What were the mass media all about in 2012? Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 21st century, could explain it. After all, he was a specialist in 20th-century mass media history. But instead of describing it all to his history students, he decided a visual reputation would make it more clear.
What could mass media students of a century ago do, and why would they decide to do it? Dr. Dan offered this flow chart for the young and confused.

Lefse, vegans, and a video

Does anybody eat lefse anymore? Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22nd century, wanted to know, because, well, historians are a curious sort. In 2112 America, the old Norwegian food seemed to have about become extinct.

Why? Veganism. It had swept the Midwest like a spring snowstorm in the late 21st century. Americans began to take seriously the cost of the obesity epidemic blamed on habits developed in the late 20th century. People just had to lose weight. One way to do that was to eliminate “junk food,” the highly processed and calorie-dense fare of most American restaurants at that time.

But Americans tend to believe anything worth doing is worth doing to extremes. So many people did not stop at hamburgers and donuts. They moved on to eliminate all meat, then all fish, then all dairy. And lefse featured cream and butter.

But it took Dr. Dan only a little research time to find out that, indeed, lefse still found favor among a small group of good Norwegian stock living in the Upper Midwest. That area of the United States always loved its lefse, a food hard to explain to the rest of the country. Sort of a soft flour tortilla, but made with potatoes, was Dr. Dan’s best effort.

As dairy products became less popular, a few intrepid Scandinavians moved to find substitutes for the milk and butter. And they succeeded! This lefse was almost as good as the old original. But more than that. Dr Dan should have known: his indefatigable predecessor, Ross Collins, had actually shot a video of experts making lefse. And included was not only the traditional recipe, but the vegan recipe. “Good ol’ Ross,” thought Dr. Dan. “He was a true historian–always trying to conserve the present as a gift for those of us in the future.”

Watch the video.

Get the recipe.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University.

Madagascar: Like Nowhere Else.

Historians may be given to occasional bouts of longing for the distant past they study. Research, facts, a steely-eyed approach to writing history: that’s the training of the professional historian. But sometimes on a grey winter day random feelings sneak into the idle academic’s mind and can’t be denied. For Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22nd century, the memory jog was a video his predecessor had produced featuring Madagascar. Ross Collins had visited the country over holiday break 2011-2012.

Madagascar, Dr. Dan recalled, is the world’s fourth largest island. It intrudes into the Indian Ocean about 200 miles east of Mozambique. At the beginning of the 21st century, it was the focus of a world-wide biodiversity debate.

Madagascar was unique as an extraordinary cradle for animals and plants found nowhere else on earth. About 80 percent of its plant species were endemic in 2012; that is they were found no place else. Every one—100 percent—of its animals not introduced from elsewhere were found only in Madagascar. Most famous were the lemurs, a monkey-like ancestor that thrived on the island but elsewhere had been eliminated by evolution in favor of monkeys.

The charming friendly chameleon—60 percent were endemic, and biologists thought that animal probably originated on the island. And those amazing baobobs! Dr. Dan had seen the photos.

But the sad feelings of longing and loss washing over his thoughts came not from the statistics of a century ago. Even then, deforestation and unwise farming techniques had driven so many of Madagascar’s unique species to extinction’s brink. Even then all the lemurs were considered endangered, and much of the flora.

Worldwide organizations tried to help. But political instability and world indifference could not be overcome. By 2100 most of the lemurs had become extinct. Only two species of chameleons remained. The famous baobabs, enormous trees that had existed more then 500 years, had fallen as habitat around them was converted into cropland.

Dr. Dan could know these great vanished sentinels only in photographs—just as his ancestors of a century ago knew only from pictures the passenger pigeon, Barbary lion and Yunnan box turtle.

Madagascar had become a weedy collection of second-growth forest overrun with rats, rattlesnakes and kudzu—aggressive species able to overcome and replace endemic animals and plants. But what humans now know was even more unsettling: most medications found to treat the terrible diseases of humanity had been discovered in diverse species of plants and animals. And in Dr. Dan’s time, as diversity had diminished, so had hope for humanity that a new discovery could save lives as well as preserve the immense diversity of life on earth. If only his ancestors had cared enough to do something.

It was a profoundly moving moment for Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22^nd century. His burrowing into the archives had produced rare videos of a process thought lost to history.

Dr. Dan loved researching photojournalism during its golden age of the later 20^th century. (See “The Rise and Decline of Straight Photography,” posted Sept. 29, 2011.)

Photography was a human activity driven by technological advances. The original chemical-based photographic processes had seen revolution after revolution, until reaching a pinnacle of achievement with Kodak’s T-Max black-and-white film in the 1990s. But that pinnacle came to symbolize the last hurrah for a process based on precious silver and finicky liquids. By the first decade of the 21^st century, film-based photography was pretty much dead.

“And so was the Great Yellow Father,” mused Dr. Dan. As a historian of the early 21^st century, he was one of the few who knew what photographers of yore fondly nicknamed the once world leader with the iconic yellow logo. By 2011, recalled Dr. Dan, Eastman Kodak was considering bankruptcy.

That wasn’t the loss that particularly bothered Dr. Dan. He could understand the nostalgia of his predecessor, Ross Collins, who grew up working in a home darkroom stocked with familiar yellow containers. But Dr. Dan knew this much: great and famous companies come and go. Heck, who in 2111 remembered a once-powerful company called Microsoft? It was now a half century since technology advanced to the point where electrical brain waves could access the cloud to produce most of what used to require that antique MS operating system. Like Royal typewriters, or the U.S. Postal Service, Microsoft evaporated into Dr. Dan’s history books.

So be it. Capitalism at work. And capitalism was very much at work in the early 21^st century. By about 2005, digital imaging had nearly replaced film. Why? For newspaper publishers, it began as a matter of money. Film and darkroom chemicals were expensive. Digital images cost nothing to produce, and only the price of a ubiquitous computer to edit.

Digital photography ushered a new golden age. But this time the age belonged to the amateurs. The old home darkroom required space, skill and money. But everyone could produce pretty good digital images without much special skill at all.

“And that,” Dr. Dan had written once in a scholarly article, “marked the beginning of the dark ages for historians of the visual image.”

This was because the old chemical-based processes offered proven longevity. Chemical-based black-and-white prints properly stored lasted centuries. But digital photos printed on those clumsy ink-jet machines had no such proven longevity. Some survived the century. Most did not. And the digital files became corrupted or unreadable.

Did the people care? No, not really. Historical study had not become the centerpiece of higher education, as it was in Dr. Dan’s time. People in 2011 lived in the present. They thought little about leaving a historical trace.

So how did people actually go about that obsolete work of producing photos with chemicals? Dr. Dan knew hobbyists often set up darkrooms in their homes. But he had no idea what they might have looked like, or how photographers might have used them. Until he found a treasure among his predecessor’s pack-ratty archives. Ross had actually made videos of the process in his home darkroom! They weren’t very professional, Dr. Dan observed. But they were accessible. And so Dr. Dan sat back in his office ergonomic posterior support structure, called up a cup of Darjeeling from the food replicator, and began to watch.

 How to develop film in a home darkroom.

How to print pictures in a home darkroom.

Feature video: Rolling a film onto a developing reel.

Learn more! A short history of the home darkroom.

Should children be involved in war? Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22^nd century, thought not, not ever. But thinking does not make it so—particularly for historians. And Dr. Dan realized that children a century ago often were warriors. Children killed, and were killed, tortured and were tortured, brutalized, and were beastly to their enemies. How did such a thing become acceptable in 2011? In an article found in the pack-rattish archives of Ross Collins, Dr. Dan found his long-gone predecessor once had taken a closer look at that question.

The children’s wars
It was a mere detail mostly ignored in the long frustrating story of America’s war in Afghanistan. Children, war reporter Sebastian Junger observed, found part-time paid work attacking United States military bases. They would harass troops with a few rounds, then hopefully scamper away before soldiers responded with mortars. For this the Taliban reportedly paid $5.

Perhaps this attracted little notice because such stories have become so familiar. At the beginning of the 21^st century, the lives of children had been militarized throughout the world. One-quarter of the world’s military recruited children under 15. Nearly one-fifth welcomed children under 12. Some were as young as 6. In the last decade of the 20^th century, war deaths included 2 million children. In Iran alone, during its war with Iraq, the Ayatollah Khomeini delighted in the “children’s sacrifice”: 100,000 boys died on the front lines.

But militarization of childhood does not happen only in brutal dictatorships, and governments run by religious zealots or hate-filled sects. Children have been drawn into a militarized life in many countries whose people strongly supported war and clearly believed war could transmit positive virtues to kids. Countries such as the United States.

United States children did not participate in America’s recent wars. But they did participate in World Wars I and II, in a big way. Propaganda aimed at children worked to persuade the youngsters that war was good for them. It could build manly virtues in boys. It could encourage a sense of duty in girls. It could offer all kinds of valued benefits: physical fitness, obedience, thrift, teamwork, loyalty, sacrifice, respect, generosity, and practical skills. In fact, authorities believed, world war could create the kind of admirable traits parents had longed to develop in their children—a miraculous transformation.

The U.S. Government took keen interest in fashioning war propaganda for children. Educators, youth groups and editors of child magazines responded. The child made virtuous by war was expected to fill free time with all sorts of  war duties. Many Americans who were children during World War II remember collecting scrap metal. That was just one of a multitude of jobs, from building airplane models to helping out at farms.

Children were also expected to sustain morale by becoming propagandists themselves. Junior speakers’ bureaus canvassed the country to promote the war. Juvenile war bond sales agents fanned through neighborhoods. These small salesmen were sometimes encouraged to become spies as well—to report to the police those neighbors who refused to buy.

Toy manufacturers turned war into a game. Coaches touted sports as good preparation. America’s child life during the world wars was thoroughly militarized.

American authorities during the world wars hoped to establish a home-front army of children for reasons practical as well as virtuous. Children needed to be kept busy while their parents were fighting or working in war industry. Propaganda served to remind kids that soldiers were fighting not for the present, but for the future. The future was the children. And to whom much—and maybe all—was given, much was required.

The grooming process to bring children into war had never been undertaken at such a massive level before World War I. Yet authorities during these wars had no evil intent in encouraging children to adopt a wartime frame of mind. They worried about children fearful of war and anxious for their parents and family. They found an answer by fashioning war as part of the family, commonplace, something not to be feared. “In wartime, war is a way of life,” educator Angelo Patri in 1943 told parents. “We must adjust our thinking and our behavior to its demands.”

Did this militarization of childhood—all world war belligerent nations shared this country’s philosophy— have unintended consequences? Today’s world has become more brutal, death more acceptable. Since 1945 war deaths have been double that of the 19^th century, seven times that of the 18^th century. America’s soldiers in World War I were slightly older men. In World War II a voracious need for troops drew the U.S. Army into accepting 17-year-old boys. The Nazi’s Hitler Youth were thrown at Allied troops late into the war. Many perished pointlessly. In World War I it became acceptable to groom children for the home front. In World War II, it became acceptable to groom them for the actual front. At the beginning of the new millennium, soldiers fighting in three-fourths of the world’s wars included children.

Find out more: Children, War and Propaganda.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University.

“History,” mused Dr. Dan Druckermann, “is like an onion.” The post-cyber historian of the 22nd century was thinking about his research as the university neared its Thanksgiving Day break. “You begin with a wrinkled weathered peel that everybody recognizes. You peel the outer layer to find another. You keep peeling through more and more layers–keep looking into more and more sources. And as you reach deeper and deeper, you discover things few people know. Maybe things nobody knows.”

Dr. Dan particularly found that to be true as he shuffled through the crumbling archives of his predecessor, Ross Collins. A century before Ross had donated many boxes of documents–what a pack rat he was–to the university archives. They sat unexplored for a century; after all, who was interested in an obscure professor from 2011? But now and then during a free moment Dr. Dan took a look. And sometimes he did find something interesting. Today, for instance. He discovered that Ross had a sideline interest. He actually was a Certified Fitness Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor!

What a weird sideline for a historian, thought Dr. Dan. Another layer of the onion. And Ross now and then produced articles and videos about fitness. Such as the one below–just in time for “Black Friday,” the merchandizing frenzy that dominated post-Thanksgiving U.S. culture a century ago. The shops became “black with people,” perhaps a translation of the familiar French phrase “Noir de monde.” Hence the slightly sinister-sounding “Black Friday.”

The Black Friday Workout.

As “Black Friday” shopping starts earlier and earlier, many Americans will perhaps begin to worry. In your haste to snag the best deals are you neglecting your post-Thanksgiving feast workout?

No need to despair! You can turn your mall marathon from pathetic to powerful by just building on what we already do so well: shop. Functional training is the hot topic among fitness pros. But you don’t have to go to the gym to function. Just build your body as you buy! Below are 10 exercises designed to turn traditional after-Thanksgiving shopping into a great fitness workout.

1. Lateral hanger raise.

We shoppers prefer to try on multiple items without leaving the changing room. That’s just more efficient. It can also be good exercise! Grab four or more attractive ensembles by their hangers. Hold clothes out to the side, half in each hand. Arms straight, no drooping, please! Wend all the way to the back-of-the-store changing rooms. You can increase the intensity of this exercise by making your way around the entire crowded store, maybe with some added pushing, as you’ll need to create plenty of space shopping with your arms stretched out.

Major muscles worked: deltoids.

2. Shop squats.

You want to take a closer look at that pair of cute shoes on the bottom rack. Instead of bending over and picking them up, squat. Weight through your heels, please! Now the shoes are about at eye level. Hold that pose. Examine the shoes while continuing to squat. Stand up, repeat. Go for the burn!

Build on this exercise by bounding up escalators and stairs two steps at a time. You may have to push past other shoppers to do this, making the shop squat a good cardio challenge as well.

Major muscles worked: quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, full lower body. A good squat works up to 260 muscles!

3. Top shelf calf raises. 

Can’t quite reach that pair of jeans on the high shelf? Rise to your tiptoes. Hold it! Examine the item from the shelf while staying on your toes. Lower and raise several times.

Major muscles worked: calf (gastrocnemius and soleus).

4. Plyometric get-’em-downs.

Okay, so the pair of jeans is actually higher than you can reach on tiptoe. Instead of relying on a (probably non-existent) sales clerk, snatch the pants yourself. Ease down to a half squat. Jump. Reach out and grab that garment! Don’t want it after all? Jump again to return it to the shelf.

Major muscles worked: full body for speed and strength.

Warning: Not recommended for retrieving breakable items.

5. Bottle curls.

Liquid is heavier than you think! One gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. Buy a couple jumbo-sized bottles of shampoo or lotion at the beginning of your expedition. As you move from store to store, bottle in each hand for weight, flex your arms biceps-curl style.

Major muscles worked: biceps.

6. Quad door sweeps.

You can open doors with a mere push, sure. That’s a little bit of exercise, but our upper body is used to it. Why not challenge your lower body instead? Push at the bottom to open the door with your foot. You’ll feel it your quadriceps, and in fact, in your whole lower body, challenged in this surprisingly difficult exercise.

Major muscles worked: quads, abdominals.

7. Checkout line tree pose.

One of the worst parts of Black Friday shopping: waiting in those interminable checkout lines. Why not make it part of your workout? Try standing on one leg. If you can, bring the other heel up until it rests above your knee on the side. Stay in “tree pose” as long as you can. Switch to the other leg.

Major muscles worked: core, lower body. Balance challenge.

 8. Penny-drop lunges.

Will the government ever dispense with those annoying pennies? Worth little of nothing–except as part of your shopping exercise routine! We inevitably drop these coins we get in change. Instead of just letting them go, use this opportunity to do a lunge. One leg back, one leg in front, back straight. Bend front leg and pick up that coin. Add a couple more lunges for good measure.

Major muscles worked: quads, hamstrings, gluteals, core.

9. Weighted mall walk.

Got a few heavy purchases? Don’t ask the kids to haul them off to the car! Get nice carry bags, and lug them around with you throughout your shopping. Get benefits of the gym-time “farmer’s walk” exercise without the dumbbells. Remember: back straight!

Major muscles worked: whole body. Walking fast, it also can be a reasonable cardio exercise.

10. Food court dips.

Find a sturdy and stable plastic chair–that is, all of them, as food court chairs have to handle a heavy American shopping population. Ease yourself into the chair. Place your hands at your sides holding the front of the seat. Slide your butt off the front of the chair. Still holding the seat, your legs out in front, dip up and down.

Major muscles worked: triceps, abs.

On Fitness and Heath: A Journey. 

Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22nd century, reflected that while many things had changed in a century, one thing had not: the human body. Despite 22nd-century cyber medicine, despite collision avoidance systems, despite anti-stupidity brain implants for teen-agers, the body still required for good health sufficient exercise and good nutrition.

Dr. Dan, of course, was able to make better nutrition choices in 2111. McTofu’s fast-food restaurants since the 2070s had been manufacturing French-fry-tasting fries out of, well, tofu. And the popularity of the healthy Japanese diet that had been growing even a century ago flowered to become standard choice of most Americans.

Seaweed: it’s what was for dinner. And everyone lived better for it.

But exercise? A stubborn challenge. A century of fitness trainers and repeated government pronouncements had not managed to move many Americans to move. Gyms had become more sophisticated, of course. Nearly every modern cyber-gym featured a holodeck somewhat like the one in the retro “Star Trek” television series. Fitness was more fun when you could  get your core workout through swordplay against evil monsters from history, such as the infamous Col. Gaddafi.

But free time still was short in the 22nd century, and Dr. Dan was like most Americans: he had gained a few pounds since college days. So as he looked through the antique video collection created by his predecessor, Ross Collins, he made an unlikely discovery: Ross was a fitness fan. In fact, he actually taught group fitness classes at the university wellness center. “That crabby old duffer was a fitness trainer?” he marveled.

Dr. Dan knew a lot of people a century ago were overweight by a quite few pounds. While a healthy diet kept most 22nd-century Americans from actually becoming obese, Dr. Dan wondered how health choices of 2011 affected his ancestors. He decided to consult the archives. What he found was that he’d dramatically underestimated the problem:

• Overweight adults in America in 2010: 97.1 million. Obese: 39.8 million.
• Percentage increase in obesity 1991-2000: 61%.

“I had always been curious,” Dr. Dan thought, “about America’s 20^th-century preoccupation with pills and surgery in a quest for youth and beauty. Clearly what they actually wanted was the true fountain of youth: fitness.”

But Dr. Dan had to admit the journey to fitness could not be undertaken from a chair, then as now. After watching Ross’s video, he concluded: “I will get back to the cyber-gym. Beginning tomorrow.”

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University.

A photograph is an abstraction of reality. Learn to visualize. Learn to see.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22nd century, was sifting through his predecessor’s videos. A hundred years ago it was still not possible to stream information directly from computer through the wireless neurological connection to the brain. People actually looked at a screen, television, computer or iPhone. And what about those ludicrous 3-D glasses? A fad from about 2011 that never failed to cause chuckles among the next generation. It was like those leg warmers and shoulder pads from about 1985.

In any case, images in 2011 were made using a digital process still called photography (“light painting”). And while Americans had pretty much moved away from the stone-age chemical process, they had not moved into the realm of image as electrical impulse from the brain. And that meant that Ross Collins still taught photography.

Ways to see.

Ross fancied himself a photographer. Dr. Dan had to smirk about that. But his predecessor did try to teach through visual means, including video. And Dr. Dan had discovered this video from a photography class of long-ago 2011.

Dr. Dan discovers a long-lost treasure: The famous pepper relish of Little Italy

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University.

Original pepper relish recipe by Dorothy Collins.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22^nd century, was just about bubbling over with glee. It’s the kind of thing that happens to historians who discover forgotten documents languishing in the archives. Lost treasure! Lost, that is, among the jungles of history, until rescued from sad obscurity by heroic historians like Dr. Dan.

In this case the treasure was a century-old document once thought long lost to local cuisiniers. “The foodies, as they called them back in 2011, were lucky enough to have actual card files available to keep their best secret recipes,” recalled Dr. Dan. Unfortunately, during a great paper purge around 2035 most people threw out their card files. What people didn’t know then—but realized now to their woe—was that digital files from those early years could easily become corrupted. Most had. Much was lost. Today Dr. Dan had an easier time researching America of a century ago than America of 50 years ago.

But he was lucky enough to find a trove that had slipped behind a foundation during the Great Minard Hall Wall Fall of 2009. And in that trove he discovered none other than the long-lost pepper relish recipe of the famous Italian mom from Dilworth, Minn., Carmella Varriano.

As he deciphered the stained sheets, Dr. Dan recalled that his predecessor, Ross Collins, had once wrote that his mother actually knew the famous mom of “Little Italy.” Carmella had personally demonstrated her method to former Forum reporter Dorothy Collins, who took notes.

Ross’s scribbled recipe indicated he had later adjusted the original. Dr. Dan was disappointed. He didn’t like people messing with culinary history. But the recipe was still pretty much intact.

Ross’s Carmella Varriano-Style Pepper Relish.

Ingredients.

No quantities are listed; Carmella’s relish is an informal mix based on cook’s preferences.

• A variety of peppers.

May be hot, mild, or a combination. Note peppers such as habanero and jalapeno may seem impossibly hot eaten fresh. But the relish-making process tames the heat—somewhat. They still make one nice, hot pepper relish!

• Celery.
• Salt, preferably coarse pickling salt.
• Sliced green olives. Remove pimiento, if necessary.
• Fresh garlic.
• Fresh parsley, preferably Italian (flat-leaf).
• Olive oil. If that’s too expensive, substitute corn or other oil.

Method.

Wear latex gloves and glasses before chopping peppers. Ross tells you this from painful experience. Chopping lots of peppers without gloves can cause near second-degree burns. He kids you not.

1. Slice peppers vertically. Remove seeds with paring knife. Note: If you don’t remove the seeds of hot peppers, you end up with a relish that’s perfect mostly for macho hot-pepper-eating contests and sinus-clearing allergy purges.

2. Dice peppers horizontally into rings.

3. Dice celery.

4. Combine both in colander. Add pickling salt. Place in bowl, let stand overnight to extract liquid.

5. The next day, slice garlic, chop parsley, and slice olives, if necessary.

6. Mix all in bowl. Fill clean canning jars.

7. Pour oil to cover. Move peppers around with small spatula inside of jar to remove air bubbles. Fill to ¼ inch from top with oil.

8. Wipe rim, seal with new two-piece covers prepared by soaking one minute in water just off the boil.

Note: Most homemade pepper relish is packed in vinegar. This recipe uses oil. That means it tastes a lot better than those vinegary things. But it also means it ought to be refrigerated, and not just shelved in the basement. Probably good Italian moms of yore would think it ludicrous to refrigerate their pepper relish. But nowadays we tolerate less risk. So final last words: refrigerate the relish.

Dr. Dan Druckermann, a specialist in 21st century history, writes about America and the world. His writing partner, Ross F. Collins, preceded him as a professor at North Dakota State University. 

Dr. Dan Druckermann, post-cyber historian of the 22^nd century, found it particularly interesting to research United States wars of the early 21^st century. It was a disastrous era in U.S. history—but a critically important one. The early 2000s marked the final years in which the Americans found focus and confidence through military force.

As everybody in 2111 knew, America’s enthusiasm for enormous arms spending, and its repeated willingness to wage war, led ultimately to the Seventh Gulf War of 2045. (See “The 21^st Century: Professor Druckermann Looks Back.”) In this debacle, the U.S. Government had as before tried to give Americans “guns and butter”—that is, prosecuting a war without asking the country to pay for it.

Could this possibly work? Dr. Dan recalled that in the 1950s, American military expenditure reached to half of all federal spending, an average 7.1 percent of GNP. This compared to less than 1 percent of GNP in 1939, the last year before the country began its recast its status into a military colossus.

That was unprecedented. But it seemed the country could afford it. The 1950s American saw not only powerful military growth, but burgeoning prosperity at home. The United States was, indeed, buying guns and butter. A real superpower, and proud of it!

“Unfortunately,” observed Dr. Dan, “the 1950s taught America the wrong lesson.”

Eventually a repeated commitment to maintaining military prowess around the world proved to be America’s undoing. The United States was not the exception of history. Like many before it, the country discovered it could not sustain the enormous cost of arms supremacy. Between 1948 and 1986 Washington spent a staggering $6.1 trillion maintaining its status as military superpower. By 2008 it spent more than every other country combined. Much more: $623 billion. Next highest expenditure was $65 billion—from China.

As the new millennium dawned the United States struggled to maintain its economic dominance. The Cold War had ended. No one on earth could threaten the United States as the Soviet Union once had. Yet a militarized behemoth focused on a foreign policy now defunct could nevertheless not change its course. “What’s my option? You’ve given me only one option,” President Barack Obama complained in 2009, when presented only with the choice of committing a bigger army to Afghanistan. Greater military commitment was the only option he was going to get.

A half century later, wars left the U.S. Treasury bankrupt. Washington had to be propped up by massive loans from China. And to America’s ultimate chagrin, Beijing had taken the mantle of world superpower. The world no longer studied English. Reserve currency was the yuan. Americans, like the British before them, or the Spanish, or the Turks, or so many others, had ruined themselves trying hold onto a militarized society.

Dr. Dan thought of that old-fashioned term so popular in the early 21^st century: “They blew it.”

How did the United States reach this point? That’s the question Dr. Dan hoped to explore as he searched through the archives for the beginnings of American decline.

Historical evidence sometimes starts with statistics, and in this case, those of the early 21^st century seemed revealing. Dr. Dan observed the United States had engaged in two wars following a Sept. 11, 2001, incident in which terrorists took over commercial airplanes and flew them into buildings. A fear-fueled rally around “9/11,” as it was nicknamed, encouraged Americans to support Washington’s military action in two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Hmm,” Dr. Dan mused, “these stats seem to show the United States actually did not gain much.” In fact they revealed a startling contrast.

Economic cost of the 9/11 attacks: $171 billion. Lives lost: nearly 3,000.

Economic costs of the “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan: $1.88 trillion. “And that last figure is low,” Dr. Dan observed. “In 2011 they did not know the long-term costs of war veteran disability payments and interest on their loans.” In fact the total had reached almost $6 trillion. Lives lost: nearly 6,000.

“A classic pyrrhic victory,” thought Dr. Dan. He was delighted he could use in its true sense a term dating to antiquity.

“The problem should have been crystal clear to my ancestors,” Dr. Dan mused, forgetting the old American adage, hindsight is 20-20. “The war on terror was not a true war in the first place. The country faced no enemy nation, no particular front, and no accepted notion of victory.” President Obama did finally abandon the term in 2011, but the damage had been done, as the United States military worked to hunt down every last terrorist it deemed threatening. That was impossible, but extraordinarily costly: in 2011 it cost the country $1 million to equip each soldier for one year.

By the early years of the new millennium, Dr. Dan’s great nation had moved from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation in which its beleaguered young men and women in uniform saw themselves jerked from country to country on military escapades that could only be paid on credit.

Still, Dr. Dan mused, my ancestors from 2011 might have recovered from the evidence that their country was in decline. But they acquiesced to the military-industrial complex that dominated government policy, while refusing to pay the costs of maintaining a permanently militaristic world view.

Guns and butter worked before. The president during the first years of the new millennium proceeded as presidents of both parties had before him: he tried to shield Americans from the true cost of a war. Not only did George W. Bush not raise taxes—he cut them. “I think he hoped for a growing economy just like the 50s,” thought Dr. Dan. “But this time that was not to be.”

“The military-industrial complex, that old chestnut,” recalled Dr. Dan. It’s what every 22^nd-century school kid learned, part of the famous 1961 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower. More than a century of historical scrutiny had come to judge Eisenhower as the 20^th century’s greatest general. This was because he not only understood war; he also understood peace. He saw the danger of converting the country into a permanent warrior nation. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” warned Eisenhower.

Of course, the country had not done that. By 2011 generals retired not to their fishing poles and stamp collections. They joined munitions industries as highly-paid advisors, lobbyists with access to government at the top circles. “Military-industrial complex?” said Dr. Dan. “Pssht. Eisenhower couldn’t have predicted the half of it.”

But what else did Eisenhower, the great general from America’s greatest war, find worth telling his fellow citizens? This is what Dr. Dan was looking for in the archives. And he found something intriguing: Eisenhower in 1953 had not-so-famously warned that government devotion to an enormous military would court disaster. And that was intrinsically wrong on its face:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

So Americans were warned, by the country’s greatest warrior himself, as early as 1953. Dr. Dan wondered: could such warnings have been given even earlier? In a forgotten article from an unlikely magazine—Parents’—he found his ancestors had indeed been warned against the militarization of America as early as 1944:

“What a wonderful advantage that will give to our enemies in the postwar struggle if we free them from the yoke of militarism and chain ourselves down to two million men under arms, the biggest fleet in the world and the most paralyzing expenditures and debt,” said Oswald Villard.

Norman Thomas agreed the United States could not endure the costs, and observed, “Conscription and great armaments will supply incentives, conscious and subconscious, to those who profit by them—a huge officer class and the makers of supplies—to fan the hate and fear necessary for the indefinite support of so costly a military system.”

“Militarism,” concluded Sen. Claude Pepper, “breeds militarism.”

But the irony of American militarism grown to dominate the entire next century really hit Dr. Dan as he read from President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech of 1940. Here Roosevelt had said, unmistakably, “no nation”:

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor —anywhere in the world.

Check out Dr. Dan’s sources! 

Robert Higgs, “U.S. Military Spending in the Cold War Era: Opportunity Costs, Foreign Crises, and Domestic Constraints.” CATO Institute, Nov. 30, 1988. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa114.html.

David B. Yerger, “The Economic Costs of 9/11 on the U.S.” Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Fall 2011, 12-13.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Military-Industrial Complex Speech,” Jan. 17, 1961.  http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” April 16, 1953. http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html.

Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Tyranny of Defense Inc.,” The Atlantic, January/February 2011, 74-79.

Globalsecurity.org, “World Wide Military Expenditures,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm.

“Shall We Have Compulsory Military Training After the War?” Parents’ Magazine, November 1944, 16-18, 158-159.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The Four Freedoms,” speech to Congress Jan. 6, 1941. American Rhetoric, http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrthefourfreedoms.htm.