The Presidency Analyzed

On July 2, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This piece of legendary legislation functioned as a magnificent sword, retrieved by the nation from the Arthurian stone of Congressional turmoil and wedged into the centerfold of the Jim Crow system. With the swipe of the president's pen, the 90-year-old tyrannical apparatus of segregation was split in half, slain and never to reign over the south again. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1877, a massive ocean of toxins and boiling blood sat between white southerners and black southerners, keep these two sections of the working class split apart and miring southern society in tyranny. But no more! The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation, prohibited companies from denying employment to people due to their race and blocked federal financial aid to organizations engaged in racial prejudice. A year later, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which dismantled a series of loopholes instituted by southern st

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This famous phrase, birthed in the opening sentence of Charles Dickens' cherished novel A Tale of Two Cities , serves not only as a symbol of Dickens' literary impact but also as a perfect summary of America's time amidst the Great Depression. It was certainly the worst of times. Overproduction in the agriculture sector spurred on by World War 1, a debt-based stock market, needless gluttony in industrial production, and increased interest rates had tossed the economy into its worst crisis ever, a fact intensified by the failure of the banking industry due to depositors' panicked riots and trade wars catalyzed by Herbert Hoover 's staunch protectionism. The entire nation sat like Tantalus in his pool, presented with a cornucopia of foods, but unable to reach them and enjoy. But this situation was not the punishment handed down by a pantheon of mythical gods, as in Greek myth. It was, instead, the product of very re

1877 proved to be the culmination of one of the most depressing and melancholic processes in all of American history: The dissolution of Reconstruction. No longer would northern and Union forces exist to monitor the south and prevent it from abusing black Americans. Institutions chartered a decade prior and which had served as the torch-bearer for the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights - two documents black Americans had been fighting to obtain the benefits of ever since the end of the 18th century - were now defunct. In lieu of these great enforcers of human rights, tyranny and segregation plugged the power vacuum. The segregation virus first struck railroads and trains, then spread to the rest of southern society. States like Texas, Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Mississippi were plunged into 9 decades of darkness, where every liberty was obscured by a massive sheet of spiteful despotism. Like practically everything else in history, though, this massive shift was

The other day, I spent a lot of time traveling through one of the greatest cities in the entire world: Philadelphia. A source of brilliance and revolution comparable only to Athens, Cairo, Timbuktu, Mecca, Karakorum, and Beijing, Philadelphia is the progressive and world-shattering father of Washington DC. While Washington DC became the gloomy realm of imperialists and aristocrats not too distinct from King George III himself, Philadelphia remained and continues to be a hub of working-class people originating from every race - descendants of abused slaves, white members of the lower- and middle-classes, children and grandchildren of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants - who know the struggles of existing in the lower echelons of the American hierarchy. It was once the city where Thomas Jefferson forged the Declaration of Independence, where Alexander Hamilton and James Madison guided the creation of the Constitution, and where the Second Continental Congress preserved American independ

The 2008 Financial Crisis, a period of economic despair considered second-only to the decade of melancholy and gloom endured amidst the Great Depression, functioned as a massive sword, puncturing the flesh of the global market and causing it to leak out the corpse of the old world. It was a golden sword, forged in the wicked imaginations and greedy appetites of America's richest citizens, that murdered the human realm existing prior to 2007 and 2008. The economic pain contributed to the election of Barack Obama , thus reviving the progressive nature of the Democratic Party, which had laid dormant since the presidency of Bill Clinton . Internationally, it threatened collapse in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain - countries with economies already burdened by enormous national debts - forcing the rest of the European Union to spend the 2010s investing money in these nations as a means of preventing dissolution. Frustrated with all these responsibilities, Britain, already ang