Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (11 page)

When the war finally ended, Truman shrewdly realized that it was time to enter the Postwar Era. His first order of business was to work with the leaders of the other devastated and war-weary nations to establish some kind of mechanism to guarantee that there would be lasting world peace for a couple of months while everybody developed better weapons. It was this idealistic hope that gave birth to a noble organization that has survived and flourished to this day, an organization that affords an opportunity for representatives of virtually every nation on the globe to gather together for the purpose of freely and openly using their diplomatic license plates to violate New York City parking regulations. We refer, of course to …

THE UNITED NATIONS

The U.N. consists of two main bodies:

The General Assembly, which is, in the generous spirit of the U.N. Charter,

open to just about every little dirtbag nation in the world. It has no

power. Its functions are to: (1) Have formal receptions; (2) Listen to

the Grateful Dead on headphones; and (3) Denounce Israel for everything,

including sunspots. The Security Council, which is limited to nations that have mastered the

concept of plumbing. It is very powerful. Its functions are to: (1)

Pass sweeping resolutions intended to end bloody conflicts; and then (2)

Veto, ignore, or walk out on these resolutions.

But despite the presence of this potent force for peace, trouble was looming between the United States and the Soviet Union. Indeed, even as the final battles of World War II were still being fought, the battle lines were being drawn for yet another struggle—an epic struggle between the archenemy ideologies of communism and capitalism; a struggle that was to take many forms and erupt in many places; a struggle that threatened and continues to threaten the very survival of life on the planet; a Struggle that has come to be known as …

THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

No! Sorry! That’s it for the Hawley-Smoot Tariff; you have our word. The struggle we are referring to is of course the Cold War, which we will cover in extreme detail in the next chapter, but first let’s pause for this:

TRICK DISCUSSION QUESTION

1. What did the “S” in Harry S Truman’s name stand for? (Hint: “Lucille.”)

The end of World War II brought an economic boom to America, as factories that had been cranking out tanks and planes for the war effort were suddenly free to produce for Mr. and Mrs. Joe Consumer (Not their real name. Their real name was Mr. and Mrs. Bob Consumer.). This made for some pretty exciting times, because Mr. and Mrs. Consumer had very little experience with tanks and planes, and sometimes tempers would fray in traffic. (“Hey, that’s my parking space!” “Oh yeah?” “Look out! He’s turning his turret!!” “KABLAMMMI!!” “AIEEEEEEE …” But while things were doing well on the domestic front, problems were looming on the international front in the form of

THE COLD WAR

The Cold War gets its name from the fact that it was formed first in the Soviet Union, also known as the “U.S.S.R.” or simply the “Union of the Society of Socialistic Soviet Union Communist Russians.” The Soviet Union had actually been our ally during World War II, although today many people do not realize this, in large part because we forgot to mention it in the last chapter.

What caused the Cold War? Why did two nations that had both spilt so much blood in a common cause, suddenly become archenemies? And how come it’s acceptable to write “spilt”? We don’t write: “I was truly thrilt when the service-station attendant filt up my car with gasoline,” do we? Of course not! There are no service-station attendants anymore! This is just one of the grim realities that we have been forced to learn to live with in the Cold War era. But what—we are going to finish this paragraph if it kills us—caused this to come about? Respected historians agree that many complex and subtly interrelated factors were involved, which is why we never sit next to historians at parties.

Speaking of parties, the soviet Union at this time was being run by the Communists, a group of men fierce in their dedication to wearing hilariously bad suits. Their leader was Josef Stalin (Russian for “Joey Bananas”), who had risen quickly . through the party ranks on the basis of possessing a high level of personal magnetism, as measured in armed henchpersons.

Stalin’s strategy at the end of World War II was to acquire a small “buffer zone” between Russia and Germany, consisting of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and most of Germany. In an effort to garner public support in these nations, Stalin mounted a public-relations campaign built around the upbeat theme “Maybe We Won’t Have Your Whole Family Shot,” and in 1945 Eastern Europe decided to join the Communist bloc by a vote of 28,932,084,164,504,029-0. Heartened by this mandate, Stalin immediately ordered construction work to begin on the Iron Curtain, which was given its name by Sir Winston Churchill, who, in a historic anecdote at a dinner party, said: “Madam, I may be drunk, but an iron curtain has descended upon BLEAAARRRGGGHHH.”

Alarmed by these prophetic words, the United States joined with eleven other nations to form the North American Treaty Organization, or UNICEF. Under this treaty, the United States agreed to station tens of thousands of troops in Western Europe. In return, the Western Europeans agreed to station tens of thousands of their troops in Iowa, but after a couple of weeks they got bored and went home to make imported cars. (Our troops are still over there; we keep trying to get them back, but they like the beer.) And thus the Cold War continued to deepen and broaden and widen and become larger, and by 1948 it became clear that some kind of confrontation was inevitable, and so the two Superpowers decided to hold one.

The Berlin Crisis

The Berlin Crisis was caused when Stalin, encouraged by the success of his Iron Curtain, decided to set up a blockade cutting off the West’s land access to West Berlin, a city that was on the good side in the Cold War but that was located, due to computer error, some 120 miles (325 kilograms) (30936.54 hectares) (2,342,424,323.3432 millipedes) behind the Curtain. As food supplies ran low, it began to appear as though the Berliners, despite the fact that they were feisty and of course plucky, would be starved into surrender. Just then (October 8.), President Truman had an idea, an idea that showed the kind of straightforward, no-nonsense, homespun wisdom that had served him so well in the past. “Let’s drop an atomic bomb on Japan,” he said. His aides, however, detected several flaws in this plan, so instead Truman decided to proceed with:

THE BERLIN AIRLIFT

This was one of the most dramatic feats in the history of dramatic aviation feats. Day after day, around the clock, U.S. planes took off from West Germany, carrying thousands of tons of clothing, medicine, fuel, and food destined for besieged Berlin. It was a stirring sight indeed to watch these mighty aircraft sweep over the surrounded city and open their cargo doors, allowing the life-giving supplies to hurtle majestically toward the grateful Berliners below. Individual cans of Spam were clocked at upward of 130 miles per hour. Despite the casualties, it was a triumph of the “can-do” American spirit, and when Truman threatened to escalate the relief effort by having the planes fly over Soviet territory and drop huge amounts of cafeteria-grade ravioli or even—remember, these were desperate times—fruitcake, Stalin had no choice but to call off the blockade.

But it was clear by now that communism would continue to be a serious threat abroad, and it was equally evident that the only intelligent way for Americans to deal with it was to develop a firm yet cautious and intelligent policy, based on a realistic assessment of the situation rather than blind hatred, uncontrolled emotion, and shrill accusation. Still, that seemed like an awful lot of work, so instead we had …

The Red Scare

The Scare was started by Joseph McCarthy, who was a senator from Wisconsin. That’s the strange thing about Wisconsin: You think of it as being this nice friendly state full of decent, God-fearing, cow-oriented people, and here they elect this vicious alcoholic psychopathic lunatic. And it’s not just an isolated incident: In recent years, Wisconsin has also attempted to elect Charles Manson, Hermann Goring, Jabba the Hutt, and, chillingly, Geraldo Rivera. We think it’s something in the cheese.

Anyway, McCarthy made a series of speeches in which he charged that Communists had infiltrated the federal government to the point where the State Department had an actual Communist dining room, Communist men’s bowling team, and so forth. At first, skeptics scoffed at these charges, but when McCarthy produced solid evidence in the form of a piece of paper that appeared, at least from a distance , to have something written on it, the press, displaying the kind of journalistic integrity that we normally associate only with restroom bacteria, had no choice but to print the story, and the Scare was on.

Speaking of bacteria, a highly active Communist-finder during this era was a young attorney named Richard “Dick” Milhous “Milhous” Nixon, who had gotten elected to Congress from a California district despite the handicap that he reminded people of a nocturnal rodent. It was Nixon who nailed proven suspected Communist and Red Fellow Traveler Alger Hiss, the turning point in the case coming when Nixon, accompanied by reporters, went to a Maryland farm, where he reached into a hollowed-out pumpkin and, in a moment of high drama, pulled out a cocker spaniel named Checkers. This was widely believed to be the end of his career. (Nixon’s.)

Eventually the public came to its senses and the Red Scare hysteria died down, and today, thank goodness, we no longer see politicians attempting to gain power by accusing their opponents of being unpatriotic, except during elections. Speaking of which, we almost forgot to mention the dramatic …

1948 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

in 1948 the Democrats had little choice but to nominate President Truman, under the banner:

HE IS GOING TO LOSE.

Everybody felt this way: the politicians, the press, the pollsters, the piccolo players, Peter Piper, everybody. The Republicans were so confident that they nominated an individual named Thomas Dewey, whose lone accomplishment was inventing the decimal system. Truman campaigned doggedly around the nation, but his cause appeared to be hopeless. A Dewey victory seemed so inevitable that on election night, the Chicago Tribune printed the famous front-page headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. This was because Dewey had defeated Truman who immediately threatened to drop an atomic bomb on Chicago, so everybody went ha-ha-ha-ha, just kidding, and wisely elected to let the feisty ex-haberdasher have another term.

This was typical of the carefree attitude widespread in the nation during the postwar years. Popular culture saw millions of “bobby soxers” (Not their real names.) swooning over a feisty, skinny crooner named Frank Sinatra, while young “hep cats” wore “zoot suits” and danced the “jitterbug” to “platters” on the “jukebox.” In short, the whole nation was behaving like “dorks,” and it was only a matter of time before some kind of terrible event occurred.

THE KOREAN WAR

The Korean War was, as is so often the case with wars, not especially amusing, except for those soldiers who were fortunate enough to get in a fun unit featuring Alan Alda and a host of wacky and zany characters and young nurses with terrific bodies. So we’re going to continue our policy of skipping over the depressing parts and hasten ahead to the fifties, although we would like to “toot our own horn” just a little bit here and point out that we have managed to get through this entire chapter without once mentioning …

THE H***-S**** T*****

If you get our drift.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Remember when the United States was supposed to switch over to the metric

system, and the federal government put up road signs in kilometers, and

in some areas people actually shot the signs down? Wasn’t that great? 2. Do you think “Checkers” is a good name for a dog? What about “Booger”?

Explain.

EXTRA-CREDIT PROJECT

Think of a joke that starts this way: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Lithuania.” (Hint: This joke could involve lisping.)

Because of scheduling problems, the fifties did not officially begin until 1952. This, coincidentally, was the year of the 1952 presidential election campaign, in which both parties, recognizing that the nation was locked into a deadly Cold War struggle, when the slightest mistake could mean the destruction of the entire planet, nominated bald men with silly names. The Democrats went with Adlai Stevenson, a suspected intellectual, and the Republicans went with Dwight “David” Eisenhower, who was extremely popular for winning World War II and having the likable nickname “Ike,” which he got from a sound that his friend Sir Winston Churchill made just before pitching face-first into his food at a dinner party.

Going into the race, Eisenhower had a strong tactical advantage stemming from the fact that nobody, including himself, knew what his views were. But his campaign quickly became enmeshed in scandal when it was discovered that his running mate, Senator “Dick” Nixon, had received money from a secret fund. Realizing that his career was at stake, Nixon appeared on a live television broadcast and told the American people, with deep emotion in his voice, that if they didn’t let him be the vice president, he would kill his dog. This was widely believed to be the end of his career.

Nevertheless, Eisenhower, buoyed by the inspirational and deeply meaningful campaign theme “I like Ike,” won the election and immediately plunged into an ambitious and arduous schedule that often involved playing golf and taking a nap on the same day. This resulted in a humongous economic boom that caused millions of Americans to purchase comically styled big cars and hightail it to the suburbs. Thus began a Golden Era in this country that is still looked back upon with nostalgia by the millions of Americans who are involved in the manufacture and sale of nostalgia-related products.