The Untold History of the United States

  1. Introduction
  2. Distant Beginnings
  3. The rise of Imperialism
  4.  Eisenhower
  5. The Evil in My Time
  6. The Real Evil Empire
  7. A Grim Future for Freedom

1. Introduction

A tremendous amount of US history is either hidden or false. I'll assume you heard the usual stories in high school. This will fill the holes that they hid.

2. Distant Beginnings

I'll start with the Pilgrims. They chased around in Europe for the longest time trying to force their exclusive way on everyone else. No country would have the fanatics. They kept raising such a ruckus that they got chased out. Finally they came to the New World where they set up an insane cult complete with witch burning and heathen hanging. The descendants of the pilgrims are very hard at work today. They are the fundamentalist part of the Republican party. They believe that a fetus is a human being. They should be called to task for such nonsense.
Then came the American Revolution. Washington was an incompetent general. Franklin brought in French troops at York town which won the war. Shortly after the revolution the federalists tried to trash democracy and disparaged Franklin.
The Constitution was unique. Although it was written for the rich, according to Jerry Fresia (1) we atheists like to point out that there is no mention of God in the Constitution and that it was intended that way. The Constitution was written for a godless nation by people who locked out God. In the second treaty with Tripoli are the words "The United States is in no way founded on the Christian religion." The brilliant Bill of Rights set a standard in constraining government that has never been equaled. The most important point of the constitution is that it divided up the power of government to make seizure of control difficult. Today even in the face of the powerful right wing establishment it is still possible to devastate the scoundrels by voting.
Good sense didn't last very long. John Adams led a reign of terror with the Alien and Sedition Acts which undid some of that fabulous freedom of speech - an outrage that has never been repealed or struck down even though it directly contradicts the Constitution. The Sedition act in particular makes it a crime to criticize the government.
The push westward was marked by near constant fighting with the Native Americans. The white man dealt with the heathern in a typical fashion. Of dozens of peace treaties made with the Native Americans few if any were kept. The Native American population was decimated.  Starting with some ten million before the white man, the final count around 1900 was only a few hundred thousand. That is called genocide but few American children are taught about it like it really was.

In Philadelphia in the 1840s Catholics and Protestants were duking it out (2). They had religious riots that make our modern ghetto riots look like small stuff. On one occasion 150 people were killed. Protestants burned two Catholic churches and numerous Irish homes. You won't find that in the high school history books.

Then came the Civil War and when it was over the vindictiveness of the Federal government was revealed when a reported 30 thousand Confederate soldiers spent the rest of their lives in prison, even the injured ones. The Civil war was also the origin of Military Specifications mostly because the government got robbed by contractors.

3. The rise of Imperialism

The WASPs were getting out of hand in many ways. By the time the west was won about a half million Indians in the New World were dead (3). By 1900 there were only 270 thousand Indians left. The Manifest Destiny battle cry was a shallow cover for racism, robbery and imperialism. The infamous Monroe Doctrine was part of this sorry plan. You still see imperialism (robbery) today when folks say the Panama Canal is ours.
The Spanish American war was more plunder. When the US took over the Phillippines, the local tribes fought bravely for independence. In one of their last attacks they wiped out a platoon of 40 US soldiers. The American reaction was to kill every Philippine man over the age of 18. The genocide numbered 100,000. The Colt 45 revolver was specifically designed for close combat in the Phillippines. How many high school history books tell you that?
Woman suffrage was won after the turn of the century mostly by atheists (4). It wasn't so long ago that mounted police were breaking heads in a demonstration by the Suffragettes.
When the US invaded Haiti (1910) the Americans stayed for 19 years and killed 50,000. I heard the testimony of one old soldier who said they killed a man with leprosy just to get rid of him and that was standard procedure in the Marines (5).
World War I was not our fault and it was fair enough that we fought in it but the treatment of the troops was rotten. If they refused to charge the German machine guns and get shot, they got shot anyway by the US officers. When the Russians pulled out of WWI with their own revolution, big US institutions like the Ford Foundation secretly funded the Whites (anticommunists). The US fear and hatred of Communists was always artificially created by big business interests who feared loss of their power. No wonder the Reds mistrusted us.
Meanwhile when the disabled WWI veterans demonstrated at the White House for the pensions and medical benefits which we have today, the marines came out and fired shots in the air (6).
The Spanish Civil war was a lost opportunity to fight the Fascists. General Francisco Franco's Fascists threw Spain back into the dark ages. The chance was passed up because of US right wing hype about the communists. America should have supported the communists in Spain. Read Earnest Hemingway's books. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the only decent bunch of Americans around.
World War II was a war that we were right to be in. We were right to make the Atomic Bomb too, but wrong to use it a second time. The folks who made the A Bomb, like Oppenheimer, were very upset when it was used. Oppenheimer was a good guy much maligned by US right wing militarists. Oppenheimer and his friends went on strike when asked to make the H bomb and a new team had to be formed (7). It was led by the right wing bigot Edward Teller.
It was WWII experience with the German Enigma encryption machine and Japanese code breaking by us that caused the US Government's paranoia with encryption. This insanity has resulted in several unreasonable laws which the banks have been complaining about since 1985. For example if you invent an encryption scheme you cannot tell anyone else. You must tell the government though, and will not be allowed to use it anyway. If you tell a foreigner, you will be convicted of international trade in arms. I had a friend who advertised such a scheme on Internet and was questioned by the FBI. The government might as well start eating crow now. Anyone can come up with an encryption scheme that the government can't break.

4. Eisenhower

President Eisenhower was one of the worst disasters the country ever had. Not only did he unconstitutionally add the words "In God we trust" to US currency but he also was a habitual liar about government activities in persuit of the cold war.  He lied about the U2 spy plane incident. He also authorized Fake air attacks against the Soviets involving squadrons of B-52s, in attack formation, penetrating deep into soviet territory.  Known as Operation Home Run, such provocations could have triggered an all out nuclear war(8).

5. The Evil in My Time

The cold war was always blown up unnecessarily by the business community. They made enormous profit selling arms to the government. The US always had a force advantage of three to ten times. Nuclear forces on both sides were an unjustified waste.
The CIA was a key institution for promoting cold war hysteria. The intelligence it gathered was faulty when it was not actually deliberate lies. The CIA says it could not foresee the fall of the Sha of Iran. I did. The CIA often drastically over estimated Soviet military strength. Congressional testimony has it that the reports were deliberately falsified. The CIA also sent killer teams to many countries and was responsible for waging war against the poor worldwide with a cost of millions of lives. Cold war rhetoric was used by the right wing to justify this killing. I could see through the lies.
When Daniel Elsberg took the illegally classified Pentagon papers and gave them to the press the newspapers called him a spy. He spied for the American public and that is a crime today despite lip service to the contrary in certain laws. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Johnson Administration was aware that everything they were doing in Vietnam was criminal.

Nixon and Watergate

Nixon was one of the most rotten American politicians. He supported McCarthy in the 50s, ordered the bombing of Cambodia and prolonged the Vietnam war. Then when his gang was caught at Watergate they lied and stonewalled the investigators to the point that the whole executive branch was acting like a bunch of criminals. The US government was nearly wrecked. Nixon launched the war of dictator Pinochet in Chile with a secret Green Beret invasion and millions of dollars in illegal military aid.

It was around this time that a PLO suicide bomb truck killed 200 marines in Beirut, Lebanon. That made big headlines. No one reported the number of Lebanese that were killed by the earlier US Navy shelling. What goes around comes around.

Despite all the right wing hoopla Jimmy Carter was the third best president we ever had (Lincoln and FD Roosevelt were first). His statement about the Sha of Iran was his biggest mistake. He did many good things like firing a bunch of CIA scoundrels. He also permitted the Sandanistas to take Nicaragua without US intervention - a very fortunate development. He tried to support progressive causes world wide but later remarked that he could accomplish more after he left the office. Apparently his hands were tied by the right wing Congress.

6. The Real Evil Empire

The Reagan Administration was one of the worst. They started off screaming that the US was not strong enough because of the trivial things that Iran had done with the 50 hostages. The big news media cooperated in orchestrating the stampede like a wolf pack. With the Iran hostage crisis the Robber Barons were howling for an increased military buildup. That made them big contract money. When that broke the government's budget, they made a big fuss about the terrible debt. They started a "Balance the Budget" campaign which had as its real target to kill the social services programs. That scared the public and enabled congress to pass Gramm-Rudman. They lied when they said Gramm-Rudman was about balancing the budget. When Gram-Rudman was passed, Reagan did as much as he could to get a line item veto to kill all progressive budget items. In the Tax Reform Act of 1981 he decreased the tax on the rich and added new taxes for the rest or us. The White House aide David Stockman who made all the big promises about trickle down economics bragged as he left office that he deliberately lied. See "Triumph of Politics," 1987. And you will notice the press kept his secret.
The press made a big fuss about how government red tape was crippling business. That fooled the public into supporting legislation which deliberately crippled banking regulation. The savings and loan robbery was caused by weakening the banking rules. Ronald loved to do this and a bunch of crooked Democrats helped him out. The Robber Barons were ready to take advantage of that one and pulled off the second biggest robbery in history. (The first is the US military budget.) The Savings and Loan problem was deliberately hidden by Republicans, Democrats, the press until it could be used as a crisis to panic the public into accepting the bailout deal. The public got robbed double on that one. Naturally the taxpayers were forced to come up with the money while the crooks went free. There were plenty of well-known thieves running around with their pockets full but no legal effort was made to speak of. That was because the Democrats had been given a piece of the loot and no one wanted a red face. There are dozens of documented cases where crooks, seeing the FBI on their trail called their lobbyist who called the committee chairman, who passed the pressure to the investigators-money talks. They all knew there was going to be hell to pay but the media helped them to hush it up until a big tax raise was needed. Then in 1992 when Clinton took office they could blame the tax hike on him. The increased differential between lending and savings rates made a bundle for the banks, paid for by us the little guys.
Now called the war against the poor, Reagan also used the cold war as an excuse to fund dictators world wide. In South America It was standard practice if a business wanted to kill you for union work to call you a communist. Then it was all right to kill you. While the Contras were killing thousands of civilians in Nicaragua he said "They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance." Reagan started the Star Wars hype which was a fraud from start to finish. I saw the American Institute of Physics report. He won funding anyway and made his friends, the contractors, rich. Edward Teller was there helping him.
Here is a list of things that Ronald Reagan did to look good to his friends in the short term. Sold Government wilderness areas. Cut federal education support. Cut funding of basic scientific research. Cut welfare to children. Lowered FDA standards. Changed accounting methods for inflation and unemployment to make his administration look better. Specifically the Social Security program which always had a surplus was historically tracked separate from the budget. Now it is included in the Federal budget so that the Federal overrun is lowered by the Social Security surplus. Of course this is robbery but I did not hear one voice of protest when it was done, nor was even one other person aware that the trick was a gross violation of government integrity. When he got a chance to make appointments to the Civil Rights Commission, his Klan types turned it into the Civil Wrongs Commission. He appointed Federal judges on the basis of right wing ideology. At the Mexico City conference on world population his man declared that all we need is more world wide capitalism and the overpopulation problem will go away. The USA became a laughingstock. Similarly in the European conference on greenhouse gasses his man declared that the US would not cooperate with the rest of the world in reducing greenhouse gasses. Reagan was noted to say that scientists did not know where acid rain came from when everyone knew that it came from his rich industrial friends in the Midwest. He also said "There is today in the United States as much forest as there was when Washington was at Valley Forge."
Here are some typical Republican executive actions during the Bush years. Bush prevented the EPA from reducing sulfur oxides by three to five million tons a year. The Democrats wanted to reduce sulfur oxides by 12 million tons a year. Bush proposed exempting 80 to 90% of new industries built in cities from the Clean Air Act. Bush instructed the EPA to rescind the phase-out of lead in gasoline even though the EPA objected. Bush supported ocean dumping of radioactive wastes at the 1983 London Convention. The rest of the world voted the US down. Bush opposed efforts to renew and improve the Superfund toxic waste clean up program. The Bush EPA failed to perform health studies required by the Superfund law. In ten years the government lost $2 billion by selling timber to special Republican interests below the cost of production.
At the global warming conference in Denmark the Bush announcement was that the US just doesn't believe in the greenhouse effect. We became the laughingstock of the civilized world. With the collapse of the Soviet empire instead of cutting military spending Bush wanted to raise it and raise taxes to suit. If the national debt can't be paid off now, what will they do when times get really hard? And bad times are coming.
Kuwait was a puppet state set up by the British to steal Arab oil. It has no native validity. The war in the Gulf was deliberately set up by Mr. Bush to justify the US military machine. Millions of dollars worth of arms were supplied to Sadam Hussein in the years just prior to the war and no one told the public. The US ambassador April Glasby told Sadam Hussein that we would not interfere if he invaded Kuwait just to sucker him into the conflict. Then the US forces never went after Sadam because the crooks in Washington need him around so they can scare up the military budget. It is hard to believe so much money was spent to support a man with 40 wives. The UN resolution on the Gulf war just squeaked by the Security Council and it did not call for war. The US promised millions in bribes to several nations to get their vote.

7. A Grim Future for Freedom

Now with the great Republican victory of 1994 we get to see a rerun of the eighties. The balanced budget amendment is a trick to cut social programs. No one is considering a real cut where the waste is certain-the military budget. The "Contract With America" is really a contract with Wall Street. New legislation on corporate liability is just what the Board of Directors wants. The plan to gut environmental regulation by requiring government compensation for a loss of property value will result in wholesale robbery again as prices are inflated for swampland and handed over to the Fed for payment. The most important part of the "Contract With America" is the promise to revise the tax law to fully tax only income earned by labor, and shelter the rich. That means the rich will soon go tax free for good if the Congress is not stopped..
The monster foundations and the media rained propaganda to support the Republican agenda. Scientific tests contradict the right wing view point. Typical are several studies of welfare funds that found a long term government savings of three times the original cost."


1 Jerry Fresia wrote "Toward An American Revolution - Exposing the Constitution And Other Illusions", by South End Press ISDN 0-89608-297-0.
2 Reported by American Atheist magazine and National Public Radio.
3 From "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."
4 See Freedom From Religion Foundation publications, Madison WI.
5 National Public Radio Morning Edition in 1997.
6 Related by my own mother.
7 Unknown source probably Physics Today.
8 Revealed by a NSA operative on NPR's Fresh Air program in April 2001.