Exhuming Reagan

[TomC]

I've always thought that Carter was under appreciated for his accomplishments. Compared to other presidents, he was a humble, honest man. Of course, all of our presidents had faults and weaknesses.

Perhaps it would be more understandable if I pointed out that, over 40 years ago, I was a lot younger?
Tom

 

[steve_bank]

How anyone can defended Reagan's presidency is beyond me.

JFK's botched invasion of Cuba. Regardless of admissions since the 19th century our foreign policy has been what's good for business is good for America, hence 'banana republics'.

You may not like Regan but in context he was not much different than other presidents.

How can anyone support Biden for his unqualified support to fund the Israeli destruction of Gaza with Netanyahu now saying there will be no independent Palestinian state and they will control all land. Settlements will continue.

Biden at least publicly now calls for Israel to pull back in the face of domestic and global responses.

Reagan was called 'the great communicator'.

Morally JFK was a pig. Boinking women in the WH, His wife knew, his family knew, the press knew but said nothing.

 

[Swammerdami]

You can debate Reaganomics, but he iherited a problematic economy. I rember auto loan rates at around 17%.

Reaganomics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The pillars of Reagan's economic policy included increasing defense spending, balancing the federal budget and slowing the growth of government spending, reducing the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reducing government regulation, and tightening the money supply in order to reduce inflation.

Wow. Wikipedia is increasingly a very poor source for valid information.. If this is the first-sentence summary of their Reagonomics page, it's truly putrid.

Reagan's policy was to "balance the federal budget"?? The debt rose from <31% of GDP when Reagan was inaugurated to 63% by the end of Bush-41. It fell throughout Clinton's terms.

Slowed the growth of Spending? Federal expenditures rose from 657 billion to 1152 billion under Reagan, and continued on up to 1522 billion for Reagan's 3rd term (Bush-41).

The inflation rate was remedied by interest-rate hikes, but this was started under Carter. In April 1980 the overnight rate for risk-free money was a whopping 17.6%. It is universally agreed that  Paul Volcker should get credit for curbing the inflation of the 1970s. Volcker was appointed by Jimmy Carter.

By now I hope we can agree that Wikipedia, while usually OK for simple facts, is useless for a sensible summary of anything like "Reagonomics."



fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1ekqI

 

[steve_bank]

Economics is in the eye of beholder.

Reagan's policies were supply side. Cutting taxes and government spending. Stimulate business with tax cuts. You have to look at it in cotext of the economy as it was.

Supply-side economics usually focuses on creating government projects to encourage the production of goods from a corporation. In contrast, demand-side economics focuses specifically on creating government jobs, so consumers feel more comfortable spending.Feb 3, 202

Don't forget Clinton pushed welfare reform, welfare not being lifetime sport. Work requirements. And Clinton had a balanced budget..

He had budget surpluses for fiscal years 1998–2001, the only such years from 1970 to 2023. Clinton's final four budgets were balanced budgets with surpluses, beginning with the 1997 budget. The ratio of debt held by the public to GDP, a primary measure of U.S. federal debt, fell from 47.8% in 1993 to 33.6% by 2000.

In contrast to both Clinton and Reagan Biden is the progressive spend-a-holic.


The flip side of course

What is Keynesian economics in simple terms?
Who Was John Maynard Keynes & What Is Keynesian Economics?
Keynesian economics argues that demand drives supply and that healthy economies spend or invest more than they save. To create jobs and boost consumer buying power during a recession, Keynes held that governments should increase spending, even if it means going into debt.

The way I heard Keynesian economics described is the government should pay some people to dig holes and others to fill them in. It puts cash in the system and creates demand for goods and services stimulating business. The oppoisite of Reaganomics.

 

[robnisch]

What happened when tRump cut taxes for the 1%? Did they create jobs? NO. They put that money away in stock buy backs.

ETA: Repeated insanity.

 

[TomC]

What happened when tRump cut taxes for the 1%? Did they create jobs? NO. They put that money away in stock buy backs.

ETA: Repeated insanity.

Worse.
Rather like back in the Bush II era, they invested in jobs. Overseas and for machines, but not for U.S. workers.

Back when JFK was President, trickle down economics worked. A rising tide lifted all boats. But that was then and this is now. For the last 30-40 years tax cuts and corporate welfare have resulted in fewer jobs for working class people and bigger profits for the wealthy elite. Who can then afford to buy more tax cuts and corporate welfare because they can buy more political power.

Now, we've got a Republican party who is all about ending legal immigration and supporting Putin.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You can debate Reaganomics, but he iherited a problematic economy. I rember auto loan rates at around 17%.

Reaganomics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The pillars of Reagan's economic policy included increasing defense spending, balancing the federal budget and slowing the growth of government spending, reducing the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reducing government regulation, and tightening the money supply in order to reduce inflation.

Wow. Wikipedia is increasingly a very poor source for valid information.. If this is the first-sentence summary of their Reagonomics page, it's truly putrid.

Reagan's policy was to "balance the federal budget"?? The debt rose from <31% of GDP when Reagan was inaugurated to 63% by the end of Bush-41. It fell throughout Clinton's terms.

The con was the alleged revenue growth that'd result from cutting revenue. And people still believe that! It was sold so well. If we just lower the tax rates, that will lead to more growth and tax revenue. Everyone wins. 40 years later, people are still making that debunked argument. Reagan's budgets were cooked and indicated revenue growth would exist where it simply couldn't have because of the tax cuts.

Reagan was the grooming period of the right-wing base by Big Money interests. Normalizing a bunch of ridiculous thoughts about economics, money, taxes, that when the time came, the right-wing base felt quite at ease with letting the Big Money interests have their way with them.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You may not like Regan but in context he was not much different than other presidents.

Reagan was an intellectual idiot. The guy was dumber than a fencepost. The press said nothing.

 

[robnisch]

Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis

The former first lady fought the most conservative elements of the Reagan administration in an attempt to get her husband to pay more attention to the deadly pandemic. It wasn’t enough.

www.theatlantic.com

A long read.
But, It took Reagan five years to do anything about HIV/AIDS.
Five years!

 

[robnisch]

Scandals of the Ronald Reagan administration - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't remember the HUD scandal.

 

[lpetrich]

I see the thread title and want to say "Hallelujah! It's about time we exhume his fetid corpse and drive a stake through his heart." Perhaps more than any other single human, it is Ronald Reagan who deserves the blame for placing the U.S.A. on its present path to deliberate ignorance and fascism.

But leaders do not rule alone. They need underlings to do their bidding, and to do the lower-level leadership. I think that this was a broader trend.

 Cyclical theory (United States history) - According to Arthurs Schlesinger Sr. and Jr. the US alternates between these two kinds of period:

Liberal	Conservative
Public Purpose	Private Interest
Increase Democracy	Contain Democracy
Wrongs of the Many	Rights of the Few
Human Rights	Property Rights

Each kind of period generates the other.

Conservative periods accumulate unsolved social problems, problems that society's elites do not do much to solve, if they do anything. That is because society's elites sometimes consider those problems to be non-problems. This accumulation of problems provokes efforts to solve them, and enough effort ends the period. As an example, slaveowners did not consider a social problem their owning of fellow human beings as if they were farm animals.

Liberal periods suffer from society-scale activism burnout. Activism is not a free action. This may especially be true if the activists won some big victories, because they may not feel motivated to do much more. So they take a rest and society more broadly takes a rest to assimilate those changes.

Some liberal periods are what Samuel P. Huntington called "creedal passion" periods, with efforts to get the US back to the "American creed" of governance: "In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government."

 

[Politesse]

Why is it that so many wealthy people despise poor people?

In fairness, it isn't just wealthy people who despise the poor. They are carefully taught to disrespect themselves as well.

 

[lpetrich]

I also wish to mention:

• Some liberal periods had race-relations upheavals
• The US has gone through several party systems, each with characteristic platforms and constituencies
• Peter Turchin's long wave of cycles: +++ is peak, --- is trough

Here is a table of the periods. Begin and end dates are approximate, and periods typically fade into their successors over some years.

Begin	End	Type	CrdPas	Race	PtrTrc	PrtSys
1776	1788	Lib	X				Revolution, Constitution
1788	1800	Con				1	Hamilton Era
1800	1812	Lib				1	Jefferson Era
1812	1829	Con			+++	1	War of 1812, Era of Good Feelings
1829	1841	Lib	X		+++	2	Jackson Era
1841	1861	Con				2	Slaveowner Domination
1861	1869	Lib		X		3	Civil War, Abolition, Reconstruction
1869	1901	Con			---	3	The Gilded Age
1901	1919	Lib	X		---	4	Progressive Era
1919	1931	Con				4	Roaring Twenties
1931	1947	Lib				5	New Deal Era
1947	1962	Con			+++	5	Fifties Era
1962	1978	Lib	X	X	+++	5	Sixties Era
1978		Con				6	Reagan Era, Neoliberal Era, Gilded Age II

Cyclic theories of history - Liberapedia

So it's just about time for another turn of the cycle, and we see some indications of it starting to happen. But given what a rough ride many previous liberal periods were, this one also will be a rough ride. From Peter Turchin's long cycle, we are headed for a trough.

How rough might it be? Peter Turchin notes spikes in social violence around 1870, 1920, and 1970, indicating that we are due for another one. There was no spike around 1820, meaning that the Era of Good Feelings lived up to its name there.

 

[lpetrich]

What was in each of the liberal periods? From my Liberapedia link:

Period	Gov	Reg	Wfr	Env	Lab	Rac	Fem
Revolution	X
Jefferson
Jackson	X
Civil War	X		X			X
Progressive	X	X		X	X		X
New Deal		X	X	X	X
Sixties	X	X	X	X		X	X

What's what:

• Gov: government structure
• Reg: government regulation
• Wft: welfare-state measures
• Env: environmentalist measures
• Lab: labor issues: unions, regulation
• Rac: race-relations issues
• Fem: feminist issues

There were sometimes gaps, when some issue was not a big one, like labor issues in the Sixties Era, government-structure issues in the New Deal Era, etc. But some gaps were very long.

The black civil-rights gap was the result of counterrevolutionary "Redeemers" destroying Reconstruction so thoroughly that black people took nearly a century to recover. There was some civil-rights activism during the Progressive Era, like the founding of the NAACP, but it did not get very far. There was also some toward the end of the New Deal Era, the March on Washington and Harry Truman desegregating the armed forces, but also not much. The recent big push for civil-rights activism started in the Fifties Era and continued into the Sixties Era.

The feminist movement scored a big success in getting women the right to vote at the end of the Progressive Era, but it fizzled out so thoroughly that when feminists got back into action in the Sixties Era, they had to rediscover their predecessors' history.

 

[lpetrich]

• The Double Helix of Inequality and Well-Being – Peter Turchin
• Dimensions of Well-Being – Peter Turchin
• Age of Discord II – Peter Turchin
• Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA

The variables, with (-) meaning negative correlation:

• Ordinary-people well-being
  • Physical height: how tall people grow
  • Life expectancy
  • Relative wage: median wage / GDP per capita
  • Employment prospects: fraction of population that is foreign-born (-)
  • Social optimism: age of first marriage (-) -- late age means not much confidence in being able to afford a family
• Elite overproduction (-)
  • Top wealth: largest fortune / GDP per capita
  • Education cost: elite-university tuition / GDP per capita
  • Elite fragmentation: political polarization
• Social violence (-)
  • One/few on many - terrorism
  • Many on one/few - lynching
  • Many on many - riots

How to get out of this mess? Peter Turchin in Noema:

How can Americans end our current Age of Discord? What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure.

This sounds like commonplace leftist discourse and a weak response to such extreme conditions.

He then discusses past successes: Britain in the 1830's under Prime Minister Charles Grey, and the US in the 1930's under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The formula in both cases was clear and simple. First, the leader who was trying to preserve the past social order despite economic change and growing violence was replaced by a new leader who was willing to undertake much-needed reforms. Second, while the new leader leveraged his support to force opponents to give in to the necessary changes, there was no radical revolution; violence was eschewed and reforms were carried out within the existing institutional framework.

Third, the reforms were pragmatic. Various solutions were tried, and the new leaders sought to build broad support for reforms, recognizing that national strength depended on forging majority support for change, rather than forcing through measures that would provide narrow factional or ideologically-driven victories. The bottom line in both cases was that adapting to new social and technological realities required having the wealthy endure some sacrifices while the opportunities and fortunes of ordinary working people were supported and strengthened; the result was to raise each nation to unprecedented wealth and power.

Part of their success was their threat to pack recalcitrant bodies that obstructed their reforms. CG threatened to pack the House of Lords with his supporters and FDR threatened to pack the Supreme Court with his supporters. Though neither effort was successful, both bodies backed off from their previous obstructionism.

 

[lpetrich]

Previous US liberal phases left behind a lot of unfinished business.

• Civil War Era: Reconstruction destroyed by Redemption.
• Progressive Era: Feminist activism collapses after getting women the vote.
• New Deal Era: Second Bill of Rights, black civil-rights activism
• Sixties Era: Equal Rights Amendment almost ratified, abortion legalized but becomes a major culture-war battleground, renewable-energy development slowed down, as did conversion to the metric system of units.

 

[lpetrich]

Genesis 6:4 begins "There were giants in the Earth in those days"; and there were giants who once served as President of the United States: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt. But where are the giants now that we need them so desperately?

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have among the highest IQs of any men ever to serve in the Oval Office, but their talents were wasted in this post-Reagan era of hyper-partisanism, lies and irrational hatreds.

Seems a bit like the Great Man Theory of history. But almost all the liberal periods had big mass movements involved in them.

I don't know how much the American Revolutionary War was a populist effort rather than an elite vs. elite affair, but it needed a lot of recruits. During that war, Thomas Paine once grumbled about “Summer soldiers and Sunshine patriots” - The American Crisis | American Battlefield Trust

About the Jefferson Era, I don't know how populist Jeffersonian democracy was.

The Jackson Era was populist enough for President Andrew Jackson's detractors to call him "King Mob", with the mass mobilization in his party. Also, around the time his Presidency, property qualifications for voting and public office were abolished in most states.

In the decades before the Civil War was a big antislavery movement, one big enough to be feared by Southern slaveowners and their supporters. In the 1850's, proslavery and antislavery settlers physically fought each other in the then-territory of Kansas, fighting over whether it was to be admitted as a slave state or a free state.

In the first years of the Civil War, Abe Lincoln did not want to seem too opposed to slavery, so as not to alienate states with slaves that remained in the Union. But he eventually decided that antislavery activists were more firm support than wavering border states, and two years into the war, he issued his Emancipation Proclamation, ordering the freeing of all slaves in states that opposed the Union.

The Progressive Era had a lot of activist movements, and was thus much more than Teddy Roosevelt. More direct democracy, women voting, fighting back against corporate corruption, ...

The New Deal Era owed a lot to FDR's leadership, but it had lots of labor-union activism.

The Sixties Era also had a lot of activist movements, and it was also much more than LBJ.


For a successful liberal period, one needs both good political leadership and mass movements. Barack Obama was potentially a great leader, but he flubbed the activism part big time.

Obama’s Lost Army | The New Republic - "He built a grassroots machine of two million supporters eager to fight for change. Then he let it die. This is the untold story of Obama’s biggest mistake—and how it paved the way for Trump."

As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.

“We lost this election eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”

They threw away what they had.

Instead of calling on supporters to launch a voter registration drive or build a network of small donors or back state and local candidates, OFA deployed the campaign’s vast email list to hawk coffee mugs and generate thank-you notes to Democratic members of Congress who backed Obama’s initiatives. As a result, when the political going got rough, much of Obama’s once-mighty army was AWOL. When the fight over Obama’s health care plan was at its peak, OFA was able to drum up only 300,000 phone calls to Congress. After the midterm debacle in 2010, when Democrats suffered their biggest losses since the Great Depression, Obama essentially had to build a new campaign machine from scratch in time for his reelection effort in 2012. (Plouffe and Messina declined requests to speak about Movement 2.0; Axelrod, Podesta, and Rouse said they had no comment.)

Having to rebuild a campaign organization from scratch? That's a huge failure of the Obama Admin.

The Right responded with its "tea party" movement, a movement that was not afraid of claiming that Obamacare has "death panels", a movement that eventually supported Donald Trump.

 

[Swammerdami]

Genesis 6:4 begins "There were giants in the Earth in those days"; and there were giants who once served as President of the United States: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt. But where are the giants now that we need them so desperately?

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have among the highest IQs of any men ever to serve in the Oval Office, but their talents were wasted in this post-Reagan era of hyper-partisanism, lies and irrational hatreds.

Seems a bit like the Great Man Theory of history. But almost all the liberal periods had big mass movements involved in them.

I wouldn't underestimate some of these "Great Men." Thomas Jefferson was a key figure in the Enlightenment, sometimes compared to David Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Rousseau and Adam Smith. James Madison was the high-IQ guy who designed the U.S. government with its Checks and Balances, a great democracy that survived various assaults until the 1991 appointment of Scumbag Thomas to the Supreme Court began our descent into Stupidism and Fascism. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican who enacted much anti-Republican agenda: A Democrat could have done this only with difficulty.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Obama’s Lost Army | The New Republic - "He built a grassroots machine of two million supporters eager to fight for change. Then he let it die. This is the untold story of Obama’s biggest mistake—and how it paved the way for Trump."

As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.

“We lost this election eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”

They threw away what they had.

Instead of calling on supporters to launch a voter registration drive or build a network of small donors or back state and local candidates, OFA deployed the campaign’s vast email list to hawk coffee mugs and generate thank-you notes to Democratic members of Congress who backed Obama’s initiatives. As a result, when the political going got rough, much of Obama’s once-mighty army was AWOL. When the fight over Obama’s health care plan was at its peak, OFA was able to drum up only 300,000 phone calls to Congress. After the midterm debacle in 2010, when Democrats suffered their biggest losses since the Great Depression, Obama essentially had to build a new campaign machine from scratch in time for his reelection effort in 2012. (Plouffe and Messina declined requests to speak about Movement 2.0; Axelrod, Podesta, and Rouse said they had no comment.)

Having to rebuild a campaign organization from scratch? That's a huge failure of the Obama Admin.

The Right responded with its "tea party" movement, a movement that was not afraid of claiming that Obamacare has "death panels", a movement that eventually supported Donald Trump.

Wow. I was unfamiliar with this perspective. Do Obama's defenders have anything to say about it?

(Am I the only one who didn't know that "OFA" was "Organizing For America"? Or was it invented to be palindromic with "Americans For Obama"?)

lpetrich's article links to a Rolling Stone article from early 2010 that lays much blame on David Plouffe.

 

[lpetrich]

I think we would have been better off if Carter had gotten a second term.

Yes. It's hard to postdict from such a huge counterfactual, but the country -- indeed the whole world -- might have been significantly better off had a righteous good-spirited man led the White House in the early 1980's instead of a stupid right-wing racist and homophobe. Carter was a victim of bad luck. He had to deal with the dollar devaluation begun under Nixon, as well as the Iranian Revolution provoked by U.S. malfeasance beginning under Eisenhower. Even as it was, Carter might have been re-elected if his daring Operation Eagle Claw had succeeded. (And some say, with credible circumstantial evidence, that George H.W. Bush led a secret mission asking Iran NOT to release the hostages before the 1980 election.)

Giants still sat in the Oval Office during our own lifetimes! FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, LBJ and even RMN form a list of six consecutive Presidents who were ALL more effective than anyone who's come since. We have Ronald Reagan to thank for that.

As to what might have happened if Jimmy Carter had won a second term, he might have continued to seem very earnest yet totally feckless and inept. His Vice President, Walter Mondale, would likely have tried to succeed him, and he would likely have failed.

I think that a conservative period was likely inevitable, so which kind of conservative might have been the best kind? I think that someone like Gerald Ford or George Bush I would have been good, someone with a successful but undramatic career in public service.

 Historical rankings of presidents of the United States - Ronald Reagan has very mixed ratings.

Of our most beloved Presidents, many of them were Presidents in liberal periods, and two of them started this kind of period: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Some others: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson (?), Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Of conservative-period Presidents, I think that George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower were the best, and that they were much alike. Both of them were military commanders and much-appreciated war heroes who were not much involved in politics.

I've never understood what's supposed to be so great about John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

As to the worst Presidents, most of them were in the slaveowner-dominance era: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan. Except for the first, who died after only a month in office, they got worse and worse, with the last ones being among the worst ever. Completing for that title are Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, and Donald Trump.

Andrew Johnson threatened to undo much of what the Civil War was fought for, and Warren Harding's Presidency had gross corruption: the Teapot Dome scandal. Richard Nixon was 10 at the time, and he supposedly said about it "I would like to become a lawyer—an honest lawyer who can't be bought by crooks."

As to Joe Biden, so far he is much like George Bush I and Bill Clinton, neither very good nor very bad.

 

[lpetrich]

On US foreign policy, Frank Klingberg has proposed a similar sort of cycle, between being extroverted and being introverted. In an extroverted phase, the US was willing to challenge other nations, while in an introverted phase, the US avoided doing that.

Begin	End	Type	What
1776	1798	Int	Revolution, establishment of government
1798	1824	Ext	French naval war, Louisiana Purchase, War of 1812
1824	1844	Int	Nullification Crisis, Texas question, non-assistance of Canada revolts
1844	1871	Ext	Texas and Oregon annexations, Mexican War, Civil War
1871	1891	Int	Non-involvement in the European powers' Scramble for Africa
1891	1919	Ext	Spanish-American War, World War I
1919	1940	Int	League of Nations rejections, Neutrality Acts
1940	1967	Ext	World War II, Cold War, Korean and Vietnam Wars
1967	1987	Int	World War II, Cold War, Korean and Vietnam Wars
1987		Ext	Vietnamization, détente, dissolution of Soviet Union

This cycle runs out of sync with the internal cycles, and like the Schlesinger cycle, each phase generates the opposite. Introverted phases end from challenges from other nations, whether real or perceived, and extroverted phases end from burnout from big wars.

Challengers: France, Britain, European empire builders, Axis powers, Islamists

Big wars that caused burnouts: the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, the Vietnam War, the War on Terror

I tink that the US is entering an introverted phase, though it's hard to say.