About today is picking up where we left off on thursday with the end of the cold war. And also im trying to make sure that we stitch different themes that weve had through the quarter and through both quarters together. The program is titled america to 2025. So something about the future is important and as ive been thinking about the last part of the 20th century the 1990s i think makes sense to really dig into in terms of how people thought about the future in culture in popular cultural as well as in politics. So the themes and overviews that i want to talk about in terms of this do a little bit of looking back looking forward and then theyre kind of going to be two halves of the lecture links to kind of politics and links to pop culture. So i want to talk about the end of the cold war and especially how it manifested and how americans thought about politics. Then i want to talk about pop culture and think about the the way the 90s thought about the future and thought about the present even in terms of like everything is great or everything is terrible. The future will be wonderful or the future is going to be awful. Um adding here that as with all of my lectures im not going for comp like comprehensive coverage. But especially asking people to think about change over time and then like how does idology how does Youth Culture how do systems of power change over time . So theres going to be i think asking you all to think about how the 90s were actually quite different than today, and ive got some examples that i think will be interesting. Oops in terms of looking forward looking back a reminder how were combining psychology in history. Its an interdisciplinary program, so im not going to be talking much about psychology. Thats my coteaching nathalies job, but thinking about how the disciplines have different orientations. And ive really been thinking a lot and were going to talk about this in the afternoon. We kind of stumbled last week on experiments. And how like history cant do experiments and like theres no reason theres like Historical Research is not grounded in the ability to ask people different questions about the experiences. They lived through in the moment. We can do it with oral history, but like contemporaneous documents. Cant be changed. So thats structuring a little bit of my thinking. Im not going to talk too much about that this morning, but definitely this afternoon. And then this is also a chance to return to things where we began really week one week two week three and fall quarter about National Identity because of how like developmental and adolescent psych is all about change is all about development. How modernity has kind of posited the nation state as as an individual as a person or as a family which we read all in the family and just yeah development and adolescents and Youth Culture. Okay questions about where we are everybody just making sense sound familiar. Okay. Okay, so i talked some on thursday about the collapse of the soviet union. And i remember someone and i forget who it was sort of like oh now i fully get how the idea of from generation disaster the reading we had how a Certain Group of people would have grown up in the aftermath of the end of the cold war with really triumphant kind of like yay america has done it sort of thinking. So we we thought some about like the the kind of National Narrative of triumph. I really also want to focus not only on the end of the cold war as a National Triumph but in a sort of like us versus them but really go into the ideology ideological triumph the idea that the promise of liberal western democracy and capitalism has triumphed internationally. So some of this is like these little post formal thought to Different Things at once were asking you to think about National Politics and ideology and then Youth Culture so its not like teenagers. Were gonna im gonna give some like geopolitical stuff. The teenagers wouldnt have been thinking much about but i think theres think theres something shared in the ethos. So were going real like nation state and national ideology. And particularly around capitalism and just elevating stuff that you all set in our seminar for week 7 um in week seven we were reading about Like International consumerism do people remember Like International consumerism. 12 yes. Yes. Yeah girl scouts that that Girl Scouts NationalInternational Reading and one thing that you all said in seminar was the idea that like capitalism never ends. That with consumer culture, especially like tech centered youth consumer culture and remember sony walkman 1980. Its like oh new stuff is always demonstrating the superiority of capitalism. Like as long as theres new stuff to consume capitalism is obviously dominant. And so like that is that was very much a shared idea. Um, and so that like the if collapse of the soviet union the fall of the berlin wall were seen geopolitically as like success the evil empire has been defeated. But then also a little bit of like everything is great. With not just Like National conflict but like our ideology about consumer capitalism has been has been triumphant. So just really like hitting 1989 follow the berlin wall vermeulen in generation disaster points 1989 as the like the starting point. Theres a whole section in the introduction to people remember that about like why 1989 is important. In 1989 like came up a lot in some of the stuff i was looking at as well. So the cultural dominance of capitalism here. Even like tended to span the political spectrum. In the United States so both folks on the right and folks on the left tended to in some ways. C capitalism has having been validated and so just like things that might have been coded as negative or were coded as negative like deindustrialization. Theres a client of factories. Um, were often framed or understood in a sort of like, oh the world is coming together. The world is technology is connecting us. The tech boom of the 1990s the real flourishing of Silicon Valley and the. Com bubble was not seen as a bubble. It was seen as like Oh Technology is causing unprecedented economic growth. So the 1990s saw like government surpluses booming economy, right . It turns out the wages were stagnant, but it seemed like wages were rising it seemed like, you know know technology was going to solve. Solve more or less every single problem um their work occurrence of opposition and this is an area where like thinking about change over time is possible like looking through the evergreen newspapers of the 1980s and 1990s. There were lots of examples of people being like not entirely on board with things or the system seemed seems fractured. But nothing in the 1990s happened in the same way that like in 2000 Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Of people are familiar with this that there were big riots against the meeting of the wto in seattle starbucks windows got smashed and then the National Media coverage of it was like, how did this happen . Why are people angry at starbucks . Where did this come from . So there are currents in the 90s that like exploded in the 2000s. But since 2000 i mean there was the 20082010 occupy movement the 2016 Bernie SandersCampaign Just real centerings of critiques of capitalism. Across the political spectrum exists now that definitely didnt exist in the 1990s, nick. The 1990s that wages seem to be rising, but actually werent was that related to inflation. Um, i dont see it. Everyone was kind of like, oh look we fixed inflation. There isnt much of a problem. The idea. Was that even though economics would later see a like stagnant wage growth. Like the media was covering stories. I mean, i will say i was a college. No, i was a High School Student in the in the late 1990s and there was a time when burger king was offering 3,000 signing bonuses. Yeah. So there is this idea signing bonus for working at burger king. Some are 1998. Thats three grand for signing a contract saying ill work for you. Yes. Fast food jobs. I know it seems like im incredulous but im shocked. Well, this is actually there are things like this in our economy right now that like theres there a lot of entry level jobs that are offering big paychecks to begin and people are framing it as the great resignation. People are like leaving the job how many of you have like left a job and started a new one for better wages in the last. A couple of months right theres another matthew had a question. So at what what point again did this whole oh, what was it called . The clward trade World Trade Organization. Yeah trade organization protests started was it . In the late 90s or early 2000s. Thats one thing that i dont actually know about the like specific groups the protested they all existed before but there was like some meeting in the summer of 2000 that protests turned into, you know direct action of people smashing windows against globalization against the kind of sort of international you know unfettered capitalism. And this happened . Did just happen in seattle or did happen in . Other cities like across the Country International opposition, but it was the meeting was in seattle and so like the event was only in seattle and it was covered as if it was just seattle. And there was lots of like Media Coverage. That was like whats going on . Why are why are these kids breaking windows hannah . Shared memory of the cold war was like an ideological capitalism versus capitalism versus communism is that the reason that like the afterwards the triumph was also ideological even though that was like a reductive view. Yes, i think so. Youre asking like the idea that it was triumphant was ideological out of the war is yeah ideological between capitalism communists exactly exactly if there is a victory there has been a struggle one side has been defeated. Were going to look at some stuff that grounds this and like actual text but spencer. Yeah, i think i think i understand. Im just gonna i think im good. Im gonna chew its a lot of complex thinking. I think im just gonna chew the fat i think. Yeah. Well, well come back to it. Um okay, two two things to um, maybe three things to kind of ground this before then moving to the next just about like how there was a kind of across the political spectrum . The way that like the wto protests or the occupied movement were really like capitalism terrible and needs to be not just reformed but change that was really absent in the in the 1990s and i want to illustrate that in a couple of ways things that weve weve thought about so if you remember queer activism in the 1970s was very much about like a antidiscrimination in jobs and kind of like whole political inclusion, and there was lots of like we need to get more gay activists elected to political office. It was very very very very political 1980s 1990s the aids epidemic totally changed. Queer activism to be very much like people are dying. So the idea that like the system was rigged was a political one, but it was not a like intersectional radical like queer identity can lead to a different kind of capitalism which did exist in the 1970s and maybe kind of exists some on like tumblr today. So like queer activism. The Civil Rights Movement. I think this hannah this might answer your question. Remember how like radical of the critique of the Civil Rights Movement . In the long Civil Rights Movement framing was like march for jobs and freedoms. Not just i have a dream most activists felt that postvoting rights act 1967 1968 1969 that the movement had kind of failed in lots of substantive ways. The the Poor Peoples Campaign by Martin Luther king before his assassination and then after his assassination seen as like didnt accomplish a goals they kind of fell apart. So hardcore activists that had a like really intertwined critique of politics of economics. Felt that like the movement had fallen apart and the 70s were a time of great declension. Contrast that with the National Triumph, right . Like, how did Many Americans were kind of like hey. We solved the racism problem segregation is gone. And kind of full inclusion regardless of race is now not just possible but happening. So theres this real like oh weve triumphed if capitalism is triumphed then oh, the more radical critiques dont need to be listened to so theres a british jamaican theorist stuart hall. Have we talked about stuart hall . I feel like hes come up in some of our readings. Does lots of cultural critique sociologists and i dont know if wed put him in the post structuralist school. Um, he he has said that the 1970s 1980s then the 1990s. Globally, the left increasingly engaged in questions of identity inclusion. Instead of critiques of capitalism theres a certain kind of identity politics. That is all about like who is in the system whos not in the system not the system is rigged and needs to be overthrown or taken apart. So like who is involved who is not involved is a different question of like how just are our systems . This is making sense. That kind of tracking. On the right as well kind of american conservatives also to a certain extent felt that american capitalism was obviously dominant it was triumphant and there wasnt a lot of like we need to teach people how great capitalism is or there was like rahrah yay america, but the main strand in of like grassroots activism in the 1980s, and then it carried on to the 1990s. Its all about family values and morality. You remember the all in the Family Reading it starts with dan quayle Vice President under George Hw Bush saying like we now have to Center Family values. Evangelical christians formally entered politics in ways that like most evangelical christians throughout like throughout the United States had a very tenuous relationship with politics because thats the world of like caesar. Thats thats the world. That is not the sacred world. Thats the secular world. 1979 Jerry Falwell forms an Organization Called the moral majority lots of american evangelicals begin saying that like politics is an area for morality for encouraging family values. So its like not linked to the whole, you know, communism is bad, but theres a certain bit with like weve won now weve just got to like keep these kids from getting perverted and and becoming immoral. Okay, so it hannah does that help kind of make sense about the ideology . To kind of like the shared thing. So the most important or the the example that everyone points to as like the ideological expression of this idea is an essay by an economist Francis Fukuyama called the end of history have people heard of how many people have heard of the end of history in france of hands . Heard of end of history, but its one of those things where im honest like if you put a gun to matter like have you heard of the end of history paper by francis . Fukuyama, id be like ive heard of the end of history. I dont know who this person is or this essay. So like familiar, im gonna im gonna illustrate that in in a little bit. So fuguayama was a scholar. He wrote an article in publication called the National Interest a couple years later turned the article into a book. Lots of people look back on it and ive seen conversations about how like fukuyamas argument is more sophisticated than people think of it. And its going to seem the the outline of it might seem a little silly based on what happened next in the world. I think its important to think of it as like descriptive of how people thought as opposed to fukuyama saying this is how things are. Its more like this is this is the ethos right now. So the pull code i have here the triumph of the west of the western idea is evident. First of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism. So follow the berlin wall. That summer its like the triumph of the west is evident, so ill even ill even call up and ill link this on canvas. So people can read it. In totality that this is like the very beginning of it like here it is on jstor the very beginning. In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so. It is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in World History. The past year has seen a flood of argument articles commemorating the end of the cold war and the fact that peace in quotes seems to be breaking out in many regions of the world. Its interesting. Its like so pieces in quotation marks because the idea that the cold war didnt have much conflict which we talked about how like how much conflict there was last week. Most of these analysis lack any larger conceptual framework for distinguishing between what is essential and what is contingent or accidental in World History and are predictably superficial. So here this paragraph. He does some of his definition like defining and kind of background and context and then heres the pull quote. The triumph of the west of the western idea is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism. So like with the fall of communism. There are no alternatives to western liberalism. Like this, is it hannah . Relationship between capitalism and western liberalism use of it in this their their their completely intertwined. So here here you see like this paragraph or this sentence, but the century that began full of selfconfidence in the