Episode 117: The World Today or, “Too Soon?”

[Music] Friends, we've done it. We've reached the final episode of season one, the big picture of world history. And let me tell you, my original plan for this season was to make six episodes. Six. One for each era in world history. Oh, so stupid. Turns out that a lot of things have happened over the last 12,000 years, but how could I have known that? So, as a quick recap of the whole history of the planet, global empires have risen and fallen twice. That's why we should just understand the political history of the entire world. Just been two cycles of the rise and fall of global empires. In the first half of world history, ancient kingdoms grew into classical empires that then fell apart into a period of relative global chaos when people in the post-classical era tried to sort themselves out into a new type of organization. Some did this through religion, like the Asphonic Caliphates, others did it through trade, like the African kingdoms, and others never fully united back together again, like in Europe. China was just always there, just trucking along, selling it stuff to the world. And then the process started all over again. In the early modern era, European kingdoms rose, and then in the modern era came to dominate the globe during the age of industrialization and imperialism. And it all came crashing down in the 20th century, thanks to a few world wars and independence movements in Asia and Africa. Throughout this process, the economy has continued to be more and more interconnected. Silk Road 1.0 fell apart, but was reunited bigger and better by the Mongols. Ocean trade began with just India and the Mediterranean, but then expanded to include the Atlantic, and then the entire world. And here we are today. But the question I have for you is this, are we still in unit six? What I mean by this is that in my class, I divide the year into six units for the six eras of world history. But I'm not sure where to include the last 25 years. Are they part of the late modern era that began in 1914 with World War I? Are we still living in that time? I mean, that era was known for nationalism, ethnic violence, and culture of clashes during the Cold War. But can we really lump ourselves in with a time when they were just figuring out what telephones were? I don't know. I think we may be living in a new era, a unit seven, if you will. I think it's possible that the last era ended around 1990-ish when the Soviet Union fell apart and the internet became a thing. Or maybe it ended on September 11th, 2001. Either way, I'm pretty convinced that we're all living in a new era of world history right now. But the trick is that it'll take us solid 50 years before we can look back and know for sure. I mean, it's almost impossible to see the big picture when you're experiencing it, but let's do our best, shall we? This is anti-social studies. I'm Emily Glankler, settle in, and let's go not so far back in time. Act one, the 1990s. So I've nicknamed the 1990s the Seinfeld Years because as far as I can tell, it was a decade about nothing. Like, what's the deal with the 90s? (audience laughing) I mean, that doesn't mean that nothing happened. It just means that historians still haven't figured out the narrative of the 90s. I mean, my narrative for the 90s revolves around Snap, bracelets, Sophie B. Hawkins, and Racing Home from School to Watch, say, by the bell. But I'm pretty sure none of those things will make it into a world history textbook anytime soon. The reason why it's so hard to create a narrative around the 1990s is that it's too soon. Even though in your lifetime, the 90s might feel really far away. Or for some of my students listening, it was before you were even born. Oh God. But I mean, as far as the human history, the planet, the 90s was like two seconds ago. Also, I mean, American historian Fukuyama famously published a book in 1992 called The End of History and The Last Man. I mean, his ideas have since been debunked because, I mean, you know, we're still here. But his idea was that Western liberal democracy was the apex of human development and there wouldn't need to be any more sociocultural evolution because Western-style government society and culture was gonna be adopted worldwide and there would never be an ideological conflict again. Ah, wouldn't that be nice in Eurocentric? I mean, it's problematic because it's wrong, but also because yeah, it's so Western-centric. Like, not everyone in the world wants to be like us, Fukuyama. So I mean, you can see the 90s are a confusing time. Some historians believed history had ended. Others just hadn't had enough time to figure out exactly what happened. And I'm sort of going in blind here, but I'm just gonna tell you a few things that did happen in the 90s that you might wanna know about and then we'll make sense of it later. First, the Soviet Union broke apart. We won the Cold War. Woo! It officially dissolved in 1991 with all of the member states going back to just being regular countries again. And this had two impacts. First, satellite countries were independent and they got to determine their borders and national identity for themselves, some for the first time in centuries. This was like another wave of decolonization across Eastern Europe. And think about some of those Eastern European countries. They'd been ruled by the Byzantines, then the Ottomans, then the Nazi Third Reich, and finally the Soviet Union. And I mean, now Putin's there trying to get his hands in everything again. As we saw with decolonization and independence in Asia and Africa, this process is messy. The most famous example of this is the Yugoslav wars. As each country and former Yugoslavia declared its independence, ethnic minorities in those countries were often not represented in the new government, or even worse, they were killed as a part of ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity. Some groups wanted Yugoslavia to stay united, most notably Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs. Remember the Serbs? They shot the Archduke-France Ferdinand because Austria was conquering places where ethnic Serbs lived, and they wanted their own Serbian nation. Yeah, that never went away. The Serbs saw Yugoslavia as their opportunity to finally have a country where all the ethnic Serbs could be united, and they increasingly took over the military. And they used this military to try to annex parts of nearby Croatia and Bosnia, where ethnic Serbs still lived. There were so many different conflicts wrapped up in the Yugoslav wars, and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the conflicts that the US got involved in in a minute, but what the wars in general are mostly known for as their brutality. And there are attempts to create ethnically pure nations, the majority groups, often the Serbs, although they were sometimes the victim when they were in the minority in nations like Croatia. They committed crimes against humanity. This included mass genocide, ethnic cleansing, which means at best forest deportations and at worst more genocide, and war rape. This is a special type of horror that involves a military being ordered to commit mass rape to speed up the displacement of targeted groups. By the end of the Yugoslav wars, the end of the decade, 130,000 people were killed, and more than four million people were displaced from their homes. All of this was made worse by the other big impact of the breakup of the Soviet Union, which was that the economies across the former Second World collapsed. Even though they tried to stay afloat by forming an economic trade organization in 1992, the shift from a state-run socialist economy to free market capitalism was jarring. It took generations to outgrow this communist ideology, and there are a lot of people in the former Soviet Union that still want to go back to a socialist government today. For most of the 90s, Russia and its former satellites relied heavily on support from the West, which was really like rubbing salt in the wound of their defeat in the Cold War. It would be like if at the end of Rocky IV, Ivan Drago had to go to an American doctor to get fixed up after the fight because no one in the Soviet Union could handle his injuries. The US was the main supplier of loans to former Soviet countries, and this seems really nice of us, and maybe it was, but it was also because the US knew that total economic collapse in Russia, while sweet, sweet revenge for them invading rural Colorado and red dawn, it'd be bad for the entire global economy. This is the other big theme that is slowly appearing from the 1990s, a truly globalized economy. Now, I keep saying this, I know, like the classical silk road connected the known world from Rome to China, then the second silk road reunited Eurasia thanks to the Mongols. But wait, Columbus discovered another half of the globe so the transatlantic trade created the first truly global economy, or maybe industrialization and imperialism shifted markets and labor forces so that the entire world was working toward a similar economic outcome. Well, I'm here to tell you that me and the past was wrong. All of those examples are done because the late 20th century created the real globalized economy. Apparently, President Clinton, Bill that is, had a running theme during his campaign and White House. It's the economy's stupid. And that sort of sums up the last 25 years of world history. Like sure, government and politics are still important, but the main influencer around the globe is the economy. And if you want to get to the bottom of most of the crazy things that have been happening in your lifetime, just follow the money. Organizations like the IMF and World Bank have grown incredibly influential. They were formed originally to help war-torn countries after World War II and to prevent the rise of communism from impoverished nations. But today, the IMF and World Bank have set their sights on the former third world. They provide low interest loans to governments and they help negotiate international trade agreements, all in the name of creating a free market economy. Now, depending on where you stand on the hippie to fascist spectrum, that goal is either noble or the cause of the downfall of the planet. To get to it. Now, you know how much I hate talking about economics, but unfortunately in the 90s, we kind of have to talk about economics. So here we go. A global free market economy just means an economy that has as few barriers to trade as possible. This means that countries are encouraged to lower tariffs, making it cheaper for foreign products to enter other countries' markets. It also means that companies have an easier time utilizing the various economic strengths of different countries around the world to create their products cheaply and easily. A clothing is a really good example of this. For example, the cotton in your jeans might have been grown in the United States, but more likely it was grown in China, India, Pakistan, or Brazil. Then, that cotton is sent to be turned into denim somewhere like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, or India, Hong Kong, Turkey, Indonesia, any of those places. Then it may be sent somewhere else like maybe Italy to be dyed, and then somewhere else to be cut and sewn, and then finally to the United States to be marketed and sold. It's exhausting. The argument that free market advocates make is that companies are taking advantage of favorable economic conditions around the world so that they can find the cheapest place to get their work done. In the end, they argue the consumer wins because the product is cheaper. And according to proponents of free markets, conditions within each country all improve. This is the key. I mean, they're not arguing that economic conditions all improve equally. Like, they're not saying that the garment worker in Cambodia is living at the same level as a Levi's ad executive in New York City, but they argue that everyone's economic situation is better than it was before. And quantitatively, that's true. Opponents of free market reforms argue that this is really just a new form of economic imperialism. Less developed countries are getting taken advantage of and are forced to do the difficult jobs for way less money than an American would get paid to do the same thing. These are the sweatshops that we typically hear about from college students as they protest while wearing their hippie inspired dress from urban outfitters. But, I mean, it is a real problem. Companies like Nike became infamous in the '90s for using subpar factories, especially in Asia, and paying their workers incredibly low wages sometimes around $1 a day. The other argument that free market opponents make is that all of this is creating a global consumer culture that is unsustainable. Basically, it's too much of a good thing. We're now conditioned to want everything as cheap and as fast as possible. I'm looking at you, Jeff Bezos. And we are willing to overlook poor living standards and damage the environment to get it. Think about those blue jeans again. For example, how much water do you think it takes to make those jeans? To grow the cotton, dye the fabric, machine wash it until it has the perfect brand new but lived in vibe. It takes 1800 gallons of water to produce one pair of blue jeans. And that's not taking into account the environmental impact of transporting the materials all around the globe throughout the process. I mean, that's insane. So anyway, what everything about the free market economy is happening. It's also the reason why US manufacturers and other typical American jobs are going away. It's ironic because the American economy is a whole really benefits from a free market economy, but companies trying to employ American workers can't compete with this new globalized setup. So you have American workers, especially in manufacturing who are losing their jobs, but are also excited that a Walmart is opening up in their town so they can buy cheap jeans. It's called irony kids. Some parts of the world have started forming international blocks that are essentially free market zones. The European Union is the best example of this. They've decreased barriers to trade and movement within EU member countries. So companies can set up shop anywhere. People can move to find jobs anywhere, and they all use the same currency. Except Britain for some reason, who I guess was still trying to hold on to their imperial attitude for just a little while longer. I don't like the EU because they've made movement across borders so easy that if you travel by train, they only stamp your passport in the first country. Like I want all of the stamps, Europe. Is that a valid reason to hate the largest economy in the world? I hope so. NAFTA was created with a similar philosophy to the EU, but it's not as extensive. So a quick note about NAFTA, but if Trump decides to delete NAFTA entirely and renegotiate a new deal, then I made you a whole episode about it. But for now a brief overview. NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement, and it was created in 1994 between Canada, the US, and Mexico. The idea was to work toward a free market in North America, with fewer barriers to trade between the three countries. US and companies could travel across borders more easily in theory benefiting everyone with cheaper products. That's the basic idea. Two unintended consequences came out of NAFTA. First, Mexican farmers often couldn't compete with American farmers. This isn't because American farmers are better. Sorry, it's because the United States government still subsidizes American farmers even though that's not technically a free market idea. It's kind of like cheating. But whatever. So Mexican farmers couldn't compete as cheap American corn, for example, flooded their markets. They either sold the farm and moved toward the border where there are now American factories benefiting from the cheaper labor in Mexico, or they kept farming, but they just started farming other things. I don't know, like maybe a wealthy cartel approaches you with a proposal. Such a shame the your corn farm is failing. What if he provided you with something else that's really easy to grow? We'll guarantee that we will always buy your product for a good price and you don't have to worry about competing with American growers because it's illegal there. Sounds like a great deal, right? So some of these farmers turned to growing marijuana, helping fuel the rise of powerful drug cartels in Mexico. Whoops. The second unintended consequence was a spike in immigration. NAFTA made travel easy for money, goods, and companies. The only thing they left out was people. In a true free market economy, labor should be free to move where there are jobs. That's the whole idea of laissez-faire. But the US didn't want to open up the border with Mexico, and so that stayed out of the deal. And this is why we've seen a massive spike in illegal immigration from Mexico over the last 20 years. Families who used to be able to support themselves are now struggling to compete in the globalized economy, so they send their young men toward the border to work in factories. But even Mexican factories often couldn't compete with places like Southeast Asia, and so many of the factories closed. And now you have a ton of young men looking for work to provide for their family, all living along the border with one of the richest economies in the world. Yadia, Yadia, immigration. I promise I'll do a more in-depth episode on illegal immigration soon. My sources are telling me that it's sort of a big topic right now in the United States. The last big thing happening in the 1990s is US hegemony. Hegemony means one thing having basically complete power. We were the lone superpower, and it was wonderful. I always tell my students, "Oh, the '90s were a great decade to be alive." Some might say it was the last great decade to be an American. Sorry you just missed it. We had about 10 years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 when the US was basically untouchable. Our economy was booming, our enemies were weak, and we had a cool president who played the saxophone and took advantage of women without anyone seeming to care all that much. Man, Trump is his time by just 20 years. I would argue that US hegemony was bookended by the two Iraq Wars. So first, when Saddam Hussein ordered the 1990 Iraqi invasion of the small oil-origination of Kuwait, the US stepped in. This was the first Iraq War. Under President George H.W. Bush, Operation Desert Storm was a massive military success to lead to Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. But in a faithful decision, he decided to allow Saddam Hussein to stay as the leader in Iraq. Why? Well, first you have to know a little bit about the US invasion of Panama in 1989. First, did you know that we invaded Panama in 1989? I sure didn't. So the US government invaded to get rid of drug trafficking dictator Manuel Nordeiga, but he fled. I mean, he turned himself in a few days later, but that experience was important in Iraq. So in Iraq, there was a genuine concern that Saddam Hussein would flee, leaving the United States in charge of an extended campaign to hunt him down across the Middle East. And meanwhile, we would become responsible for the power vacuum in Iraq. So they kept him in charge. For now. The US also got involved in a few other conflicts during the 1990s. If you remember from a previous episode, we sent peacekeepers to Somalia that led to the black-hawked-down incident. And before we talk about the semi-successful interventions in Yugoslavia, I want to quickly acknowledge our biggest failure in the 1990s. Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide was occurring throughout the 1990s, and basically everyone knew about it, and no government stepped into stop it. The UN kept passing resolutions that did nothing, and after the fact, they created the International Criminal Court to administer trials for crimes against humanity. But considering the UN was created after World War II, and its member nations constantly said, "Never again. It happened." Again. The US was more proactive in Eastern Europe. Working through NATO, the US intervened in the various conflicts during the Yugoslav wars. NATO sent air forces and troops to intervene in the Bosnian War, between the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the various ethnic groups of Serbs and Croats who wanted to break away and join Serbia and Croatia, respectively. NATO also supported the Kosovo Liberation Army as it fought for independence against Yugoslavia. This included bombing, Serbian military positions in response to a new way of ethnic cleansing, committed by the Serbs against the people of Kosovo. of O. President Clinton, Bill, not Hillary, he once said that the conflict across Yugoslavia was like, quote, a metaphor for the struggles of the 20th century. I think he's right. The last few episodes we've been talking about nationalism, self-determination, views of ethnic superiority, and arguments over land. And that's the 20th century in a nutshell. Thanks, Bill. So what were the '90s about? What's the big story? I have no idea. My guess is that historians may look back and see the '90s as the last part of the golden age of the United States. Every civilization has a golden age. And I think ours started during World War II. We swept in and saved the world from evil dictators. Then we came home and had a lot of babies, bought cars, and moved to the suburbs. We had a civil rights movement that extended tolerance, at least on paper, to all people. And we won the ideological battle of the Cold War. It sure sounds like a golden age to me. But everything changed just one year into the new millennium. [MUSIC PLAYING] Act 2, the 21st century. OK, full disclosure, I may not go into a ton of detail in these last two acts, mostly because we're still living this part of history. And I'm not confident that I fully understand what's happening. It's the curse of the historian. You have to wait approximately 50 to 500 years for things to really make sense. So I mean, ask me about the world in 1,500, and I am on it. But ask me about the years when I've been alive. And I'm like, let me get back to you in 2068. The other reason why I'm not going to go as in depth is that that's what season 2 is for. After this episode wraps up season 1, I'm launching into a series of episodes called Historical Context. I'll pick out things that are currently being talked about, major geopolitical events, or TV shows that I like, and give you some history to help make sense of it. And I plan on covering a lot of these topics in a lot more depth in those episodes. So for now, here's what's been happening in the last 18 years. First, the spread of technology. There's this thing called the internet and experts say it's going to be a pretty big deal. The internet is the ultimate globalizer, because yes, it connects the economy. I mean, the fact that I can go online right now and order a T-Rex pool float that was made in China, and it will be at my doorstep in one day, is certifiably insane. I mean, that's a totally hypothetical example, by the way. Don't check my Amazon purchase history. But we've had technology that connects trade routes before. The latine sale allowed ships to navigate the monsoon winds uniting the Indian Ocean trade. The camel was able to cross the Sahara Desert, connecting the Middle East and Europe with the great African trading kingdoms. The compass helped Columbus bump into America. But the internet is different, because it doesn't just connect trade, it really connects all people. I know this is obvious, but think about it from a historical perspective. I mean, when Columbus stumbled onto American soil and bragged about reaching India, it took two months for his letter just to get to Europe. Then it took months to travel around to the various kingdoms. I mean, things got faster. After France's ferdinand was assassinated, all of the newspapers reported it the next day. But think about it. Today, Govrilo Princip could have live streamed his assassination attempt. People who were in the sandwich shop would have tweeted about it within minutes, and the entire world would know instantly. It's not just about reporting the news, though. The internet is also about connecting people from all over the world. Let's take Egypt as an example. So with the rise of social media, young Egyptians began connecting with people all over the world. They were able to see in real time what things were like outside of their country without having to leave their homes. They also were able to start sharing opinions about Egypt with other Egyptians. They vented about how hard it was for young educated people to find jobs. They used that maybe, I don't know, just spitball in here. Maybe it wasn't a good thing to have the same dictator for 30 years. They also were able to watch live while countries around them began protesting and toppling their governments. They watched Muhammad Boazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in 2010, sparking the Tunisian revolution that toppled their regime, that had been in power for 23 years, and they did it in just one month. After Tunisia, the ensuing revolutions are generally called the Arab Spring. It led to the toppling of dictators like Mohmah Gaddafi and Libya, Hazzni Mubarak in Egypt, and other autocratic regimes across North Africa in the Middle East. I remember following the Egyptian revolution live. I taught at an Islamic private school and I had students in the room from Egypt. For weeks, we kept Twitter open in my classroom, following a few young Egyptians as they reported from to rear square. By the way, if you want to learn a lot about the Egyptian revolution, and you should, there's a documentary called The Square that's fantastic and it's on Netflix. Some people have nicknamed the Egyptian revolution that overthrew Mubarak, the Facebook revolution, because of how useful social media was as a tool to organize. One protester tweeted, quote, "We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world," end quote. 60% of Egypt's population was under the age of 30. They were the social media generation and they used it to oust Mubarak. In short, the legacy that revolution is still a little murky, but it's a great example of how transformative social media and new technology has become. Social media is our something new of the 21st century, but some old things are also rising again, namely Russia and China. Vladimir Putin has made it his mission to bring Russia back to its former power, ideally while forwarding a river while riding a bear shirtless. I want to do an episode about him at some point because he's fascinating, but for now just know that Putin really wants to reunite the old Russian empire again. He's been consistently intervening in Ukraine over the last few years in an attempt to gain back some or all of that territory, partly because almost all of the oil pipelines coming out of Russia and into Western Europe cross under Ukraine. He's especially interested in the Crimean Peninsula along the coast of the Black Sea. Remember the Crimean War in the 1800s? When Russia tried to take Crimea from the Ottomans who had to get Britain and France to help them stop Russia? Yeah, I mean, you don't remember, but Putin does. Russia has also been trying to continue its influence in its former satellite nations, sometimes going so far as to directly invade them. They fought outright wars in places like Georgia, the country, not the state, and Chechnya recently. Some of these regions, especially the Stans, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, et cetera, have seen a rise in Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism partly in response to Russian intervention. China is also on the rise, which should surprise no one who studies world history. They are quickly becoming the most powerful economy in the world, which has allowed a lot of their repressive tactics and human rights abuses to be overlooked. They're also just so freaking big, like everyone in the world wants to avoid a war with China. So they've been able to hang out in Dominat Asia still proclaiming communism and we're like, fine, as long as you keep making all the things we want, I.e. T. Rex pool floats, well, let it slide. So a lot of people bring up the fact that China owns around 10% of the US debt, and that's true. As of January 2018, that came out to $1.27 trillion that China holds. Japan is right behind them with $1.22 trillion, by the way, but I mean, don't worry, they're not going to knock on our door and ask for it back tomorrow, because Americans, by one fourth of everything China produces, our economies are so intertwined, it's like our new version of mutually assured destruction. Instead of nuclear weapons, it's trade. No one in the US would be dumb enough to go to war with China, even if it's just a trade war, because that would damage everyone's economy. Wait, what, what is Trump doing with tariffs? Oh, come on. But the main event that has dictated everything else that's occurred in the 21st century is 9/11. After the September 11th attacks, the globe shifted into a new war on terror. I said it a few episodes ago, but this is like our generation's Cold War. It overshadows every international interaction and every other conflict in the world. After George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, it became pretty clear that you were either with us fighting terrorism or you were against us. He even gets his own doctrine called the Bush Doctrine. You can read about it in textbooks if you're at a public school that's lucky enough to have a book that's not over 20 years old. But the Bush Doctrine includes two big things. Unilateral action, which means the US does things regardless of the advice or desires of our allies. And it includes preemptive strikes in places that are developing terrorists that might eventually do us harm. So the 9/11 attack was funded and orchestrated by Al Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan, which was why the US invaded Afghanistan just months after the 9/11 attacks. The US military, and in this case, supported by NATO allies, toppled the Taliban government in just two months. But again, as we've seen throughout world history, conquering is the easy part. The last 17 years have been spent attempting to build up a new Afghan state and eliminate terrorist elements in the country, especially in the eastern half that's much more difficult to police. The Taliban is still relatively influential in the eastern half of the country. But the war in Afghanistan doesn't really follow the Bush Doctrine. First of all, we did it with the support of our allies, so it wasn't a unilateral action. And also, it wasn't really a preemptive strike. I mean, we could trace the September 11 attacks back to Afghanistan. So, the Bush doctrine was really first put into effect in Iraq. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam Hussein, finishing the business that Bush won had left open after the Gulf War. And this was done unilaterally, meaning the invasion was done without the support of NATO. At the time, it was justified by citing that Iraq was developing WMDs or weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration argued that a preemptive strike was necessary to prevent an attack by Iraq. Enough time has passed to definitively say that this wasn't true. Multiple organizations have extensively searched the country and studied Iraq since then, and they've found no evidence of this. In fact, a U.S. led investigation found that Iraq had destroyed its nuclear program long before the invasion, thanks to UN sanctions throughout the 1990s. Whoops! Also, rhetoric used to justify the invasion of Iraq just two years after the September 11th attacks created an impression among many members of the public that Iraq was somehow connected to the attacks. It wasn't. Really. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator, but there was no evidence that he, his government or any of his citizens had anything to do with 9/11. Of the 19 hijackers, one was from Lebanon, one from Egypt, two from the United Arab Emirates, and the other 15 were Saudi. The war in Iraq officially ended in 2011, and the war in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, but obviously there are still a lot of American troops on the ground. Soon after the U.S. officially pulled out of Iraq, a civil war erupted as different groups struggled to take control over the relatively weak government. One of these groups is ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization that wants to conquer land across Iraq and Syria to create a new unified, Sunni caliphate. In a lot of ways, this is just another version of the conflicts of the 20th century. Border is drawn by Westerners that don't make a lot of sense, and various ethnic or religious groups that are fighting for control of land to create their own self-determination. ISIS is just using particularly horrific methods to gain control of that land, so much so that al-Qaeda has made statements to a distance itself from the organization. Like, you know your bad when al-Qaeda doesn't want to be associated with your brand of terrorism. For now, it looks like ISIS's power is waning, especially in Syria, but only time will tell. Act 3. Future World History You thought I was done, didn't you? Nope. I'm just arrogant enough to do a section on predicting the future. So there are a few things going on in the world today that seem eerily similar to historical events. Mark Twain supposedly said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." I don't think he actually said that, but I like it, so let's pretend he did. So what's rhyming right about now? Well, there are two things going on right now that make me nervous from a historical point of view. The first is Syria. A lot of historians have looked at the Syrian Civil War and seen parallels between that conflict and what was going on in Serbia 100 years ago. They also sound similar. Syria, Serbia, uh-oh. Now I think we're going to need a whole episode to figure out what the heck is happening in Syria, but for now, just know that it's a three-way civil war between the government, led by dictator Bashar al-Assad, rebel groups who want to overthrow the government and ISIS. Basically, it started out as a straightforward Arab-Spring Revolution, but the rebels didn't topple the government. They got embroiled in a civil war. The US and its allies, like Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia, supported the rebels as they attempted to oust a brutal dictator. Side note, the US supported most of these brutal dictators during the Cold War because they repressed leftist movements. Sorry, I should have got one more in there before I finished the season. Bashar al-Assad and the government have been supported by countries like Russia, Iran, and China. Ooh, we don't like this guys. So there's a concern that Syria might be becoming a proxy war, like we saw during the Cold War, with major powers on both sides using Syria as its pawn to gain or maintain power in a very important region, the Middle East. There's also a fear that giving support to the two sides could eventually grow into direct fighting. Even though I don't think it's likely that the US and Russia will go to war, knock on wood, there's been troubling news recently about sporadic fighting between Israel and Iran. They seem to be using the conflict in Syria as a cover for ramping up their own military presence in the region. The concern is that this could end up like World War I, with none of the big guys really wanting to go to war. I mean, especially for Syria, which none of them really care about on its own. Sorry, Syria, I care about you. But if Israel entered a conflict, the US would probably get dragged in too. And if Iran got involved, bigger nations like Russia or China might step into support. The other trend that's happening that's reminiscent of earlier times is the rise of divisive politics around the Western world. Far right conservative movements are becoming more common and more influential in governments across Europe and the United States. We're calling it the alt-right, but it's fascism, and a lot of it is rooted in racism and xenophobic attitudes. To be clear, I'm not saying that American politicians are members of the alt-right. Really, I don't think they are, but we are seeing some leaders catering to these groups more than they should to gain support. Again, to be clear, I'm not saying that all of Trump supporters are members of the alt-right. But the majority of the alt-right did support Trump. It's like a square and a rectangle. Like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, right? I mean, I don't think those guys at Charlottesville drove home with Hillary stickers on their pickup trucks. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, this trend is popping up around Europe too, and a lot of it is tied to Syria. But a crisis in the Middle East, centered for now in Syria, is creating a massive refugee crisis. As refugees pour into Europe and the United States, people are becoming scared of being overrun by immigrants, or of terrorists entering the country along with those refugees. And this is playing into the hand of extreme right groups that are using rhetoric that's a mixture of white nationalism, populism, anti-immigration, Islamophobia, and racism. It's like a real grab-back of terrible people. But the various themes we've talked about this episode are swirling together to make these groups more popular. Economic globalization is moving traditionally blue collar American jobs overseas and bringing immigrants to the United States in search of work. US intervention in the Middle East is sparking new terrorist organizations who are actively fighting against Western culture. Meanwhile, progressive movements like the LGBTQ+ movement and a new wave of feminism are breaking down the traditional power of white men. All of this is making lower and lower middle class white men in particular feel attacked and threatened. And some of them, again, not all white men, thank god, are seeking refuge in groups that harken back to the quote "good old days" when factories and mines were running, everyone in America spoke English and women and people of color knew their place. I mean, I didn't say the good old days were good for everyone. These two current events, the Syrian Civil War and the rise of the far right, sound very world-worry to me, but allow me to get preachy. This is why learning history is so important. What excites me is how many people around the world seem to be noticing these connections too. Hopefully enough people paid attention to the 20th century to not repeat its mistakes in the 21st. I mean, spread the word about my podcast people, it could save the world. So I want to end season one with a thought experiment. Imagine yourself in 20 years. It's 2038. Kanye West is the emperor of New America and you're having a history textbook beamed in your consciousness from your Apple Ibrain. There will be a chapter about right now. There will be bold words for terms that we are currently creating. What will they be? Think about it this way. The Library of Congress is currently preserving people's tweets. The same organization responsible for preserving the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is also cataloging every single public tweet. Not just the President's, yours too. Every tweet, every Facebook post, every hashtag is now a primary source that people in the future will use to understand early 21st century society. Graduate students in 500 years might write their thesis on the true meaning of Caffefe, or the influence of dabbing on American culture. It's really upsetting to think about. So if I'm betting, here are some people or events that are going on right now that I think will be bold words that my son will learn about one day in his history class. In the section on the 21st century civil rights movement in alphabetical order, bathroom bills, black lives matter, Colin Kaepernick, the MeToo movement, and the women's march on Washington. In the section on post-Obama politics, Hillary Clinton email controversy. We get it. March for our lives, Robert Mueller, fake news, and Anthony Scaremucci. He was fun while I lasted, right? In the section on American culture, just two things. The first post-modernism. In case you're wondering, this is a set of values that emphasizes the quality of life over concern with material gain. It's what we're seeing in the younger generation. about wanting to follow their passion and not necessarily pursuing things that will make them the most money. Most of them are able to do this because their parents didn't follow their passion and made a lot of money instead. So thanks, mom and dad. Examples of this include preserving the environment, promoting universal healthcare and education, or all of your friends wasting their college degrees, working as yoga instructors because they want to follow their passion. The other thing that will be in this section on American culture is Beyonce, because I mean, it's all we really need, right? So let me reiterate this one last time in a way that's as preachy as possible. What is our bold word that's going on right now that we will have to answer for? Because people are going to judge us. The way we judge Roman emperors or conquistadors or everyone in the 1930s. Is there some injustice happening that you're ignoring? Or something that's just the way it is? When future generations ask us, "Why didn't you do something about blank?" Make sure you have a good answer. Now, before I go, just a quick plug. If you liked what I'm doing and you want to hear more, please like me on Facebook, follow me on Facebook. Those are two different things, I don't know, or go follow my blog. I want to be hearing from you about what things you want me to talk about in season two. Season two, again, will be historical context. Instead of being sequential episodes that tell one long story, I'll do an episode on various topics one at a time. So please tell your friends, follow me on Facebook, make sure that you subscribe to my podcast so that you can check out season two. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. [Music]