I'm about two-thirds of the way through Ken Burns excellent documentary series on the Vietnam War. One of the key people interviewed is General Merrill McPeak (retired) who flew combat missions in Vietnam and later went on to become Chief of Staff of the US Air Force.
In one segment McPeak opined that the protests that wracked the US and the World in 1968 were "necessary to create the America we have today".
This seems to me to be another example of the myth of American exceptionalism. So here's a review the last fifty years of US Presidents. I remember them all well.
Richard Nixon had just become President in 1968, he is best remembered for the Watergate scandal, better described as the Watergate criminal conspiracy enabled by paranoid leadership. He resigned to avoid getting impeached.
Then we had Gerald Ford of whom it was said he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. Jimmy Carter was a nice guy who didn't last against the political and economic challenges he was presented with.
Ronald Reagan took the credit for the economic revival that was probably going to happen anyway and his Vice President George H W Bush took the credit for winning the Cold War, even though the end of that basically just happened on his watch with little American involvement. He then got turfed out after only one term.
After that, Bill Clinton took the credit for the post Cold War economic boom, before becoming embroiled in a sex scandal, getting impeached and paving the way for the win of George W Bush who is notable for being the first Commander in Chief to evade fighting in the war of his generation but still being happy to launch a new one for the next generation to fight, which is the longest war America has been involved in to date, and is still not over.
Obama was another nice guy who completely failed to realise his potential as the new FDR by caving to the finance industry who had just ruined the World economy, and continuing foreign policies he campaigned against. Thus the way was paved for the current President, whose name I won't mention on my blog in case one of his trolls picks it up. Actually just because I won't.
And so we have is the America we have today. I wonder what America's founding fathers would say.