Swings And Roundabouts

Swings and Roundabouts.

Watching the nightly news, Susie decided the country had gone  through "swings and roundabouts." The colonists fought the subsequent wars to gain their freedom from the British.

After the French and Indian War for seven years, Great Britain made significant territorial gains in the colonies. Still, disputes over future frontier policy and paying for the War's expenses led to great discontent and the Boston Massacre. Britain tried to enforce the Stamp and Townshend Acts taxes on the colonists. The colonists protested the tariffs, which led to the Boston Massacre, which occurred in March 1770 between patriots throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks at a squad of British soldiers and colonists called the "patriot" mob 11 patriots were killed, which led to the start of The Revolutionary War.

George Washington played many roles in the founding of this country. He was a commander of the Virginia militia in the French and Indian War. With his experiences with the rising taxes by the British, he decided that it would be best for the colonists to declare independence from England. George served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774. Before the Second Continental Congress started a year later, the American Revolution had begun. George was named commander in chief of the Continental Army.

George was a better general than a military strategist. He was able to keep his poorly trained colonial army together. They lacked such necessities as food, ammunition, and even no shoes in the winter. The winter at Valley Forge was a testament to his abilities to inspire his men to keep going. Although they won very few battles, they held their own against the British. Finally, with the aid of the French, they captured British troops under General Charles Cornwallis. The battle of Yorktown ended the Revolutionary War, and George was declared a national hero. After the Treaty of Paris, George gave up his command of the army and returned to Mount Vernon.

George's services were again requested to head the committee to draft the new constitution. Public opinion was so strong that George was elected our nation's first president.

Susie saw that once the United States had gained its freedom from Great Britain, they had constantly been at War. She read in the book The United States Of War that there are currently 102 wars on record, 3 of which are ongoing. The longest span of peace has been up to 45 years. Most young people today don't remember when the United States wasn't at War. U.S. forces started most of the wars and invasions. They were aggressive, offensive wars of choice.

The number of dead is vast. Tens of millions are the total for both combatants and civilians. War has also shattered entire neighborhoods, cities, and societies. Now we have to consider the costs of these wars. As of late 2001, we have already spent a minimum of 6.4 trillion.

When the question of how we got here is asked, we feel that the answer is because the country's birth was in a revolutionary war for independence. Some think that it is due to the power and influence of the Military Industrial Complex. Manifest destiny was a widely held cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America.

Another consideration of the endless wars is the infrastructure that makes the wars possible. Bases are needed to organize, support, and sustain combat for our armed forces. The U.S. government has the most significant number of military bases occupying foreign lands. Establishing more bases abroad often leads to more wars, which leads to more bases. They have eight hundred military bases in eighty-five countries. During World War II, two-thousand bases and thirty thousand installations were built.

Maintaining "a far-flung network of bases and other arrangements to help intervention abroad" has been a massive part of U. S.political, economic and military leaders have used taxpayer money to build a self-perpetuating permanent war system. Since WWII, we have had the world's most lethal Military with the most nuclear weapons capable of destroying our whole world. We also have the world's most powerful economy; that can print dollars to pay its debts. The U.S. is the world's reserve currency.

Some senior officials appeared committed to instigating a new conflict during the previous administration. Five periods reflect U.S. imperialism. Part I shows the roots of the U.S. Empire. It shows the connections and similarities between the U.S.Empire and its imperial predecessors. Part II This tells the story of the growth of the U.S. Empire from independence to the wars against the Spanish and other locals. Part III starts with the wars of 1898 to the start of World War II. This period had less territorially focused imperialism. They used more economic tools of imperial control with "Open door" trade policies. Part IV. started before we entered World War II. This started with President Franklin Roosevelt's 1940 "Destroyers-for-Bases deal, which gave us ninety-nine-years leases on military bases in eight British colonies. Part V is in the current period, which began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, called the Global War on terrorism. This War led to unprecedented levels of military spending, unprecedented levels of power and influence for the Military, and unprecedented breadth in the deployment of U.S. military bases and troops. They also started U.S. army intervention, base construction, and warfare in the Greater Middle East.

There was lots more information in the book, which made it clear that times have changed, but not for the better. From the assault on the United States Capitol, where rioters overran and assaulted law enforcement, vandalized property, and threatened violence against Vice-President Mike Pence and lawmakers. Th138 police officers were injured, four of whom committed suicide seven months later. There was $2,700.000 worth of damage done.

These people were called to action by The former president, who claimed that the 2020 election had been "stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats." He also demanded that Vice President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden's victory.

There is also the fact that not enough attention was paid to the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic. Many people have died or suffered unnecessarily because the U.S. government didn't invest in adequate pandemic preparedness. So now the people are fighting against the government while others are suffering from the pandemic.