focusing on the migration of indigenous people

to the landmass that today comprises the United States,

we've made it all the way to the present,

a journey in time of more than 15,000 years.

We've looked most closely at the last 500 years

starting with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

Now, in this last unit we're focused

just on the last 40 years of American history

from 1980 until the present.

How can we examine something

that's so close to us in time?

We're still in this era.

It doesn't have a name,

not like the Gilded Age or the Revolutionary Era,

at least not yet.

Maybe this is the post-Cold War era

or the post-9/11 era?

Maybe it will be defined by the changes

brought by technology

and we'll call it the Information Age.

Trying to think historically about the present

gives us a better understanding

of what it was like to live in the past,

to not know what was coming next

or how to interpret all the complex threads

of politics, society, and culture

weaving together around you.

Life is messy and confusing.

We don't know if we're living in a tragic era

or a triumphant one,

neither did the people who lived in 1940

or 1860 or 1770.

So years from now when historians

write about the period from 1980 to 2020

in the United States

what will they say?

Well, let's pretend for a few minutes

that we are those historians from the future.

Maybe we're living on a space station

a few hundred years from now

enjoying a Raktajino by the Replicator

and discussing the United States

at the turn of the 21st century.

Would we be discussing a golden age or a dark period?

Let's apply some of our historical

thinking skills to this era

and see if we can determine

what effects changes in this period had

on American national identity.

First, let's talk about America's role in the world.

In 1980, the United States was still locked

in a Cold War with the Soviet Union,

and when Ronald Reagan took over as president

he moved the country away from the policy of Detente,

or relaxation of tension,

kind of live and let live with the soviets

that was pursued in the 1970s

towards a more active, anticommunist stance.

The end of the decade saw the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So after more then 40 years of foreign policy

that was aimed at containing communism

and the influence of the Soviet Union,

capitalism and democracy were now

the dominant economic and political systems,

and the United States was the world's lone superpower.

After the Cold War ended

it wasn't immediately clear

what the new US role in the world should be.

Should it return to an isolationist stance

like it had before World War II.

Should it serve as the world's police officer

keeping the peace and countering the actions

of hostile powers that might try to arise.

During the 1990s, the United States had

a few limited engagements abroad

and the Gulf War, the United States defended Kuwait

from an Iraqi invasion,

and it sent troops to Kosovo

as part of a NATO peacekeeping force.

But the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001

on the World Trade Center in New York City

and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

began a new era of American foreign policy.

US President George W. Bush articulated

what's been called the Bush Doctrine

which asserted that the United States

has the right to secure itself against countries

that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups.

So under this doctrine, the United States

went to war with Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003

after those countries refused to surrender

Osama bin Laden and the terrorists responsible

for September 11th.

The war in Afghanistan became the longest war

in US history continuing through 2019.

At the end of this era from 1980 to 2020,

Americans were continuing to debate

the proper US role in the world.

Should the United States withdraw from wars abroad

to save the lives of American troops

and the massive budget expenditures of war?

Or would leaving the Middle East

further destabilize the region

and lead to even bigger problems in the future?

Some questions that we might think about

in the broader scope of US history,

how does the Bush doctrine compare to

earlier presidential doctrines on foreign policy

like the Nixon Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine,

or even the Monroe Doctrine?

And how does the war in Afghanistan

compare to the United States' second longest war,

the war in Vietnam.

The end of the Cold War

and the rise of the war on terror

weren't the only major changes in this time period.

There were also far-reaching social changes.

How work was done,

how much people were paid for it,

and who did that work.

In the late 20th century,

the emergence of the personal computer and the internet

made it possible to communicate

and to do business all over the world in an instant.

At the same time, barriers to trade fell between countries.

In 1994, the United States signed

the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA

to reduce or eliminate tariffs on trade goods

between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The growing international interdependence of business

and the mixing of cultures that business

carries along with it is called globalization.

But the availability of cheap goods and cheap labor

that globalization made possible

also had some economic consequences for American workers.

Manufacturing generally moved overseas

to take advantage of lower wages and regulations

and union membership fell to a record low.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans

working in service-oriented jobs rose.

The largest employer in the United States

in 2019 was Walmart.

Wages have stagnated for low

and middle class American workers

while wages have soared for the richest Americans.

A study by the federal reserve found that

although the total net worth of US households

more than quadrupled between 1989 and 2018,

most of those gains were for the wealthy,

with the top 10% of households controlling

64% of overall wealth.

The top 1% alone controlled 32%.

Another social change of the late 20th

and early 21st century was the growth of immigration.

The 1965 immigration act ended

national quotas in immigration

which had barred immigration for most countries

other than Western Europe.

As a result, immigration from Latin America,

Asia and Africa grew

changing the racial demographics of the United States.

Some of the biggest questions of American politics

at the end of this era

concerned the effects of globalization and immigration.

Putting this in a broader historical context

we might ask how did the developments

in this time period compare with

say the Second Industrial Revolution in the Gilded Age

when new manufacturing technology opened up

many new factory jobs,

and lured many immigrants to American cities,

but also bred great inequality of wealth.

Politics in this period also differed sharply

from the era that came before it.

From 1932 to 1980,

liberal ideas had dominated American politics

that government should be active

in securing the welfare of people,

and that taxation should pay for those initiatives.

But there was a growing conservative movement

starting in the 1960s

and Ronald Reagan's election in 1980

began a period of limiting government regulation

and lowering taxes.

And when democrat Bill Clinton took office in 1993,

he largely adopted that same stance.

He declared that the era of big government is over

and reduced welfare benefits significantly.

The 1990s saw the emergence of the culture wars.

Battles over the growing multiculturalism,

secularism, and cultural acceptance

of non-traditional marriage and family relationships.

Many conservative Christians feared that

the traditional American nuclear family

with Christian, heterosexual married parents

was disappearing.

Meanwhile, liberal progressive celebrated

the growing acceptance of LGBTQ citizens

in diversity and public life.

This was also a time of bitter partisan divisions

with citizens not only more strongly

identifying with one party

but increasingly vilifying members of the other party

is immoral or unpatriotic.

To put this in a broader historical context

we might ask, do these partisan divisions

suggest that American national identity

was fractured beyond repair

or that a party realignment was underway?

How does this period compare with the 1850s

when the beliefs of the north and south diverged

sharply over the institution of slavery?

These are very difficult question

and I'm glad we're here in the 23rd century

enjoying the benefits of hindsight

to assess that strange period from 1980 to 2020.