The One Hundred Things That Changed America the Most Since 1900

 

The One Hundred Things That Changed America the Most Since 1900

 

Social Sciences

 

Percolating since the late 1800s, the new fields of the social sciences began transforming how we learn about humanity – less based on philosophy, and more based on data. Anthropology, sociology, and communications all followed. Psychology slowly got folded into the mix, as it became more rigorous. To this day, the social sciences remain some of America’s most popular majors.

 

Women’s Magazines

 

As women married and moved farther afield, they lost the family and community support and knowledge. In stepped women’s magazines to help them out (and their corporate advertisers): with advice on everything from cooking to hygiene to child rearing. Many of the brands of today began developing their loyalty back then (Hershey’s, Quaker Oats, Clabber Girl, Pepsi-Cola, Gillette, Pepsodent…)

 

Airconditioning

 

Electrified by Willis Carrier in 1902, air conditioning did much more than make homes comfortable. It made exploration possible – from the deep seas to the rockets that went to the moon. Climate controlled spaces allow for preserving rare manuscripts but also the banks of servers for companies like Google. And it globally doubled the economy by making work year-round.

 

Flight

 

One of the first big breakthroughs in science and technology of the century was the Wright Brothers’ 1903 flight in North Carolina, and the development of heavier-than-air aircraft. The airplane would play a pivotal role in the First World War, a little over a decade later. It would remain fundamentally unchanged until the end of the Second World War, with the advent of the jet.

 

Standard Oil

 

In 1904 Ida Tarbell published her expose on Standard Oil – headed by John D. Rockefeller, the world’s richest man. Trust-busting, the end of monopolization, became a hallmark of the Roosevelt and Taft administrations – forcing giant companies to split up. Not that oil went away, mind you – in fact it kept increasing in importance as the century wore on.

 

Factory Meats

 

By the early 1900s, the slaughterhouses of America had become industrialized, in the first significant step towards today’s factory farms. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle painted a gruesome portrait of what was going on in those blood-reeking warehouses. On the one hand we got the Food and Drug Administration, on the other corporations realized they could use factory principles starting at conception.

 

Plastic

 

Originally invented in Europe, plastic took off in America with Bakelite and its various successors. Without it many of the great innovations of the century would have been impossible, from medical supplies to polyester. It replaced traditional materials from shellac and rubber to wood and metal – and ended up in the oceans of the world, not biodegrading…

 

Fordism

 

The modern assembly line was developed for the Model T Ford in 1908, with standardization, repetitive tasks, and interchangeable parts all coming together to revolutionize industry. Along with making labor unskilled, it also wanted workers to be able to afford their products. Efficiency experts followed, such as the Gilbreths, and a punch-clock style of factory work emerged.

 

Income Tax

 

The United States finally created the Income Tax with a Constitutional amendment – so that the government could be funded by more than taxes on things like, say, alcohol. One of the cornerstones of the Progressive movement, it taxed people proportional to their wealth. The IRS began to take its modern shape.

 

National Parks

 

The 1916 creation of the Park Service brought to fruition a radical idea of vast swathes of land belonging to the citizens – an idea which had never been tried anywhere else in the world. This was a huge leap from the idea of a ‘commons’ – that was effectively conservationist – to preserving land, even if it had resources like timber, for its beauty and grandeur.

 

The Rise of the Supermarket

 

In the 1910s the first supermarket, the Astor Market, was created, in NYC. Piggly Wiggly in Memphis came a year later. From this basic idea – consolidation and centralization of purchasing things – came everything from modern department stores to the rise of Walmart and the slow decline of mom-and-pop stores.

 

Standardized Tests

 

The IQ test was heavily modified in America, and launched a whole field of standardization in testing and trying to determine who we really are: Are we smart enough for the army? Are we qualified applicants for college? What is our personality type? This sort of quantification of people would have huge ripples through society – just think of getting confirmed for a loan.

 

Hollywood

 

The location had to be 1) far away from Edison in New Jersey and 2) have lots of sun. Already by the 1910s Hollywood was becoming the location for sweeping epics to be shot, such as DW Griffiths’ Intolerance, and the studios followed. The groundwork was laid so that by the 1920s Tinseltown was emerging as a global arts hub.

 

Telecommunications

 

By 1915 the first transcontinental telephone line had been laid, and the telephone’s inventor Alexander Graham Bell called Watson once again – from New York to San Francisco. In the early decades of the century telephone lines began to connect the country, transforming the invention from urban novelty to national necessity.

 

Changes in Representation

 

The 1910s also saw the House of Representatives cap the number of members of the House, which had, up to that time, grown more-or-less proportionately, as the Constitution required. More than a century later, and the House is still 435 members. Meanwhile, Senators would now be directly elected by the people, making them more prone to populism.

 

Suffrage

 

The 1920s radically changed the lives of American women, when they finally got the vote after a campaign which had, in the immediate decades prior, significantly stepped-up the pressure on Washington to let women have equal citizenship. From the Silent Sentinels to the first woman elected to the House (from Montana), it was a revolution.

 

Public Schools

 

Not until the late 1910s did the whole U.S. require attendance in public schools in elementary grades. Of course enforcement was basically nil at first, and it would be decades before high school was added to that requirement. But gone were the tenement days of playing stickball in the street and wandering the alleys aimlessly throughout the year.

 

Native Rights

 

Citizenship finally came under President Coolidge, roughly a generation after the reservation system had removed the indigenous population to their remote outposts. As Americans, native people now could vote, and their voices would slowly emerge in a way that would require the rest of the country to listen, from improving conditions on the reservations, to casinos, to the Red Power movement.

 

Birth Control

 

Women’s right to use and learn about birth control was heavily regulated and usually forbade. Contraceptives were often banned, and so women did not have any control or say in when they had children. Along comes Margaret Sanger, among many others, who began educating women and fighting for birth control.

 

Prohibition and Organized Crime

 

The only time America took a right away from all adult citizens: the right to make, buy, and drink alcohol. Of course alcohol still flowed, from Canada and bathtubs to the speakeasies of the cities and moonshine of the rural areas. As a consequence guys like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano became major American figures until the Amendment was appealed.

 

Banking

 

The Bank of Italy – later the Bank of America – created two major reforms that opened up banking to the masses. First, they introduced branch banking, which meant you could get your money anywhere, not just from that particular safe. Second, they began giving out small loans to middle class people and businesses, which was previously not done.

 

Thomas Midgely Jr.

 

The one-man environmental catastrophe added lead to gasoline in the 1920s, which would adversely affect the health and mental condition of millions of Americans – it cost us more than 800 million IQ points, as a nation. The he created Freon, in 1928, the use of which in refrigerators and such led to the hole in the ozone layer.

 

Jazz

 

America had developed a globally-popular musical form, and a host of great names from Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington became icons. Thanks to records, people in London could listen to jazz as it morphed into swing, and big bands proliferated everywhere. Most notably: it was a black artform, connecting communities from New Orleans to Chicago.

 

The Great Depression and Dust Bowl

 

With the 1929 stock market crash, a chain reaction with global consequences followed, leading to millions out of work, and some starving to death. Desperate poverty was compounded in the mid-30s with the Dust Bowl drought of the plains and farming states, leading to displacement, food shortage, hobos riding the rails, Hoovervilles, and all the rest.

 

The New Deal

 

FDR came into power and began turning the United States around. Big employment projects, like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority did everything from painting murals in post offices and building national park trails to providing electricity to rural America. It redefined how government can take care of people in need.

 

Skyscrapers

 

Until the 1930s, the first skyscrapers were still in the stone-heavy fashion of the era, such as the Beaux Arts Woolworth Building in New York – they just took prevailing trends and made them taller. By the time of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, though, a new visual and engineering language had emerged, radically altering skylines.

 

The FBI

 

In the 1930s the Federal Bureau of Investigation began morphing into its currently-recognized form, with J. Edgar Hoover at the helm until the 1970s. The enforcement branch of the Justice Department became a vast wing of the Executive Branch, but also was tasked with keeping the Presidency accountable to the law in decades to come.

 

Social Security and Insurance

 

By 1935 Social Security had launched, and retirement began to be secured – insurance against indigency. At the same time, the first major medical insurance schemes began to launch, bringing together, for example, groups of teachers, to cover medical expenses. Universal healthcare was hotly debated, but rejected, setting up a century-long, and ongoing, battle.

 

Fair Labor Standards – Labor Unions

 

By the mid-1930s, labor unions, whose members were once gunned down with Presidential support in the 1800s, were now ascendant. Their power would continue to grow as they got results, like the FLS Act: it created the minimum wage, overtime pay for more than 40 hours, and finally ended much child labor. For the next two decades union membership would continue to grow, to 1 in 3.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright

 

The U.S. had long copied and slightly adapted the architecture of Europe – from neoclassical plantations to Beaux Arts federal buildings and Victorian mansions. Wright introduced America’s first truly unique architecture, based on integration with land and surroundings, most famously on view at Fallingwater. For half a century he kept pushing the envelope.

 

Addiction

 

Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the first attempts to treat addiction not in moral terms, but as an illness. This has become the scientific understanding: that addiction is a disease that can be treated, either in group therapy or in treatment centers (think of the Betty Ford clinic), or through other means. It began humanizing the issue, shifting away from addicts as people who were ‘weak’.

 

Disney

 

This was the age of Disney’s innovation – from Steamboat Willie to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Fantasia. Everything from inventing the multiplane camera to Mickey Mouse in the newspapers meant that Walt Disney’s company was emerging as a major cultural juggernaut. In later years it would pioneer everything from nature documentaries to Disneyland.

 

Comics

 

For decades comic book collections of humorous strips, like the newspaper funnies, had been around, but 1938’s Superman changed everything. The industry immediately ballooned, and superheroes became part of our world, later adapted into film serials, films, tv shows, and a huge quantity of merchandise. By the 21^st century you could get an Oscar portraying the Joker.

 

Internment Camps

 

One of the nation’s darker chapters, after being attacked at Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese American citizens were rounded up and sent to camps from California to Arkansas. Many died initially due to the conditions – innocent people who were deprived of all their rights. Remarkably, the legal framework for the camps is still on the books, after multiple challenges.

 

World War II

 

The First World War hadn’t hugely affected America, in terms of casualties or international power (we didn’t end up joining Wilson’s League of Nations). Being the first power since the Romans to win a two-front war, and defeating fascism, on the other hand, meant the U.S. was now a superpower. It’s imagery and moral superiority informs the nation to the modern day.

 

Nuclear Weapons

 

The development of a weapon which could level an entire city, as witnessed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forever changed the planet. It heralded a new age in Big Science – like national laboratories in Tennessee and New Mexico. It created fallout and fears of radiation, as increasingly large weapons were developed, and eventually stockpiled.

 

Bretton Woods

 

The post-war economic setup was largely established at the famed New Hampshire conference. The global economy was tied to the dollar, the International Monetary Fund was created, as was the World Bank. Keynesian economics, which America had embraced since the 1930s, became tied to liberal democracies globally.

 

The CIA

 

By the 1940s, the Central Intelligence Agency, focused on international intelligence, was made official. In the first couple of decades it quickly pivoted from trying to predict global events, to trying to influence them, notably in a series of coups and other secret meddling operations around the world, from Latin America to Asia.

 

The GI Bill

 

Loans to start businesses, buy houses, and attend college for free. It lifted a generation of veterans into the solidly middle-class. It also aggravated racial tensions, since it was usually denied to black veterans. Those loans began a self-perpetuating cycle of generational wealth, allowing white America to pull further ahead from their fellow black citizens who’d made the same sacrifices.

 

Suburbia

 

As the vets returned from the war, the Levittowns of the East Coast became the model for family homes – moving out of the tenements and into world of the white picket fence and lawn with two-bedroom one-bath house and a two-car garage. Redlining came with it, and white flight from the urban centers of American cities.

 

Car Culture

 

Car-centric sprawl of places like Southern California began reshaping the country: the Interstate Highway System was formed, the commute, planned obsolescence of cars, fast food, and the underfunding of forms of public transit and rail systems all followed. Add to that billboard advertising, the proliferation of motels, car camping, and a host of other changes.

 

The Red Scare and Cold War Fears

 

The first Red Scare had been in the 1920s, but this one was far more consequential, ruining lives and careers, and propelling the noxious Joseph McCarthy to international fame with his notorious witch hunts. Fallout shelters, “duck and cover”, the Rosenbergs trial, and mutually assured destruction at the hands of nuclear weapons all came about as a consequence.

 

The Military-Industrial Complex

 

America’s companies made money off the Second World War and used the Cold War to keep a permanent arms race going, and get lucrative government contracts to build everything from nuclear-powered submarines to the newest forms of stealth aircraft. It was recognized as insidious by the time Eisenhower left office, warning America against it becoming entrenched.

 

The Beats and Counterculture

 

Individualism, jazz, sexual freedom, and alcohol. If this sounds like the ‘sex, drugs, and rock n roll’ of the later hippies it’s because they ripped off the Beats practically whole cloth (except the wardrobe, trading black in for tie-dye and peasant shirts). The Beats were even the ones who got interested in Eastern religions first – again, to influence the later 1960s and 70s.

 

Madison Avenue

 

Advertising had been developing in new ways for decades, leaving behind paragraphs of story for simple slogans, and mascots, like those for sports teams, for brands. Soon Madison Avenue and public relations, quietly becoming the influencers of American opinion, were working for the biggest companies and politicians. Polling had transformed the citizenry into the masses.

 

Television

 

Although invented in the 1920s by Philo Farnsworth, in wasn’t until the postwar prosperity that households could afford a television set, and throughout the 1950s the number of families that owned one skyrocketed. A cascade of changes followed: everyone watching the same episodes of I Love Lucy, the nightly news, a new vehicle for ads, etc.

 

Baby Boomer Childhoods

 

Here began an intergenerational passing down of culture. The Boom was from 46-64, and included books like Dr. Spock for parents, and kids’ books that became classics – Goodnight Moon, The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, The Snowy Day, and Charlotte’s Web. Not to mention television – Saturday morning cartoons, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and just around the corner, Sesame Street.

 

Rock and Roll and the Studio System

 

Recording studios gained new power in the rock n roll era, as they managed stars, promoted tours, and sold 45s in the millions. From Sun to Motown, the musical landscape changed, and vocal music became increasingly important, as musicians began speaking directly to their audiences (and, as opposed to actors, unscripted). Soon popular musicians would be millionaires and movers and shakers.

 

Modern Medicine

 

By the early 1960s the doctor’s house call had finally disappeared. Births and deaths became hospital affairs, increasingly: the backdrop for our most important moments in our lives. Breakthroughs from chemotherapy to the polio vaccine were also improving treatment and care. MRIs were the biggest breakthrough since x-rays at the turn-of-the-century.

 

Mental Health

 

The first medications for mental health began in the early 1950s, as scientists began better understanding the brain’s chemistry. Slowly, people began to realize that that mental health issues, from psychosis to depression and anxiety, could be treated chemically. Nearly 20% of American adults take some sort of mental health medication, as of 2020.

 

Civil Rights

 

For the first half of the century, segregation and Jim Crow defined stretches of the South and the Midwest, and all but one state (Michigan) had laws regarding segregation. With equal rights and protections, millions of Americans saw their lives change, from voting power to ending segregation in schools: making Parks, King, and Malcom X icons, and realigning the political spectrum.

 

Microchips

 

Initially, the public wasn’t much affected by the development of silicon chips, transistors, and CPUs. Quietly, though, the groundwork was being laid for a host of developments. Microchips would make giant computers obsolete, and be found in everything from calculators to household appliances. Of course the 21^st century would be fundamentally different without them.

 

Obscenity

 

In a series of landmark trials throughout the 1950s and 60s, America redefined its artistic and media landscapes by slowly peeling back laws about obscenity and treating the American adult like… well, an adult. Everything from adult magazines and books to the art in museums was affected as a consequence, and the nation readjusted its understanding of what was ‘too far’.

 

Immigration

 

As late as the 1950s the country was conducting mass deportations of Mexicans – and Mexican-American citizens – across the Southern Border. In 1965 that changed with the Immigration and Nationality Act. Quotas, in place for many decades, were lifted. Priority was given to certain groups, though, based on education and skills – setting-up a generational series of consequences.

 

Vietnam

 

During the 1960s the number of American casualties escalated dramatically, from what had started as a small number of troops sent to support the French into a full-blown conflict of hundreds of thousands fighting to keep communism in check. The counter-culture rebelled, the free speech movement exploded, and America lost face as it lost its first major war.

 

Environmental Movement

 

Rachel Carson’s salvo of Silent Spring launched a revolution in how we treat our planet, from highway pollution PSAs to the Endangered Species Act, and from the Clean Air and Water Acts to teaching the food web to children in schools. Recycling and composting, sustainability, and more care and testing in products and medicines all followed.

 

Professional Sports

 

By the 1960s the Superbowl had arrived, and football began eclipsing baseball as America’s favorite sport. By now the leagues had integrated (the Redskins were last, in 1962), and television brought the game right into your living room. It wasn’t long until players began making millions in contracts and millions in endorsements and other ventures.

 

The Space Race

 

The Soviets launched Sputnik, and then Gagarin into space. America quickly pivoted to focusing on math and science, and creating a heroic new type of person: the astronaut. From NASA we got Earthrise, the moon landing, Voyager, the International Space Station, and space telescopes redefining how we see ourselves in the cosmos.

 

IBM

 

The era of the giant computer had arrived during and immediately after WWII. But their corporate usefulness took warming up to. By the 60s, though, tech was entering the workforce, thanks especially to IBM. The company also changed corporate culture and organization in these years, besides creating all sorts of tech innovations, like the barcode.

 

The Assassinations

 

JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcom X. In five years, between 1963-1968, the political and civil rights landscape was turned upside-down. Kennedy was the first President assassinated since McKinley, and his death helped launch the modern conspiracy theory, which has become prevalent in the 21^st century.

 

New Amendments

 

Between 1961 and 1971 four new amendments to the Constitution changed how people voted. The voting age was lowered to 18, D.C. got a say in Presidential elections, and poll taxes – long a segregationist tactic – were explicitly forbidden. Finally, it clarified the rules of Presidential succession, which had been fuzzy since the days of John Tyler.

 

Farm Rights

 

Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong became the faces of the Hispanic and Filipino farm workers who demanded better treatment. Two major boycotts, of grapes and lettuce, tuned Americans in to what was happening – and the power of the pocketbook. The bracero program of seasonal laborers from across the border, in place since the Second World War, was rescinded in 1964.

 

Watergate and the Pentagon Papers

 

This was the earthquake – first America learned Nixon was a foul-mouthed, paranoid criminal, and people lost faith in the White House. Then the Pentagon Papers dropped, showing every President since Eisenhower, including liberal heroes like JFK, had lied to the public about the Vietnam War. The faith and trust were broken, and has never fully healed.

 

The War on Drugs

 

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.” – John Ehrlichman, architect of the War on Drugs.

 

Roe v. Wade

 

The national legalization of abortion became a touchstone in American politics and culture. Abortion had been legal until the 20^th century, but in the 1960s only a few states had relegalized it. But the right to abortion was, for the conservatives, too far, and setup a culture war over women’s bodies which continues to today, lately inflamed Dobbs v. Jackson.

 

Women’s Lib and Title IX

 

Since Title IX in 1972, discrimination began being repealed on the basis of sex. Women began to get more social and legal rights. The sexual revolution had already begun changing mores and values, and the contraceptive pill would be taken by millions. Equal rights for all became a rallying cry, and sexism began being called out more openly, all the way up to #MeToo.

 

School Segregation

 

By the 70s the Supreme Court had swung conservative (and has been ever since). In two landmark cases they undid school integration, in San Antonio v. Rodriguez and Milliken v. Bradley: Schools didn’t need to integrate through bussing, and local property taxes could fund school districts. Today, in the 2020s, some schools are now more segregated than they were before Brown v. Board of Education, as a result.

 

Lobbying vs. Science

 

The 70s were a decade when corporate interests began actively trying to sway the masses about science itself. Climate change caused by fossil fuels, the harm caused by tobacco, the dangers of asbestos – all of these and more led to drawn-out, costly fights between bad faith companies against scientists and regulators trying to tell America the truth. Another pillar of trust began wobbling.

 

Copyright

 

Another corporate victory of the 1970s was the Copyright Act of 1976. Since 1909 the term of a copyright had been a reasonable 28 years. Then it became life of the author, plus 50 years. The public domain suffers, as a consequence, with very little new material entering the public for decades to come, right up to the present day. It was again lengthened in the 90s.

 

Retirement

 

By the 1960s and 70s, the retirement landscape had begun to change. Nursing homes had begun taking in the elderly who needed help – as an offshoot of increased hospitalization. Meanwhile retirement homes and communities began to proliferate, and senior citizens, instead of moving in with their families, began moving into ‘homes’.

 

Robotics

 

The first robot which could react to its surroundings and complete general tasks debuted in the early 1970s, called ‘Shakey’ since it shook as it moved around the room. Science-fiction was here – robots zipping around among us. From toys to the factory arms that became ubiquitous in automation, they changed our world.

 

DNA and Forensics

 

Many American milestones chart the understanding of genetics and the genome since 1900, including the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan, Barbara McClintock, and James Watson. By the early 1980s, DNA took a commanding role in the world of forensics, which had been developing more scientific methodology since the late 1800s.

 

Hiphop

 

Rap music was initially only one part of the culture – which combined fashion, DJing, graffiti, and breakdancing. As the 1980s continued, the music broke away and quickly matured. It took another decade to fully cross over from the black to white audience mainstream. Now, in the 21^st century, it’s one of the most popular musical forms in the world.

 

Gaming

 

In the early 80s, gaming meant arcades – Pong and Pacman. Soon came the consoles, which put the gaming world in the home, connected to the television. It was a new type of experience – part leisure activity and part artform. A whole slew of characters entered American’s lives from Japan and elsewhere, such as Mario, Sonic, and Link.

 

Neoliberalism

 

The revolt against Keynesianism began in the early 80s, reacting to stagflation and the oil crisis. The new idea was to curb government spending, and allow the private sector to step in and fill in the gaps, being supposedly leaner and more adaptable than the government. Meanwhile, the debt as a percent of GDP also began to balloon, doubling while Reagan was in office.

 

Tax Reform and Wealth

 

The idea was that you shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead give them tax cuts – a policy which has consistently defined Republican economics ever since. It also meant fighting the Unions (membership began to fall, until relatively recently), and unsurprisingly wages stagnated, and have stayed the same up to contemporary times. The gap between rich and poor began to increase, reversing decades of closure.

 

Deregulation

 

The other Reagan era economic breakthrough also helped corporations: deregulation. Finance began to swell as a proportion of the U.S. economy, and mergers began to be more popular. A stock market crash soon followed, and boards of trustees became new powerhouses, demanding quarterly reports and profits, shifting focus to short-term gains over sustainable growth.

 

Civics Education

 

Due to the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report, American civics education began to shift, away from teaching students about democracy and how the government works towards America’s global position. It also emphasized, in a Cold War framework, the differences in the global economy, focusing on neoliberalism and Americans as part of the international workforce.

 

Women in the Workforce

 

As wages stagnated and the middle class began falling behind, American families needed to make ends meet. In the 1960s, less than half of American women worked. By 1990 it was around 60% - mothers and wives needing to help as men’s wages dropped. Workplace culture had to adapt as women began rising through the ranks of corporate America and taking seats on boards.

 

Credit Cards

 

Women entering the workforce wasn’t enough to offset the working- and middle-class losses of the new economic policies. New credit cards became the means of making up for the shortfalls in people’s budgets. The American people became a nation of debtors, and the credit card industry began moving the nation, and global economy, away from cash.

 

Home Computers and the Early Internet

 

In development for a couple of decades, the personal computer came into homes in the 1980s, and then took off in the 90s with the world wide web. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs became household names. Silicon Valley and Seattle were new hubs of American industry and technology. Early pioneers, like Wikipedia and Craigslist, showed us the potential of being online.

 

Megachurches and Fundamentalism

 

Christianity began changing in the 80s, with a significant increase in megachurches: congregations of many thousands, often in stadium-like settings, getting rid of the close-knit parish community. Fundamentalist Christianity also began taking off, often with millenarian leanings, including increasing popularity of groups like the patriarchal Institute of Basic Life Principles.

 

Disability Rights

 

Civil rights underwent a major update in 1990, with the Americans with Disability Act. Discrimination on the basis of disability was outlawed, and the nation began to make changes as a consequence, from the visible – like installing ramps and elevators – to the invisible, like hiring protections. Accessibility and accommodations became part of the everyday.

 

End of the Cold War

 

Pax Americana had arrived. The United States was now the world’s first unchallenged global superpower, which would define the 1990s. The military began mothballing bases, and pivoting to new threats. Meanwhile, the 1033 Program meant police forces could buy military equipment at significant discount –something had to be done with all that stuff – which militarized small town America.

 

NAFTA

 

Starting in 1994, the free trade agreement took American jobs overseas, and, along with automation, dealt a gut-punch to the country’s manufacturing and factory jobs. Overall, however, most people’s economic bottom-line actually improved. Sweatshops became a major moral issue in the 90s, as a consequence. In place until 2020, NAFTA was then replaced with USMCA.

 

Mass Incarceration

 

Beginning in the 80s and exploding in the 90s, ‘tough on crime’ became a popular political position for Democrats and Republicans. Black citizens were disproportionately arrested for crimes, sentenced, and sent to prison – even though blacks and whites committed the same types of crimes at the same rate. America sent more of its people to prison – and prison labor – than any other nation in history.

 

Mass Shootings

 

The infamous Columbine High School shooting was a turning point in the U.S. From 1994 to 2004 the country had an assault weapons ban – and still the atrocity had occurred. All the same, after assault weapons became legalized again in 2004, the number of mass shootings increased many-fold. Names like Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Pulse and Virginia Tech all became tragic cultural touchstones.

 

Google

 

When they announced they were going to map the whole world by satellite it was like a dream – Google Earth and Maps changed how we interact with our surroundings. And, of course, there was so much more, from the search engine to Gmail and Google Drive storage, to Docs, and taking over YouTube. It became one of the first trillion-dollar companies as a consequence.

 

9/11 and the War on Terror

 

Ending the Pax Americana of the 1990s, America’s foreign policy abruptly shifted from Mideast peace deals between Israelis and Palestinians to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The global community shifted from support to disgust, as they discovered the Bush administration had lied to them, and torturing people. Homeland Security, the TSA, the PATRIOT Act’s surveillance: the nation radically shifted.

 

Fox News

 

In the late 80s, the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and right-wing media began tentatively coming out into the open. Talk radio was the big story at the time, but Rupert Murdoch’s Fox became the juggernaut, and by the early 2000s had become a symbiotic arm of the GOP. As George W. Bush’s popularity sank, they stuck by him, almost to the end – a pattern hey repeated in decades to come.

 

Genetic Editing and Knowledge

 

By the start of the 21^st century the genome project was well underway, and cloning had been carried out in Europe. From agriculture to medicine, the power of genetic editing also led to new vaccines, such as those used for Covid. With a minute sample of genetic material, you could learn your ancestry – such as whether you had Neanderthal DNA kicking around, or were part Mongolian.

 

3G

 

The internet of the 90s was very different from today – because sending large files like music or video was so difficult. With the advent of 3G, all these sorts of downloads and sharing became possible and easy – laying the foundation for our 21^st century internet use. 3G was the first major breakthrough – platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok are inconceivable without it.

 

Amazon

 

Online retail took off with Amazon, first with books, and then with… everything. Jeff Bezos became history’s richest person, retail changed forever, and their warehouses became infamous. They launched new ventures, such as Prime, Audible, and Twitch, and took over things like Whole Foods. Not to mention all the gadgets, like Kindle and Echo.

 

LGBTQ+

 

Starting in the early 2000s, gay and trans Americans began to gain their rights, starting with marriage and continuing to other fields. The nation began understanding homosexuality and transgender identification, and culture wars inevitably followed – from sports and drag queens to bathrooms in schools. Pronouns, queer identity, aromantic and asexual – the country learned a whole new language.

 

Social Media

 

With the launch of Facebook to the public in 2006, our communities have changed irrevocably. Instagram, Twitter, and all the rest changed celebrity, democracy, and the public square. It connected us around the globe, and connected families. We have since learned all of the downsides: from addiction, to mental health crises for children and teens and from disinformation to hate speech.

 

Smartphones

 

With the release of the iPhone and its amazing touchscreen, smartphones came of age – a phone, camera, and computer all in one. They became ubiquitous and a must-have device for life and often for work. A cascade of changes followed, from mobile games to Snapchat filters, and from wildlife identifiers to QR scanning and Pokémon Go.

 

Polarization

 

An infamous poll relates that Americans are now more divided than they have been at any point since the Civil War. The process began in the 90s, refusing to work with the opposition, but was turbo-charged during the Obama and Trump administrations, and has effectively broken the Legislative Branch. 1946-48’s ‘Do Nothing Congress’ passed only 900 bills. In 2023, Congress passed only 27 bills.

 

Renewable Energy

 

There was a revolution in the world of renewable energy in the last twenty years. Solar panels have vastly improved, electric cars are becoming common place, and the nation has come to recognize (for the most part) that climate change is real and needs serious addressing. As costs dropped, prevalence followed. Wind farms, hydroelectric, and all the rest are pointing towards a new future.

 

Donald Trump

 

From “alternative facts” and “fake news” to double impeachments, and being the first former President to get a mugshot – the Trump presidency broke all the norms and seriously weakened America’s support of democracy as a concept. Turning backs on allies while lending legitimacy to dictators, the immigration crisis and the wall, the Supreme Court appointments… easily one of the most consequential presidencies.

 

The Pandemic

 

The worst health disaster in America’s history came at the tail end of 2019 – Covid-19. Lockdowns, mass death tolls, masks, vaccine skepticism – it was a medical nightmare. It also created seismic shifts in the workforce, finally leading to hybrid and work-from-home being embraced by many, making Zoom calls ubiquitous, and briefly causing the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression.