Mejia Pagola 40

Al Qaeda/Osama bin Laden

-"the base" in Arabic was an anti-American Islamist terrorist organization that carried out bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -the leader was a wealthy Saudi who declared war against all Americans and their allies, he denounced the growing American military presence in the Middle East and its support of Israel (P) -1990s

Bill Clinton

-42nd president, who claimed to be a "New Democrat", chastened by the party's long exile in the political wilderness -a slumbering economy, a widening gender gap, and a rising anti-incumbent spirit spelled opportunity for the Democrats that had not out of the White House for all except 4 years since 1968 (P) -1992

Somalia/Rwanda

-Clinton followed his predecessor's lead in dispatching American troops as part of a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, he withdrew them quietly as Somali rebels killed more than a dozen Americans -Washington then stood on the sidelines when a catastrophic ethnic violence in Rwanda resulted in the deaths of half a million people, this questioned the obligations that the U.S. had to intervene in military and humanitarian crises abroad (P) -1994

Welfare Reform Bill

-made deep cuts in welfare grants and required able-bodied welfare recipients to find employment -a reluctant Clinton signed the bill, his acceptance of the welfare reform package was a part of his shrewd political strategy of accommodating the electorate's conservative mood by moving to the right (P/E) -1996

Family and Medical Leave Act

-mandated job protection for working fathers as well as mothers who needed to take time off from work for family-related reasons -over the course of the decade, some employers began providing paternity leave in recognition of the shared obligations of the two-worker household (S/E) -1993

Clinton surplus

-Clinton had better luck with a deficit reduction bill, though with no Republican support, the bill's spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy combined with the increasingly buoyant economy to help shrink deficits -such policies seemed to have caged the ravenous deficit monster, as Congress argued over the unfamiliar question of how to manage federal budget surpluses (P/E) -1993-1998

World Trade Organization (WTO)

-Clinton took another step towards global free-trade system by promoting this organization, the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -simmering discontent over trade policy boiled over when Clinton hosted the meeting of the WTO in Seattle, the city's streets filled with protesters railing against what they viewed as the human and environmental costs of globalization (E) -1994

Clinton Economy

-Clinton's major political advantage in his second term was the roaring economy, which had sustained the longest period of growth in American history -the Federal Reserves Board's low-interest, easy-money policies and the explosive growth of new internet businesses helped fuel the boom, unemployment crept down to 4%, sending employers scrambling madly for workers (E) -1996-2000

Clinton impeachment

-House Republicans passed two articles of impeachment against the president, perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice -although Americans held a low opinion of Clinton's slipshod personal morals, most liked the president's political and economic policies and wanted him to stay in office (P) -December 1998

Morrison/Proulx/Silko

-Morrison wrote a bewitching portrait of maternal affection amidst the horrors of slavery, Proulx wrote a comical yet tender portrayal of a struggling family, Silko contributed to the Native Americans literary renaissance -these works of contemporary fiction, especially from the pen of women and minority authors, complemented postmodernism's ethos of pluralism and cultural diversity (C) -1990s

Tan/Lahiri/Diaz

-Tan wrote about her native country, China, Lahiri explored the sometimes painful relationship between immigrant Indian parents and their American-born children, Diaz bridged the worlds of the Dominican Republic and New Jersey -this shows how immigration also yielded its own rich cultural harvest, as they would write about topics relating the experience of people of other cultures, this shows postmodernism's cultural diversity (C) -2000s

Oklahoma City bombing

-a huge explosion that destroyed a federal office building in Oklahoma City, taking 168 lives, in retribution for a standoff in Texas between federal agents and a fundamentalist sect known as the Branch Davidians. -these events brought to light a lurid and secretive underground of paramilitary private "militias" composed of alienated citizens armed to the teeth and ultra suspicious of all government (P) -1993

Chabon/Eugenides/Smith

-a newer generation of writers that adapted the techniques of post-WWII authors for contemporary audiences -this included the use of nonlinear narratives, pastiche forms, parody, and paradox in their fiction, shows how postmodern literature had deep roots in the second half of the 20th century (C) -1990s and early 21st century

Whitewater

-allegations against Clinton of corruption stemming from a real estate deal while he was governor of Arkansas triggered an investigation -no indictment was ever materialized, a mobilized conservative movement with its own humming media infrastructure in both print and talk radio amplified each new accusation and aggressively pursued any whiff of scandal throughout Clinton's administration (P) -1990s

Census of 2000

-allowed respondents to identify themselves with more than one of the six standard racial categories (black, white, Latino, American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander) -nearly 7 million Americans chose to describe themselves as biracial or multicultural, as recently as the 1960s interracial marriage was illegal in sixteen states, many Americans proclaimed their mixed heritage as a point of pride (S/C) -2000

Koons/Fairey art

-artists that borrowed the industrial materials and pop culture imagery to blur the hidebound distinction between highbrow and lowbrow cultures -their pastiches of disparate fragments, often presented in an ironic fashion, came to symbolize postmodern art, shows how visual artists also felt the eclectic surge (C) -1990s

feminist revolution

-beginning in the 1950s women's entry into the workplace accelerated dramatically, by the 1990s nearly all of workers were women, and the majority of working-age women held jobs outside the home -more astonishing was the upsurge in employment among mothers, with the majority of women with children under 1 year old were workers, there was still the persistence of occupational segregation and pay disparities (S/E) -1992-2000

NATO expansion

-expanded to include the new member states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and its continuing presence in Bosnia failed to pacify the Balkans -when Serbian president unleashed a new round of "cleansing" the Kosovo province of Albanians, U.S.-led NATO forces launched an air war against Serbia, this made the Serbian president accept a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (P) -1997-1999

Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)

-formed by Clinton and other centrists Democrats to point the party away from its traditional anti business, dovish, strong defense, and anti-crime policies -the ascendance as a business-friendly faction within the country's center-left party underscored the degree to which market-orientated thinking and policies had come to dominate American politics in the last decades of the 20th century (P/E) -1992

niche/audience fragmentation

-in the niche logic of popular art in the postmodern age, audience fragmentation enabled more and fresher voices to be heard -this also ensured that, compared to previous eras, fewer national experiences and cultural events were collectively shared by large number of citizens (S/C) -2000s

Contract with America

-led by Newt Gingrich, Republicans offered voters the promise of an all-out assault on budget deficits and radical reductions in welfare programs -the campaign succeeded, as a conservative tornado roared across the U.S. in congressional elections, this gave Republican control of both chambers of the federal Congress for the first time in 40 years (P) -1994

Florida voting problem (ballots and race)

-on election the country split nearly in half and it soon became clear the Florida's electoral votes would determine the winner, television programs soon announced the Bush won, but then Gore called it too close to call -what ensued was a five-week political standoff over how to count the votes in Florida, Democrats argued that some ballots were confusing or had been misread by machines and asked for recounts by hand, the Supreme Court gave Bush the White House, but this cast a dark shadow of illegitimacy over his presidency (P) -2000

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

-policy that quietly accepted gay and lesbian soldiers and sailors without officially acknowledging their presence in the military -Clinton stirred a lot of controversy when he advocated an end to the ban on gays and lesbians in the armed services, he settled on this after being confronted with fierce opposition (P) -1992

Election of 2000

-race between vice president Gore who faced a tricky situation linking himself to Clinton's peace and prosperity but distancing himself from his scandals -the Republican nominee was George W. Bush, who won on the strength of his father's name and his years as governor of Texas, Bush eventually won despite some calling it illegible (P) -2000

"dot-coms"

-refers to the internet businesses that emerged due to the Internet, such as Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos -the decade witnesses the longest continuous economic expansion in American history was will as a particularly exuberant boom on Wall Street, the rise of Internet firms drove the stock market to even greater heights (E) -1990s

Lewinsky Affair

-revelation that Clinton had engaged in a sexual affair with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then blatantly lied about it when testifying under oath in another woman;s civil suit accusing him of sexual harassment -caught in his lies, the president made a humiliating confession, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater presented a stinging report, including lurid sexual details to the Republican controlled House, which presented eleven possible grounds for impeachment (P) -January 1998

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

-signed by Clinton, creating a free-trade zone encompassing Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. -in doing so, the opposition of protectionists in his own party, especially labor leaders fearful of losing jobs to low-wage Mexican workers (P/E) -1993

"swing voters"

-the election between Dole and Clinton unfolded as a bland contest in which both contenders fought for the moderate swing votes -the attention they paid to one such swing constituency were middle-class female suburbanites, this made sense because for the first time a majority of Americans now lived in the suburbs (S/P) -1996

Madeline Albright

-the first women ever to serve as the U.S. secretary of state -this represent the revolutionary changes in the economy and in social values opened new career opportunities for women by the 1900s (S/E) -1997

multiculturalism

-the mantra celebrated diversity for its own sake and stressed the need to preserve and promote, rather than squash, a variety of distinct ethnic and racial cultures in the U.S. -the nation's classrooms became battlegrounds for the debate over America's pluralism, the Eurocentric curriculum was attacked and people advocated for a greater focus on minority achievements, critics said that this would be done at the expense of national cohesion (C) 1990s

The Latinos

-the most populous group of Latinos derives from Mexico, the first significant number of immigrants came during the upheavals of the Mexican Revolution, fast growing groups also include Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central Americans -fresh arrivals from Mexico can from the other Latin American nationals daily swell Latino community across the U.S., the census of 2000 revealed that Latinos had become the largest minority group in the U.S. -1910-2012

postmodernism

-the name given by commentators that refers to a condition of fragmented perspective, multiple truths, and constructed identities -the postmodern mind rejected rational, totalizing descriptions of the self or the world, and replaced modernism's faith in certainty, objectivity and unity with an eclectic celebration of diverse and overlapping outlooks (S/C) -2000s

"information age"

-the old industrial age was rapidly giving way to the new age in which the storing, organizing, and processing of date were the most important industries of all -as the pace of the information age accelerated, the world shrank, the growth of the Internet heralded an explosive communications revolution, business people could now instantaneously griddle the planet with transactions and prodigious scope and serpentine complexity (E/C) -2000

"family values"

-the traditional nuclear family, once prized as the foundation of society and the nursery of the Republic suffered heavy blows in the late 20th century -women's entrance into the workforce and the relative economic autonomy affected this, also during this time one of every two marriages ended in divorce, and there was a very large increase in babies born to single mothers (S/C) -1990s

Los Angeles riots

-when a mostly white Los Angeles jury exonerated white police officers who had been videotaped ferociously beating a black suspect, minority neighborhoods in South Central LA erupted -arson and looting laid waste entire city blocks, and scores of people were killed, this shows the complexity of modern American racial rivalries, many black rioters vented their anger at the white police and the judicial system by attacking Asian shopkeepers, who in turn formed armed patrols to protect their property (S/P) -1992