5 million ounces of gold to restore the treasury surplus in exchange for a 30-year bond issue.[13]"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are the United States government's institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers."Congressional Record 12595-12603 — Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency (12 years) 10 Jun 1932.In 1907, J.P. Morgan and partners cornered the overextended US private banks, and generated a bank run. Morgan offered to bring liquidity back to the market through the issuance of his own currency. He indeed reestablished confidence in credit markets and was heralded a national hero by then Princeton University's president, one Woodrow Wilson."I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."Thomas Jefferson.Wilson recommended appointing "a committee of six or seven public-spirited men like J.P. Morgan to handle the affairs of [the] country", which Theodore Roosevelt promptly did. He created the National Monetary Committee (NMC), which included J.P. Morgan, and was chaired by who would later be John D. Rockefeller's co-father-in-law, senator Nelson Aldrich from Rhode Island."If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."Andrew Jackson.After extensively consulting with private central bankers in England, France and Germany, Aldrich returned in 1910 and chaired a secret meeting in Jekyll Island. Other than J.P. Morgan and Aldrich, the meeting included Frank Vanderlip, then president of National City Bank of New York and Paul Warburg. Warburg had been hired by Kuhn, Lobe and Co., an investment firm, to lobby for a privately owned central bank in the US."Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands."Theodore Roosevelt.On 23 Dec 1913, when most of Congress had gone home for Christmas, Woodrow Wilson, then US president, signed the Federal Reserve Act into law."A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men... We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men."Woodrow Wilson, 1913.[14]In 1919 the first Gold Fix takes place at the offices of N M Rothschild & Sons in London. In 1926 they finance London's Tube."I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people."- Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924.."If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks … will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. … The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."- Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809).Warburg's contact at Kuhn, Lobe & Co., Jacob Schiff, was his brother's father-in-law, and their grandparents had shared a house with the Rothschilds back in Frankfurt. Since then, the two families maintained a strong bond between them. In 1913, Jacob Schiff funded the Russian Revolutionaries with $20m USD to overthrow the Czar of Russia.[15] That eventually happened four years later. The Russian nobility had steadfastly refused to allow European financiers to set up a private central bank in Russia."History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."James Madison.For this reason, in 1863, Czar Alexandre II sent part of his naval fleet to San Francisco in aid to Lincoln's battle against the South, which in turn was aided by Britain and France.[16][17]On that same year, Lincoln had issued the first USD to finance his troops, freeing the Union's finances from European-backed lenders, thus cutting short substantial revenue of Europe's private central banks. The Czar knew that a victory of the South would strengthen its backers, and enable them to have another go at Russia."The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity."Abraham Lincoln (1865) attributed by Michael Rowbotham (1998).[18]In 1865, Lincoln was assassinated."The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization."Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor.Seventeen years before that, in 1848, Marx and Engels had published their Communist Manifesto. Marx's grandmother was a first cousin of Nathan Mayer Rothschild's wife. Nathan's brother, James, was also a close friend of Marx's equally close friend, the poet Heinrich Heine. In 1882 the Manifesto arrived in Russia. A 35-year generation later, the Manifesto inspired the 1917 Russian Revolution that took down the Czar."Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave."Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer.On that same year, 1917, on 2 Nov, UK's Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, had sent a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, great-grandson of Nathan Mayer Rothschild.[19] That letter became known as the Balfour Declaration. Thirty-one years later, on 14 May 1948, Israel was proclaimed, and in 1956, it was made public that Baron James de Rothschild had left $6m Israeli liras in his will for the construction of the Knesset. It was inaugurated on 30 Aug 1966 in the presence of the baron's widow, Dorothy de Rothschild.[20][21]MK Mordechai Nurock at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Knesset; behind him are the President, Knesset Speaker, and Dorothy de Rothschild, 14 Oct 1958.In 1938, the Austrian Rothschilds' interests were seized by the Nazis, bringing to an end more than a century at the heart of middle European banking.[22]“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and this the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Reichstag, 30 Jan 1941.[23]Lustige Blätter (v. 27, 1943) suggests that the Jews controlled the Allied forces.Late 1900s till early 2000sOn 28 Nov 1961, Kennedy halted sales of silver by the Treasury Department. Two years later, on 22 Nov 1963, he was assassinated. On 15 Aug 1971, Richard Nixon terminated the gold standard, crowning the USD the de facto world currency."The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society... For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy... It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations."John F. Kennedy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, 27 April 1961.“After visiting these two places you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”John F. Kennedy, personal diary, 1 August 1945.[24]In 1969, former Rothschild general manager, George Pompidou was elected President of France. In 1985, Lord Victor Rothschild, former MI5 spy, advised Thatcher on the privatisation of Britsh Gas, and in 1986 penned the policy paper that spurred her nemesis: the Poll Tax. Victor was Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's father-in-law."Does 'R.F.' mean Republique Francaise or Rothschild Freres?"New York Times, 25 Jun 1967.In 1976 Victor passed his chairmanship of N M Rothschild & Sons to Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild. At the time, since 1972, Evelyn had already been chairman of The Economist, a position he held until 1989, the year he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. On 30 Nov 2000, Bill Clinton had him over at the White House to spend his honeymoon. On that same year, N M Rothschild & Sons advised the British government on 3G mobile phone licensing.[25]Evelyn is a Governor of the London School of Economics, served as Chairman of the Delegacy of St Mary's Hospital Medical School from 1977 to 1988, a Council Member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a trustee of the Shakespeare Globe Trust, Chairman of The Princess Royal Trust for Carers since 1988, and was founding chairman of The European Association for Banking and Financial History in Frankfurt from 1990 until 2004.Victor's son Jacob Rothschild is Chairman of RIT Capital Partners plc, one of the largest investment trusts quoted on the London Stock Exchange with a net asset value of over £2 billion. In 1989, he joined forces with the Anglo-French financial tycoon Sir James Goldsmith (Oliver Stone's inspiration for Gordon Gecko in Wall Street) and Australia's wealthiest man Kerry Packer on an unsuccessful bid for British American Tobacco. In 2002 he hosted the European Economic Round Table conference at his country estate; attendees included James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, Nicky Oppenheimer, Warren Buffett and Arnold Schwarzenegger. On October 2003, Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California.Warren Buffett, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jacob RothschildOn that same year, 2003, Russia's wealthiest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky passed his YUKOS stock to Jacob just prior to his arrest. From November 2003 until his retirement in 2008, he was Deputy Chairman of BSkyB Television, and in 2006 Jacob became a Founding Partner and Advisory Board Member of the Xander Group in India, with over $2 billion USD in infrastructure, hospitality, entertainment, retail and real estate under management. In 2011, Jacob Rothschild bought 25% of former JP Morgan Investment Bank co-chief executive Bill Winters' new investment firm Renshaw Bay.[26] In 2010, Jacob purchased 5% of Genie Energy, a subsidiary of IDT Corp, for $10 million USD. In 2012, Sarah Palin hired former IDT executive Michael Glassner as her chief of staff. In 2013, Genie Energy was granted exclusive oil and gas exploration rights in Israeli occupied Golan Heights, Syria.Footnotes[1] Rothschild Family's Net Worth Explained[2] Rothschild family - Wikipedia[3] Jakob Rothschild[4] Marx to Heine, Feb 1845[5] The Money Creators[6] Hearings with Reference to Currency Legislation ...[7] The Ascent of Money[8] Talk:Napoleon I of France[9] Exhibitions ‹ Rothschilds and Brazil[10] Rothschilds and Brazil: An Introduction to Sources in the Rothschild Archive[11] Suez Canal - Wikipedia[12] De l'Origine des esp�ces, ou Des lois du progr�s chez les �tres organis�s ... Traduit ... sur la troisi�me �dition ... par Mlle Cl�mence Auguste Royer. Avec une pr�face et des notes du traducteur[13] The Golden Touch[14] The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People[15] The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists: Antony C. Sutton: 9781905570355: Amazon.com: Books[16] United Kingdom and the American Civil War - Wikipedia[17] France and the American Civil War - Wikipedia[18] A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery, and Destructive Economics: Michael Rowbotham: 9781897766408: Amazon.com: Books[19] http://www1.rothschildarchive.org/genealogy/[20] http://www1.rothschildarchive.org/business/timeline/[21] http://www.knesset.gov.il/birthday/eng/EarlyYears_eng.htm[22] Rothschild & Co[23] Hitler's Threats Against the Jews (1941-1945)[24] Prelude to Leadership[25] http://www1.rothschildarchive.org/business/timeline/[26] Rothschilds confirms backing for ex JP Morgan chief's new firm

First, the premise of the question seems to imply that there was a single greatest decade where we reached a peak, from which we have declined. I’m not sure I agree with that.As far as a single decade where we accomplished the most good, I would vote for the 1940s. Here are results for individual decades, as I understand them:1780–1790: We ratified the Constitution and elected Washington President. But it was also the decade of Shay’s Rebellion and opportunists buying up Revolutionary War debts at pennies on the dollar, to wreak financial havoc later. These two developments indicated the constant struggle between financial elites and the common man that would persist through our history.1790–1800: We saw a democratic transition of power, as Washington declined to run for a third term. But it was also the decade of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Alien and Sedition Acts.1800–1810: One of our most intelligent Chief Executives, Thomas Jefferson, was President, completing the Louisiana Purchase and dispatching the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Three of the most important Supreme Court decisions were handed down: Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Dartmouth v. Woodward. But Jefferson also imposed a disastrous embargo and put his own former Vice President on trial for “constructive treason,” a dubious legal doctrine that John Marshall decisively quashed in Richmond.1810–1820: This decade included Victory in the War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Era of Good Feeling, but the British marched into Washington DC itself and burned the Capitol and the White House.1820–1830: This decade saw the election of the first true President of the “common man.” But that same figure, Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, brutally mistreated Native Americans.1830–1840: New states were established west of the Mississippi, Jackson faced down Calhoun in the Nullification Crisis, and Webster decisively affirmed the doctrine of “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,” in his debate with Hayne. This was the only time in our history that the budget was completely in balance. William Lloyd Garrison established The Liberator to advocate for abolition. Still, Jackson petulantly refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, leading to the Panic of 1837, and ill-advised incursions into Mexican territory led to the massacre at the Alamo. An anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was killed by a pro-slavery mob.1840–1850: Gold was discovered in California, but we also fought the Mexican War, a blatant move to extend slave territory. Nativist political parties arose, the Know-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic party. Persecution of Mormons resulted in the murder of their founder, Joseph Smith, at the hands of a mob.1850–1860: We sought better relations with Canada and entered on relations with Japan, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, the party of Lincoln was founded in Ripon, and Lincoln and Douglas held their memorable debates, but our last President to hold slaves in office, Zachary Taylor, was followed by two decidedly mediocre Presidents, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, followed by one of the worst Presidents in history, James Buchanan, whose dithering led to the Civil War. Pro- and anti-slavery settlers took bloody revenge on each other in Kansas, and John Brown was hanged after his raid on Harper’s Ferry.1860–1870: I would vote for this decade second after the 1940s. This was the decade of the Gettsyburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; Union victory in the Civil War established once and for all that the United States was not a mere conditional federation from which a state could withdraw, and the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. We purchased Alaska from Russia. But one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was struck down, and Lincoln was followed by one of the most inept Presidents in history, Andrew Johnson. We lost 529,000 men in the Civil War.1870–1880: The Freedmen’s Bureau worked to educate freed slaves, and freedmen such as Hiram Rhodes Revels served in state government for the first time. An American invented the telephone, and we celebrated our centennial. But the Administration of Grant was one of the most corrupt in history, involving Grant’s own Vice President, Schuyler Colfax, in the Credit Mobilier scandal, despite Grant’s personal honesty. Irresponsible underwriting of railroad bonds led to the Panic of 1873, and Republican President Rutherford Hayes used federal troops to suppress labor strikes. The Republican victory of 1876 was blatantly stolen from the real winner, Democratic lawyer Samuel Tilden, and the Republicans secured their victory through a corrupt bargain with Southern die-hards, agreeing to withdraw Union troops and cancel Reconstruction in return for Southern Support. The Ku Klux Klan was founded, and we pursued brutal wars against Native Americans.1880–1890: President Chester Arthur began to modernize the Navy to steel-hulled ships and began to reform the Civil Service. Secretary of State James J. Blaine sought to establish good relations with Latin America and helped found the Organization of American States. But Blaine himself was disgraced by corruption, and an unbalanced disappointed office seeker struck down President James A. Garfield in a Washington train station. In Chicago, a political rally that ended with a bomb being thrown resulted in the trial and hanging of seven political agitators who probably had nothing to do with the bomb.1890–1900: We celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyages with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, featuring the largest peacetime gathering in American history, the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law, a populist movement led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey mounted a march on Washington, William Jennings Bryan began a populist movement at the Chicago Democratic convention of 1896, and Herman Hollerith invented a tabulating machine, an ancestor of the computer, to count the national census. But the decade also saw another financial panic, an unnecessary war with Spain, and the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing legal segregation. A wave of unspeakably barbaric race-based lynching swept the United States, prompting a bitter Mark Twain to compose his essay “The United States of Lyncherdom.” Americans overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii and deposed its last queen.1900–1910: We built the Panama Canal, the Wright brothers began manned flight, and President Teddy Roosevelt became the first President to win a Nobel Peace Prize, for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese War. But another President was assassinated in 1901, we suppressed an indigenous independence movement in the Philippines, waterboarding insurgents, and when Teddy Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington as his dinner guest at the White House, Southern newspapers said Roosevelt had turned the White House into a “coon café,” and one South Carolina editor said whites would have to “shoot ten thousand of those n___s to teach them their place.” A panic in 1907 was resolved only because J.P. Morgan corralled bankers and forced them to underwrite loans to support the nation’s faltering finances.1910–1920: The Federal Reserve was founded and the 19th Amendment gave women the vote; Woodrow, Wilson, the only President in history to hold a Ph.D., was elected; the United States joined European Allies to win World War I, and Wilson proposed a League of Nations to promote world peace. Wilson also appointed Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court as the first Jewish justice. But Wilson, a Southern racist, endorsed D.W. Griffith’s cartoonishly racist film The Birth of a Nation, ordered civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter out of the Oval Office, and let cabinet members hound blacks out of the Civil Service. A Georgia minister started the Klan once more, which had died out decades before. European crowds shouted their adoration of President Wilson when he went to the Peace Conference of Versailles, but his peace proposals were dead on arrival in the Republican Congress, led by bitter opposition from Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. A 29-year-old Southeast Asian patriot, Ho Chi Minh, came to Paris to hand Wilson a letter asking for liberation of Vietnam from the French, but Wilson probably never saw it. Wilson himself, incapacitated by a stroke, did not even meet with his own Cabinet for 6 months, while his wife and his private secretary ran the government of the United States. Wilson still hoped for a third term and was bitterly disappointed when the Democratic convention of 1920 did not nominate him by acclamation, even though he could no longer even compose a thousand-word article for a law journal. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, concerned about “Red agitators,” directed the FBI to carry out intrusive raids of suspected dissidents, violating civil rights. An influenza epidemic in 1919, with contagion exacerbated by gatherings to celebrate the end of World War I, killed scores of thousands in the United States.1920–1930: An American author, Sinclair Lewis, was the first American to receive a Nobel Prize for literature, and Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. The stock market and general prosperity reached unprecedented heights, and the President addressed the nation by radio for the first time. A young Democratic politician, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to national attention for the first time. On the other hand, Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents in history, with his administration plagued by the Teapot Dome scandal concerning oil leases; 53-year-old Harding fathered an illegitimate child by his 23-year-old lover, Nan Britton, and after Harding’s death, photos were discovered of him posing with nude 16-year-old farm girls. The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited, leading to the rise of criminal syndicates, and the Democratic party in 1924 split over its inability to take a definite position on the role of the Klan in politics. A high school science teacher, John Scopes, was put on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution to his students. The stock market crashed in 1929 and led to the Great Depression, while our President, Herbert Hoover, insisted that business conditions were just fine and that people simply needed to have confidence.1930–1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for the first two of four Presidential terms and began ambitious federal programs under the heading of “The New Deal” attempt to bring America out of the Great Depression. Prohibition was repealed, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was established, with a chain of hydroelectric dams to relieve flooding and provide power to rural areas. President Roosevelt named the first African-American Army General, Benjamin O. Davis. But the Depression persisted, and at its height, national unemployment probably reached around 25%. The United States turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees from the Third Reich and would not approve visas for the family of Anne Frank. In 1932, an encampment of embittered World War I soldiers in Washington, DC, insisting on being paid bonuses promised by Congress 14 years before, was violently dispersed by troops under Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, acting reluctantly under the orders of General Douglas MacArthur. As the soldiers and their families fled bullets and tear gas, MacArthur commented, “Thank God this country still knows how to handle a mob.”1940–1950: Thomas Dewey of New York successfully prosecuted mobsters, leading to the execution of Louis Lepke Buchalter and the deportation of Lucky Luciano. Entering World War II on the side of the Allies, the United States helped defeat Hitler. The war with Japan was brought to a successful conclusion, and the United Nations was founded. Despite President Roosevelt’s sudden death just before the end of the war, his Vice-President, Harry Truman, the last President who never attended college, took over and retained most of Roosevelt’s capable advisors. General George C. Marshall formulated the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe, saved starving thousands, and probably kept some countries from being drawn into the Communist orbit. Truman integrated the U.S. military. Television became commercially viable, and the Ed Sullivan show began. The government passed the GI bill, financing college educations for veterans. On the other hand, nuclear weapons were used in war for the first time in history, causing unspeakable suffering. Distrust between the U.S. and its former Soviet allies led to the “Iron Curtain” separating Warsaw Pact nations from the West, while Truman felt compelled to enunciate the Truman Doctrine, outlining a plan to contain the Soviets. In formulating the American response to the new state of Israel, Truman declined to push for a two-state solution, even though this approach was favored by George Marshall. A severe housing shortage left returned veterans and their families living in cardboard boxes.1950–1960: Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command in Korea, reaffirming the principle of civilian control of the military. A United States delegation met with a Soviet delegation in Geneva. The Supreme Court reversed its earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision with its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down the principle of “separate but equal” facilities for the races. President Eisenhower ordered the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools and sent federal troops to enforce it. Congress passed a bill to construct the interstate highway system. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee convened a commission to investigate organized crime. The polio vaccine was introduced. William Faulkner became the third American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Popular TV shows such as Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best portrayed the United States as a land of attractive suburbs, full of polite, well-dressed middle class people. On the other hand, the Korean War entered a stalemate that persists today. The CIA deposed a democratically elected head of state in Iran. Russia detonated a hydrogen bomb and went into space before we did. The death of Emmett Till in Mississippi highlighted continuing mistreatment of blacks by whites. A popular TV show was Amos and Andy, featuring blacks acting like buffoons. The House Un-American Activities Committee forced Hollywood actors, directors, and writers to name associates who might be “communist sympathizers” on pain of being hounded out of the industry if they refused. In the Senate, a red-baiting demagogue, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, held televised hearings purporting to prove that the State Department was “filled with Communist agents.”1960–1970: John F. Kennedy was elected President, inaugurating the “Camelot” era in which the White House seemed to be the headquarters of a new era of hope, energy, optimism, and cultural sophistication. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, marshaled Congressional forces to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; following the example of his idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Johnson advocated for a “Great Society” in which poverty would be eliminated. James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy declared that we would go to the Moon, and that happened, in 1969. A youth-oriented movement stressing greater personal freedom culminated in such events as the Woodstock Festival in 1969. The Supreme Court ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright established the principle of a right to legal counsel even if a defendant could not afford it; Griswold v. Connecticut strengthened personal privacy rights; Miranda v. Arizona stipulated that arrestees must be read their rights, and Loving v. Virginia helped to legalize interracial marriage. On television, Bill Cosby, as a United States government agent, and Diahann Carroll, as a nurse, presented blacks as worthy of respect, as opposed to the clownish stereotype of Amos and Andy, which went off the air. The first black Supreme Court justice was appointed.On the other hand, we imposed an embargo on Cuba, nearly went to war with the Soviets over their plan to put missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States, and became involved in the quagmire of Vietnam. Civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi and Alabama, and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers were assassinated. President John F. Kennedy and later, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated. President Kennedy had endless sexual liaisons in the White House on which the press remained silent and pursued an affair with a woman, Judith Campbell Exner, who was simultaneously the mistress of a Chicago mobster, Sam Giancana. Race riots broke out in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark. Chicago was rocked by riots in 1968 as students and other protested the Vietnam War during the Democratic convention. The nation was shocked by violent crimes, including a mass shooting from atop a tower on a Texas college campus by Charles Whitman, the slaughter of a group of student nurses in Chicago, by Richard Speck, and the slaughter of a pregnant actress and her friends in a Beverly Hills house by cult leader Charles Manson and his followers.1970–1980: Richard Nixon became the first President to visit China and opened diplomatic relations with a Communist nation we had previously shunned. The United States sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, exposing the misconduct of the Vietnam War and later broke the story of Watergate, becoming a national paper in the process. The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade established the principle of a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. The first reality documentary, An American Family, was broadcast in 1973. The last execution for some years was carried out in Utah in 1976. The Concorde, a supersonic passenger jet, began operation. Limited cable TV programming began, and ATMs were invented, as were the first home game consoles, precursors of the personal computer. President Gerald Ford, a man of great personal decency, pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in the hope of avoiding years of political and legal wrangling and national bitterness. His wife, Betty, openly acknowledged her previous rehab treatment and, later, her breast cancer. The United States withdrew from Vietnam. The election of Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia, seemed to promise an era of hope and personal decency.On the other hand, Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam in an attempt to win the war. Our retreat from Vietnam, in 1975, was seen by many as ignominious and led to years of acrimony among Americans. The 1979 films Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter symbolized the deep American ambivalence about the war. National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio fired on student demonstrators, killing one. Nixon obstructed justice by covering up the Watergate break-in and then fired the special prosecutor assigned to investigate him. He finally resigned to avoid impeachment. His successor, Ford, let himself be advised by such men as Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and Henry Kissinger in the State Department. The Carter administration could not work well with the Democratic Congress, and the national economy suffered high inflation. The country suffered from what Carter called “the national malaise,” and Carter dismissed most of his Cabinet. Carter served just one term, in part because he was seen as weak in the wake of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the 444-day captivity of Americans by Iranian radicals. Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, VA began the “Moral Majority Movement,” the foundation of the religious right.1980–1990: The IBM PC was marketed in 1981, and the first cell phone call was made in 1983. The Apple Macintosh, with its icon-based graphical user interface, also dates from the early 1980s. President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, urged him to tear down the Berlin Wall, and advocated for peace between the two countries (although Gorbachev appears to have been inclined toward peace in part because he thought the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” was real and operational, which it wasn’t). Reagan bombed Libya, which seems to have made Qadafi decide to give up his own attempt to develop nukes, though he took revenge for the bombing two years later with the Lockerbie bombing. The U.S. economy improved from the doldrums of the 1970s. The Soviet Union basically collapsed around 1989, which some commentators heralded as “the end of history” (since events were no longer determined by a seemingly endless conflict between two lethally armed super powers).On the other hand, violent crime continued to shock us. Reagan was shot in March, 1981, and the Pope two months later, though both recovered. John Lennon had been shot to death in 1980. AIDS entered the national consciousness for the first time, and no one knew what it was or what to do about it. Reagan was seen by many as mismanaging the economy, getting Congress to enact large tax cuts without corresponding reductions in spending. He was criticized for his handling of an air traffic controller’s strike. His administration was nearly brought down when it was discovered that a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, Oliver North, was running an operation out of the White House itself, apparently without Reagan’s knowledge, to illegally sell arms to Iran, our enemies, to raise money to finance Central American paramilitary death squads, called “Contras.” We invaded the Caribbean Island of Grenada. Democratic attempts to win the White House, with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Michael Dukakis in 1988, were seen as ignominious failures. In the 1988 GOP primary in New Hampshire, the eventual nominee, George H.W. Bush, was defeated by a TV preacher, Pat Robertson. When Bush eventually got the nomination, he chose for his running mate a shallow young lawyer, Dan Quayle, given to saying things like “A mind is a terrible thing to lose” and “I was not born in this century” (he was about 35). Quayle also “corrected” a student in a spelling bee to the wrong spelling of “potato.” Meanwhile, there were notable scandals of supposed child sex abuse rings in day care centers, which were shown to be non-existent. A New York real estate tycoon, Donald Trump, published The Art of the Deal. The attempts of the American government to aid Afghan muhajideen fighters against the Soviet occupation contributed to the eventual formation of Al Qaeda.1990–2000: Bill Clinton, only the second President born after 1911, who had met President Nixon as a teenager, was elected and sought to move Democratic politics in a more centrist direction. His wife, Hillary, herself a lawyer, sought to enhance the role of First Lady to be more of an integral player on the President’s team, sponsoring healthcare reform.On the other hand, Bill was seen by many on the left as a sort of cynical sellout for political gain, and his welfare reform program as uncaring. He approved the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded man who may not have been capable of understanding the charges against him, as proof of his commitment to law and order. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to erase what many saw as necessary boundaries between consumer banking and investment banking. He supported the “Defense of Marriage” Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, for which he later apologized, and also supported “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” a measure to allow gays to serve in the military in secret. The image of the military was tarnished by the Tailhook scandal, an incident of unrestrained groping of female service members at a gathering of officers. Hillary’s attempt at healthcare reform went down to ignominious defeat, and the GOP recaptured Congress in 1994, leading to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and, later, a government shutdown. Bill, a notorious womanizer, was later found to have had an affair with a White House intern, and articles of impeachment were filed in the House accusing him of obstruction of justice. He and Hillary were continually hounded by allegations of shady dealings in the Whitewater real estate deal, as well as the supposed murder of a political operative, Vince Foster. Clinton was impeached in the House, though not removed from office by the Senate.2000–2010: George W. Bush, a former Governor of Texas and son of the 41st President, was elected on a program of “compassionate conservatism,” promising to be “a uniter, not a divider.” After the United States was attacked by Muslim fanatics on 9/11, Bush appeared in a Washington, DC mosque and said “The face of terrorism is not the true face of Islam. Islam is peace.” The United States captured Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator, tried him and hanged him in 2004. Bush was succeeded by our first African-American President, Barack Obama, a Harvard Law graduate who, as an unknown Illinois State Senator, had given the opening address at the 2004 Democratic convention, electrifying the nation with his assertion that we need not be divided as a nation but could simply be “Americans.” Veteran civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had sought the Democratic nomination in 1984, wept for joy the night Obama was elected. Obama got Congress to pass a bailout program for a disastrously weakened economy, leading to one of the longest peacetime expansions of the economy in history. Later, he got Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, providing health insurance to millions who had previously been without coverage. Obama also persuaded Congress to bail out the distressed American automobile industry, which would have cost the country thousands of jobs had it collapsed altogether. In 2011, Obama authorized a special Navy SEAL mission that killed Osama Bin Laden.On the other hand, Bush’s 2000 election was seen as stolen, since it was clear that his opponent, Al Gore, had won the popular vote. The outcome came down to a recount in Florida, which the Supreme Court stopped. Bush dismissed a Presidential intelligence briefing that warned that Al Quaeda would attack the United States with airplanes and then became obsessed with the idea that Saddam Hussein had conspired with Osama Bin Laden, which was not true, any more than the questionable intelligence asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (it is possible that Saddam may have had programs at one time to develop WMD and that his own scientists were afraid to tell him that the programs had been discontinued, but in any case, the so-called intelligence that there were currently WMD was very questionable). A botched hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan allowed him to escape. Bush’s Administration persuaded itself, groundlessly, that the Iraqis would welcome us and that their oil would pay for the invasion. Later, American soldiers were found to have tortured and abused prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib facility, while others were sent to Guantanamo. Domestically, Bush tried to partially privatize Social Security under the aegis of the “Ownership Society,” while cooperating with credit card companies to limit consumer bankruptcy relief from credit card debt and with drug companies to pass the absurdly expensive Medicare Part D, a misconceived prescription drug benefit for seniors. In foreign policy, Bush persuaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia that they might be offered NATO membership and then sat on his hands when an aggressive Russia started a war with Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. In his personal style, Bush was a dolt, given to malapropisms such as “The terrorists want to hurt our country, and so do we” and “It’s time for mankind to enter the Solar System.” Bush made a fool of himself by walking onto the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” as occupied Iraq was actually descending into chaos. While New Orleans was being flooded by Katrina, Bush endorsed the comically inept head of FEMA, Michael Brown, saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.”Obama’s election was seen as a startling sign of racial progress in our country, but Congressional Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell announced at once that they would oppose everything he stood for and pursue the goal of making him a one-term President, after which Obama was blamed by whites for failing to meet Congress halfway. Donald Trump, a failed businessman and reality TV star, became even more prominent by promoting the idea that Obama had not actually been born in the United States and was ineligible for the Presidency. Obama himself is a very intelligent man who seemed to confuse promise with performance and left office faintly puzzled that the world did not share his warm self-regard. Having accepted the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review without authoring a single article, having published two memoirs and accepted a Nobel Peace Prize without ever having actually accomplished anything to that point, Obama outsourced his “signature achievement,” healthcare reform, to Nancy Pelosi and let Congress draft it in a way that when it was later defended before the Supreme Court, the Administration’s argument that it was a tax contradicted the very language of the statute itself; he promised the public that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and, when the web site to sign up for healthcare turned out to be non-operational, professed himself as surprised as anyone, which turned out to be a customary approach; Paul Krugman eventually dubbed him “President Bystander.” Perpetually keeping his finger up to the breeze of public opinion (a tendency that Harper’s warned about in an article before he was elected), Obama declared that he was “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage and gays in the military. Despite a reputation as a public speaker, Obama clumsily borrowed a trope from Elizabeth Warren (if you built a business enterprise, you still benefited from public infrastructure and other benefits provided by society) and clumsily shortened it to the bald reduction “You didn’t build that.” Though the Republican Congress was outrageously perverse, Obama was not seen as a strong or effective negotiator with them. He discontinued Bush’s reliance on “enhanced interrogation” but carried on an illegal drone war that killed hundreds of civilians, executed a United States citizen without trial, and even killed his son. He consented to TSA officers placing their hands inside traveler’s clothing and touching their private areas over their underclothes, forcing women to remove breast prostheses and underwire bras, and forcing the elderly to remove diapers, and blandly assured the public, in a State of the Union Address, that they could take the train instead. When he appeared at a memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings, he began his address by calling out “Helloooo, Boston!” as though he were at a picnic or pep rally. Exiting Marine 1, he returned a soldier’s salute by casually lifting his coffee cup to his temple. Recently, he has agreed to an official portrait that seems to suggest that he might have felt more at home taking a Hepplewhite chair from the Oval Office and squatting in the bushes, a tendency of which no one would have suspected him to this point. Guantanamo remains open, despite Obama’s promise to close it (another point on which Congress fought him tooth and nail).2010–2020: There’s really nothing to say about our present decade except to name Trump, whose election is the worst thing that the United States ever did and an indication that our 400-year experiment in democracy is a failure. No one, including, apparently, Trump himself, expected him to win, so the Democratic leadership blandly sidelined a candidate who actually stood for something and ran one of the most unlikable candidates in history, a monster of vanity and deceit, who published a book after her defeat asking “What Happened” that reminded one commentator on the left of Hillary asking us to walk with her through the five stages of grief. SNL eulogized the failed campaign by having Kate McKinnon perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which implied that this word would be Hillary’s answer at the Last Judgment, when a much more characteristic response from her will be “It was someone else’s fault.”As Andrew Sullivan warned before Trump was elected, a Trump Presidency, for our Constitutional republic, would be an extinction-level event. He was right. Trump is mounting a slow-motion coup to destroy the very government that he was elected to preside over, though he is too stupid to understand that he is doing this, and Republicans in Congress are too craven to stop him. Meanwhile, he is itching to use his “nuclear button” and General McMaster talks complacently about a “bloody nose” strike at Kim.A year from now, the question in the OP may be a moot point.