1. Something interesting about the three turnings of the USA every 80 years.
2. 1776 is the beginning of a new united colonies known as the United States of America. The American Revolutionary War was already on the year before. Five year later, 1781, the Revolutionary War was over and the American side won at the Battle of Yorktown, VA.
3. First turning: 1776 + 80 years = 1856. George Washington as first US President. Thomas Jefferson. The Louisiana Purchase. The War of 1812-1814. Andrew Jackson. The US-Mexican War. The Manifest Destiny. Railroad. The unsolvable slavery question.
4. What's so significant about 1856?
5. It is the year the Republican Party formed its 1st national convention in Pittsburgh, PA, just less than 2 years after it was formed in major opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Many involved in that new political party were composed of Whigs and Free Soil Democrats...
5b. ... strongly opposed to slavery in the union, including the new states.
6. Between 1854-1856, only few Republicans were in US Congress. By 1856 and afterwards, more Republicans were elected, eventually replacing the Whigs and Opposition party members in Congressional seats. Democrats still dominated House and Senate.
7. John C. Frémont, a Free Soil Democrat from California, was the first Republican to run for President that year. His Democratic opponent was none than other James Buchanan. Frémont lost.
8. Buchanan believed the upstart Republican Party was full of extremists eager to throw the country into a civil war over slavery. But the country was already on the brink over the slavery question many years before.
8b. The rhetoric from all sides became extreme prior to 1854, increased in frequency after that.
9. As President, Buchanan ruined the Democratic Party by attempting to influence the politics of Kansas Territory to allow slavery. Democrat Stephen Douglas broke with him.
10. That caused a division among Northern and Southern Democrats along the line, setting up for a major loss in 1860.
11. Even though Frémont lost, the number of electoral votes he received was significant. The growing popularity of the Republican Party in northern & new states, with its powerful anti-slavery sentiment, during the Buchanan years sealed the new party's fate...
12. ...as the dominant political power for nearly 25 years. It took just one more free state to make it so. 1856 was the beginning of the second turning.
13. What happened 5 years later? The Republican from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, won the Presidency. The following year, war broke out at Fort Sumter, SC. The Civil War began. It ended in 1865. The South lost and slavery was abolished.
14: The second turning: 1856 + 80 = 1936. The Reconstruction. Ulysses S. Grant. Democratic Party power in 1884. The new waves of immigrants. The Spanish-American War. Theodore Roosevelt. World War I. Woodrow Wilson. The Roaring 1920s. The Great Depression after Crash of 1929.
15. What's so important about 1936? Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Presidency in a landslide that year for the second term.
16. He won the most electoral votes in history: 523. In 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan got more: 525. Maybe in 2020, Trump could get more electoral votes than what FDR and Reagan got. We'll see.
17. But it was not just about Roosevelt winning the White House for his New Deal programs until 1940. It was this: the Spanish Civil War that broke out in 1936. It waged for three years, pitting the fascist nationalists against the communist-backed republicans in Spain.
18. No, not those from our Republican Party of the US.
19. The US pleaded neutrality & supported the arms embargo in Spain. But it was not sufficient enough to stop it. Nazi Germany & Soviet Union got into it. The Nazis sided with the Spanish nationalists and the Soviets sided with the Spanish republicans.
20. The world watched on in horror. It was Roosevelt's non-interventionist policy that put the US on the inevitable path to war 5 years later.
21. In the same year, the Nazis got everything ready to look very good to the world by hosting the Summer Olympics in 1936. About 49 countries took parts, only Spain and the Soviet Union boycotted it.
22. The Summer Olympics ended but the Spanish Civil War raged on. Nazi Germany had the most medals, with the US in second place.
23. The following year, Imperial Japan invaded China. FDR pleaded support of China against Japan. Over the years, the US provided supplies and arms to the Chinese fighting the occupation. In December 12, 1937, Japan struck the American gunboat USS Panay ported at Nanking, China.
24. USS Panay was there to patrol the Yangtze River, protecting American lives and interests in occupied China. Imperialist aircraft attacked the gunboat and sunk it. Three were killed and about 43 wounded. The US raged at this attack.
25. But Japan claimed it was a mistake. They said the pilots failed to identify the gunboat with American flags painted on its deck. Japan apologized to the US for the attack and paid about $2.2 million to settle the affair.
26. Many thought the attack on USS Panay was intentional. But the incident wasn't deemed as severe as the devastating attack upon Pearl Harbor three years later. Some believed that a powerful faction within the Imperial Japanese military wanted to compel the US into war.
27. A war between two powers for dominance over the Pacific. But FDR didn't take the bait
28. In 1938, the Nazis annexed Austria. Then annexed Sudetenland, the areas around Czechoslovakia, then eventually occupied the rest of the country. FDR didn't blink and the US remained neutral. But he knew that war was inevitable anyway.
29. The Spanish Civil War. The Imperial Japan-China war. The Nazis marching on and taking over few European countries. The partition of Poland under the Munich Agreement. Then war broke out in Sept 1939, then the fall of France in 1940. That year FDR won the Presidency again.
30. In March 1941, FDR signed the Lend-Lease Act, empowered the US to provide massive military and economic assistance to the Allied side. Hitler warned FDR that its act was tantamount to declaration of war between US and Nazi Germany.
31. The Nazis handed the Soviets its red ass in 1941 by its massive Operation Barbarossa campaign across western USSR. On Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan struck US naval forces in Pearl Harbor. A "day which will live in infamy."
32. 1941, the US entered World War as an Allied power. By 1945, the Allies won but FDR died. Nazi Germany defeated. Two US atomic bombs dropped on Japan, changing the world forever. Imperial Japan defeated. The US became a dominant power around the world.
33. The third turning 1936 + 80 years = 2016.
34. The Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Vietnam War. Nixon & Watergate. Ronald Reagan. The fall of the Berlin War 1989 & the end of the Cold War. The Internet. Bill Clinton. The terror attacks of 9/11/2001. George W. Bush. The Iraq-Afghanistan wars. Barack Obama.
35. 2016 is the beginning of the fourth turning. Who won the election and still winning to this day? Donald J. Trump.
36. So between now and 2096, what will happen? MAGA 2016-2096? But what will happen within few year from now? War? See events leading to wars from previous turnings in this thread.
The end. 🙂
