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The American Yawp, Volume 2, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 16 · pp. 523–556
This chapter follows American history from the attacks of September 11, 2001, to the politics of the 2020s. It covers the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 financial crash, the Obama and Trump presidencies, social movements, the Covid-19 pandemic, and deep political polarization. It opens with the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, then asks how decades of change led to that day.
On January 6, 2021, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol. Their goal was to stop Congress from certifying the result of the 2020 election. They had been told many false claims that the election was stolen. That morning they gathered near the White House at a "Stop the Steal" rally. Trump urged them to march to the Capitol and told them to "fight like hell." Many then armed themselves with metal pipes, bats, hockey sticks, pepper spray, stun guns, and flagpoles, and attacked the police officers guarding the building (p. 523).
The violence was severe. Officer Aquilino Gonell compared it to a medieval battle. The mob dragged D.C. police officer Michael Fanone into the crowd, beat him, and used a taser on him. He later testified that rioters shouted about killing him with his own gun (p. 524). The rioters broke through the outer barriers and entered the building while lawmakers hid in their chambers and struggled with gas masks. They occupied the rotunda, the Senate chamber, and offices, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi's. The chapter calls this perhaps the greatest domestic assault on the federal government since the Civil War (p. 524).
The chapter argues that January 6 did not come out of nowhere. Many forces built up over decades: rapid technological change, global trade, the long War on Terror, growing inequality, a more diverse population, climate change, political gridlock, and falling trust in institutions. The chapter borrows William Faulkner's idea that the past is "not even past." The point is that the present is a product of history, not an isolated moment (p. 524).
On the morning of September 11, nineteen al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four passenger planes. The attacks unfolded in a clear sequence (pp. 524, 526):
In under two hours, nearly three thousand Americans were dead (p. 526).
US intelligence quickly blamed al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi. The group had already bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and attacked US embassies and bases. By 2001 it was active in more than sixty countries (p. 526).
The Taliban were the radical Islamic rulers of Afghanistan. They took power in 1996, and bin Laden then moved al-Qaeda to the country (pp. 526–527). Because the Taliban sheltered al-Qaeda, Afghanistan became the first target after 9/11.
President George W. Bush had criticized nation-building during his campaign. Even so, his administration included neoconservatives, who strongly favored spreading American democracy and interests abroad. Out of this came the Bush Doctrine. It said the United States could act alone (unilaterally) and strike first (preemptively) against any government or terrorist group that threatened it (p. 526). The doctrine pulled the country into long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (p. 527).
Journalist Dexter Filkins called this a "forever war." That means a permanent conflict against a vague enemy that cannot be beaten. The enemy was a network in many countries, not a single state that could surrender, so there was no clear moment of victory (p. 527).
America's history in Afghanistan did not begin in 2001. The Soviet Union invaded in December 1979 to protect its communist ally in Kabul. In 1981 the Reagan administration let the CIA supply weapons and training to the anti-Soviet fighters, the mujahideen. Bin Laden also fought alongside them and funded them. The war drained the Soviets. Its costs and problems at home led them to leave in 1989 (p. 527). So American aid helped drive out the Soviets, and the country later became al-Qaeda's base.
The US response to 9/11 was Operation Enduring Freedom, launched in October 2001. Air and missile strikes hit targets across the country. US Special Forces worked with the Northern Alliance, which opposed the Taliban. Major cities fell quickly, and Kabul fell on November 13. Bin Laden and his fighters escaped into the mountains near the Pakistan border. American forces stayed, and this became the longest war in US history (p. 527).
After the 1991 Gulf War, the United States kept Iraq under control with sanctions, weapons inspections, and two no-fly zones. American planes patrolled Iraqi skies and sometimes came under missile fire. The no-fly zones cost about 500 million more (p. 527). Iraq had stopped its weapons of mass destruction program. But Saddam Hussein kept others unsure about this, hoping to discourage attacks (pp. 527–528).
In December 1998, a standoff over inspections led President Clinton to order four days of air strikes starting December 16. The strikes used 415 cruise missiles and 600 bombs against 97 targets, including suspected chemical weapons sites, missile batteries, and command centers. The number of bombs was nearly double that of 1991 (p. 528).
After 9/11, the Bush administration pushed for "regime change" in Iraq. Officials linked Hussein to terrorists, and a majority of Americans came to believe he was tied to 9/11, though no evidence supported this. That belief helped build support for war, even though protests took place around the world (p. 528). The steps toward war were:
On May 1, 2003, Bush stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a "Mission Accomplished" banner and declared that major combat had ended. That did not mean the war was over. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, and an insurgency had begun. US forces spent about ten years trying to contain it (pp. 528–529). US forces captured Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, hiding in an underground space near his hometown. Iraq's new government convicted him of crimes against humanity and hanged him on December 30, 2006. His fall still did not end the war (p. 529).
The War on Terror was central to the 2004 campaign. Democrat John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who had spoken out against that war, criticized Bush on several points: the insurgency, the missing weapons, abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and bin Laden's escape. But Kerry had voted to authorize the Iraq War, which weakened his attack. Bush's allies also accused critics of not backing the troops. Bush won a close but clear victory (p. 529).
Two places became symbols of prisoner abuse. Enemy combatants captured in Iraq and Afghanistan were held indefinitely at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known for harsh treatment and torture. Photographs also showed American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad (p. 529).
By 2004, President George W. Bush's campaign used what political writers call wedge issues. A wedge issue is a divisive cultural topic that a campaign raises to rally one group of voters, even if it splits the country. Bush, an evangelical who had leaned on the religious right in 2000, pushed abortion and same-sex marriage to energize religious conservatives (p. 530).
The timing mattered. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court struck down "sodomy laws," which made gay sex a crime. But public opinion lagged behind the Court. Majorities in polls still called gay and lesbian relationships morally wrong. Meanwhile, gay rights groups were building support for same-sex marriage, and many Democrats were only comfortable with "civil unions." Bush's campaign could use that gap to its advantage (p. 530).
This fit a popular media picture of two Americas:
The picture was a simplification, but it showed how group identity and culture were shaping votes. Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? reflected the frustration of observers who saw cultural fights pushing aside other issues. Bush won a close but clear victory in November 2004 (p. 530).
Bush's second term brought worsening wars, but his presidency was hurt even more by the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Katrina was a Category 5 storm. A New Orleans newspaper called it "the storm we always feared" (p. 530).
New Orleans took a direct hit. The levees broke, and most of the city flooded. Thousands of people sought shelter in the Superdome, where supplies, medical care, and evacuation arrived slowly. Some people died in the heat. Americans watched on television as poor Black residents were left behind (p. 530).
Katrina became a symbol of a failing government system and of deep social inequality, in which some people could escape and recover while others could not. Critics said Bush had filled his administration with unqualified loyalists and had ignored displaced poor and Black residents of the city (pp. 530–531).
After 9/11, a wave of nativism (hostility toward immigrants) and nationalist fear made immigration a powerful political issue. Bush and Republicans used anti-immigration feeling to win in 2004 and in the 2006 midterms. Congress passed a law for a border "fence" with bipartisan support. Democrats such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama voted for it. About 700 miles of steel barriers were built through border towns and deserts (pp. 530–531).
Immigrants and their allies fought back. In spring and summer 2006, hundreds of thousands marched in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and tens of thousands marched in smaller cities. Yet broader legal reform stalled. Moderate conservatives did not want to anger businesses that wanted cheap labor, or large voting blocs. Moderate liberals did not want to anger anti-immigrant groups by pushing hard for liberalization. The result was that the fence was built and the border was tightened (p. 531).
By 2006–2007, Iraq was in chaos. Insurgents fought US troops, and al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, bombed civilians and released videos of beheadings (p. 531).
The surge was the 2007 deployment of about 27,000 more US troops under General David Petraeus. It used more sophisticated anti-insurgency methods. Together with efforts by Sunni groups, it calmed many Iraqi cities. That calm gave cover for American forces to leave (pp. 531–532).
The US withdrawal came in stages:
Violence and instability continued afterward (p. 532).
Afghanistan went the other way. In 2006 the Taliban returned, because the Afghan government was corrupt and could not offer security or social services. The Taliban began retaking territory. American money and troops held the government up for years. After the hasty US withdrawal in August 2021, the Taliban took over the rest of the country, outlasting a twenty-year American presence (p. 532).
The Great Recession began, like many American crashes, with a speculative bubble. Home prices climbed through the 1990s and 2000s. After the dot-com crash, investors wanted something that seemed safe, and real estate looked like the answer. Mortgage companies wrote ever riskier loans, then bundled them and resold them so fast that it was hard to tell who owned which piece (p. 532).
Deregulation made this possible, and it was bipartisan. In the 1990s President Clinton signed two key laws:
The mortgages were so heavily leveraged (built on borrowed money) that when homeowners began to default, the whole system fell. Firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers disappeared almost overnight (pp. 532–533).
To stop the spread, Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, sending billions of federal dollars to prop up banks. Many people were angry about these giveaways to bankers. Obama continued the program after taking office. The anger fed the conservative Tea Party, which attacked an Obama administration full of ex-Wall Street executives. It also fed Occupy Wall Street in 2011, when young, left-leaning New Yorkers protested an economy tilted toward "the one percent" (p. 533).
The recession deepened existing inequality. The Congressional Budget Office found that since the late 1970s, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent grew by over 300 percent, while the average American's grew 35 percent. Recovery was uneven. Banks and the stock market bounced back quickly. Workers did not. Job growth was slow, wages froze, and good full-time jobs were often replaced by low-paying part-time work. Unemployment among young people stayed nearly double the national average for years (p. 533).
Occupy Wall Street changed the conversation, moving it from budget cuts toward inequality. But it faded fast. Its membership was only a fraction of the Tea Party's, which had far more money and influence. The labor movement was weak and the conservative bloc strong, so little changed (p. 533).
By 2008, Democrats embraced an antiwar stance and chose Barack Obama, who had opposed the Iraq War from the start. As an Illinois state senator, he denounced the war and predicted sectarian violence. Voters also blamed Bush's policies for the economic collapse, which tied Republican John McCain to an unpopular record. Obama won decisively and became the first African American president (pp. 534–535).
His first term focused on the recession and healthcare. He kept the bank bailout and added a limited stimulus plan of government spending (p. 535).
The Tea Party was a loose movement of angry conservative voters with deep distrust of the federal government. Its activists were typically whiter, older, and richer than average, backed by wealthy donors, and used founding-father imagery. Starting with big protests in 2009, they won primaries and pulled the Republican Party far to the right (p. 535).
Obama's biggest legislative win was the Affordable Care Act. Instead of a national government system, it used subsidized private insurance, an idea earlier backed by Republicans including Nixon, Gingrich, and Romney. The law:
Still, many people remained uninsured, and conservatives attacked the law for about a decade (p. 535).
Abroad, Obama sent 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2009 to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" al-Qaeda and the Taliban, using special forces and CIA drones. In May 2011 Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. A phased NATO and US withdrawal began in 2011, aiming to remove combat troops by 2014. Al-Qaeda moved bases to Yemen and the Horn of Africa (pp. 535–536).
Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, but the Tea Party's strength in Congress blocked meaningful legislation. Gridlock became a sign that politics, the economy, and race relations all felt stuck (p. 536).
By the 2010s, the economy and politics had drifted apart from ordinary workers. Corporate profits and stock markets rose after the Great Recession, but pay stayed flat. By 2016 the typical American worker had gone almost forty years without a real raise. In January 1973 the average worker earned $4.03 an hour. After adjusting for inflation, that is roughly two dollars more per hour than the average worker made in 2014. (p. 537)
The gains that did appear went mostly to the top. From 2009 to 2013, 85 percent of all new income went to the richest 1 percent. So workers were losing ground while a small group pulled ahead. (p. 537)
While less money reached workers, much more money reached campaigns. Here are some figures:
The courts and Congress shaped this trend. In 2002 the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act tried to tighten rules on campaign money. Political action committees (PACs) found loopholes and kept raising large sums anyway. Then in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the Supreme Court ruled that corporations, unions, and nonprofits could not be limited in what they spent on politics. Even more money flowed into campaigns. (p. 537)
This money made partisan gridlock worse and made it harder to reach bipartisan agreement on hard problems. Climate change is the clearest example. (p. 537)
Scientists built the theory of human-caused global warming in the 1970s and 1980s. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in 1995 that there was a "discernible human influence" on climate. The wording was cautious, but it already matched the scientific consensus. By 2007 the IPCC called the evidence "unequivocal." It also warned that if nothing were done, climate change would likely go beyond what natural and human systems could adapt to. (p. 537)
Despite this, the public and the government did not keep pace with the science. Popular media, especially Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, made climate change a cause of the political left. The political right came to treat it as something to deny. Conservative politicians, think tanks, and energy companies worked to create doubt, and Americans stayed divided. (pp. 537–538)
Economic fear played a part too. Many Americans were watching China's rise and did not want to give up growth now for environmental safety later. (p. 538)
After the Soviet Union collapsed, China pushed hard to modernize. It opened and subsidized much of its economy and drew in huge foreign investment, and it grew very fast. It became a manufacturing center for American and world trade. Students, immigrants, and tourists moved between the two countries. (p. 538)
In 2000, China's GDP was about one eighth of America's. Many analysts expected it to pass the US soon. That did not happen, and the US kept its lead. Still, Americans kept worrying about China's growing power even as they bought more and more Chinese goods. The relationship was both dependent and uneasy. (p. 538)
In 2016 many voters were fed up. Republicans rejected their party establishment and nominated Donald Trump, a real estate developer and celebrity. He promised to "Make America Great Again," to build a wall against Mexican immigrants, and to bar Muslim immigrants. Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton after a challenge from Bernie Sanders. Trump and Clinton were the most unpopular nominees in modern history, and many voters said they were mostly voting against the other side. (pp. 538–539)
Clinton won nearly three million more votes nationwide. But she lost key Midwestern states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. No Republican presidential candidate had carried them since the 1980s. Frustrated white working-class voters left the Democrats there, and Trump won the presidency. (p. 539)
Immigration and taxes. Trump built on an enforcement record that already existed. Under Obama, border apprehensions and deportations hit record highs. Trump went further. He called for a huge border wall, ordered deportations of Dreamers (people who grew up in the US after being born elsewhere), and had officials separate parents seeking refuge from their children. His narrowly passed 2017 tax cut favored corporations and the wealthy, added to the deficit, and increased inequality. (pp. 539–540)
The promise and the result. In his inaugural address, Trump promised to end "American carnage." He said illegal immigrants, crime, and foreign competition were ravaging the country. Instead, his presidency brought deeper cultural and racial division, unrest, and anxiety. He broke presidential norms, attacked opponents, and used his personal Twitter account for angry posts. (pp. 539–540)
Truth and shared reality. Americans did not expect presidents to be perfectly honest. Still, the Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims by Trump in his first term, about twenty-one a day. On the first day, his press secretary made false claims about inauguration crowd size. A spokeswoman then defended "alternative facts." By his later years, only about a third of Americans found him trustworthy. Along with online misinformation, this wore away the idea of a basic shared reality, and that led toward January 6, 2021. (pp. 540–541)
In November 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris defeated Trump. Biden won the popular vote by about 4 percent and the electoral vote by 74 votes. Harris became the first female vice president. Trump refused to concede and said the election was stolen. The claims were easily debunked, yet months later between one-half and two-thirds of Republicans thought the election had been stolen. (p. 541)
On January 6, Trump repeated these false claims to a crowd and told them to "fight like hell." Thousands marched on the Capitol. About one in seven of the first 500-plus people arrested was tied to extremist, white supremacist, or militia groups. The rioters fought police and injured about 150 officers. Officer Brian Sicknick died, and four other officers later died by suicide. Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by an officer as she tried to storm the House chamber. (pp. 541–542)
The aftermath. The attackers held the Capitol for hours until the National Guard cleared them out that evening. Congress stayed in session into the night and certified Biden's win. Even so, eleven Republican senators and 150 House Republicans objected. Trump was acquitted in a second impeachment trial, this time for incitement of insurrection. On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, he pardoned more than fifteen hundred rioters. (p. 542)
Covid-19 appeared in Wuhan, China, in winter 2019–2020. It was a coronavirus, named for its crown-like shape under a microscope. It was very contagious and spread before symptoms began. Many carriers had no symptoms at all. But it attacked the airways of older people and those with comorbidities (other health conditions), and many suffocated. The first US case was confirmed in January. New York City was devastated by April. Hospitals overflowed, thousands died each day, and mobile morgues held the bodies. (p. 542)
The national response was fragmented. States made their own rules and competed for scarce protective equipment. White-collar workers could work from home, but hourly workers without paid sick leave had to choose between a paycheck and safety. By April, 10 million Americans had lost their jobs. Mask-wearing became political, and many right-wing Americans refused to wear masks. (p. 543)
The toll. Deaths passed 100,000 by May 2020. The worst surge came in winter 2020–21, with nearly three thousand deaths a day. Vaccines arrived in 2021, but conspiracy theories and politics led many to refuse them. By late summer, barely a majority of eligible people were fully vaccinated. Deaths passed 600,000 by summer 2021 and one million by May 2022. Later, a more transmissible but less deadly strain became dominant, and Covid became endemic, following seasonal patterns. (p. 543)
The early 2000s brought a lot of public talk about "millennials" and "Generation Z." Pollsters described millennials as more diverse, more liberal, less religious, and more hit by money worries than older Americans. They were also tied together by social media and were often in debt. People kept asking what these new generations would change. (p. 544)
Gay marriage. Few attitudes changed as fast as views on homosexuality. In 2006 a majority still told pollsters that gay or lesbian relations were morally wrong. Yet acceptance grew quickly. One sign was that more people knew a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person: 24 percent said so in 1983, and 73 percent in 2001. By the 2010s polls showed majority support for legal gay marriage. Younger people backed it more than older people, so part of the change was generational. (p. 544)
President Obama did not push for national action. He did order a review that ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2011. That left the issue to the courts. State courts began striking down bans in Massachusetts in 2003. In June 2015 the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. Nearly two thirds of Americans agreed with the result. (pp. 544–545)
Technology shaped young Americans' lives perhaps more than anything else. The iPhone (2007) made smartphones common. About one third of Americans owned a mobile computing device in 2011, and about two thirds did four years later. As newspaper and magazine subscriptions shrank, people turned to social networks for news. Online media companies chased clicks with easy, shareable stories, and older media outlets cut staff and tried to adapt. (p. 545)
Because anyone could record video and post it, stories could go viral without passing through traditional media. This put a spotlight on the often violent relationship between police and African Americans. (p. 545)
Black Lives Matter. The movement grew after the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter became a protest slogan, and critics answered with #alllivesmatter and #bluelivesmatter. Videos of other deaths, such as those of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Philando Castile, kept spreading. (p. 545)
On May 25, 2020, teenager Darnella Frazier filmed Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes. Protests spread to big cities, small towns, and rural areas, even during Covid lockdowns. As many as 25 million people may have taken part, probably the largest protests in US history. Still, no major national policy change followed, and racial gaps in wealth, education, and health continued. (pp. 545–547)
Reform and backlash. Local results were mixed. Some places elected reform-minded district attorneys, required body cameras, tried emergency services built around mediation and mental health, and took down Confederate symbols. But violent crime rose after 2020, and conservatives returned to "law and order" politics, which Trump used in his 2024 campaign. (pp. 546–547)
#MeToo and the Women's March. #MeToo began by exposing past sexual crimes of famous men, then spread a zero-tolerance attitude toward harassment. Much of this new energy among women was sparked by Trump's candidacy and presidency. The day after his first inauguration, between 500,000 and one million people marched in Washington, D.C. (p. 547)
Trump's three Supreme Court appointments had lasting effects. On June 24, 2022, the new conservative majority decided Dobbs v. Jackson. It overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), ending the constitutional right to abortion. (p. 547)
Transgender rights. In the 2020s, liberals promoted transgender visibility, and many people stated their pronouns. Conservatives pushed back with bathroom bills, claimed trans people were a risk, and targeted trans athletes. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called pediatric gender-affirming care "child abuse." Trump's 2024 ads used the issue, including one that aired as many as 50,000 times. (p. 547)
Johnson's Great Society liberalized immigration law in the 1960s and changed the country's makeup. By 2012 nearly a quarter of Americans were immigrants or their children, and half of those came from Latin America. By 2013, 17 percent of Americans were Hispanic. In 2014 Latinos became California's largest ethnic group. (p. 548)
Affective polarization means division based on group identity, not on policy or class. More diversity did not mean more support for immigration. Gen Z men moved right, not left like millennials. The Rio Grande Valley, which is heavily Hispanic, shifted right in 2020 and 2024. Hidalgo County, Texas, which is over 90 percent Hispanic, went to Trump. (p. 548)
Class dealignment means the old link between social class and party has weakened. The Democrats, once the party of labor, increasingly spoke for educated white-collar voters. The Republicans, once the party of business, drew more multiracial working-class voters. Neither party tackled the economic roots of the crisis, and inflation after 2020 hurt buying power and deepened despair. (pp. 548–549)
After a poor July 2024 debate raised doubts about his abilities, Biden stepped aside for Kamala Harris. Her short campaign had a weak message. It did not answer culture-war attacks on immigrants and trans rights, or the economic pessimism caused by inflation. Trump won and returned to office in January 2025. (p. 549)
In his second term, fewer limits held him back. He filled his cabinet with loyalists and issued many executive orders, many shielded by the Supreme Court's "shadow docket." He sent plainclothes federal agents on immigration raids. A 2025 New Yorker estimate said he profited by at least $3 billion. He also extended tax cuts that greatly increased the deficit. (p. 549)
The national mood was gloomy. Worries included social media bubbles, smartphones, less reading, and an economy that rewarded those who least needed it. In 2023 only 23 percent said life was better than 50 years earlier. In December 2024 only 19 percent were satisfied with the country's direction. (pp. 549–550)
The chapter ends by saying history is not foreordained. Trends shift, and new generations will shape what comes next. (p. 550)
