[APUSH 2] Modern Times Vocabulary

Operation Desert Storm (1990)

refers to the US invasion of Kuwait to liberate it from Iraq

• George H.W. Bush makes war speech and says “This operation once and for all finally buries the ghost of Vietnam”

Nelson Mandela

president of South Africa who was jailed under apartheid for 25 years, and when he became president, he called for peace

• Apartheid: term used specifically to refer to a system of legalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa

  • South Africa is made of 97% black people and 3% white people, yet the whites rules over the blacks

• Mandela speaks out against apartheid which causes the government to jail him, and causes a revolution in South Africa

• “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” -Nelson Mandela

Brett Kavanaugh/Clarence Thomas

two Supreme Court justices confirmed in 1990 and 2018 despite sexual harassment allegations

• Woman claims that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, and testifies against him

  • Thomas asked her out twice, and claimed to never sexually harass her

  • Woman claims that he chased her around the office and would have pornography playing in the background as he did so

• Brett Kavanaugh is accused by a woman that in 1984, they were at a high school party (he was a senior, she was a freshman), and that she was forced on a bed

  • Kavanaugh was drunk, and claims to not remember anything

• There’s no evidence to prove that these men were guilty of these allegations (innocent until proven guilty)

Bill Clinton

first baby boomer to be president, the first democrat since Carter, and the second president to be impeached

• Bill Clinton’s campaign was directed towards a younger voter demographic

• Woman says she has a 12 year affair with Bill Clinton, where he denies it

  • Bill Clinton’s voice message to her is shown at a press conference

• Got sued by Paula Jones for sexual harassment upon assuming his presidency

  • Her lawyers were republican, and wanted to find dirt on Clinton

• Linda Trip claimed that her best friend, Monica Lewinsky, was having an affair with Clinton

  • Lewinsky denied having an affair, but they did have an affair

• Upon learning about this, Hillary Clinton (his wife), makes Bill Clinton to swear he didn’t do this on Chelsea’s life (his daughter)

• Lewinsky decided to testify against Clinton after watching his denial of an affair on television, claiming that she felt like a whore

• Had a surplus instead of a deficit during his presidency, proving that his presidency wasn’t unsuccessful, but was heavily looked down upon due to this affair

Information Revolution

refers to the early 90s, with the “invention” and the popularizing of the internet

Rwanda

central African nation that suffered a genocide in the mid 1990s that killed half a million people

• Genocide is PLANNED and thoughtful, not spontaneous (cannot be negotiated out of)

• Rwanda was an independent country and wanted to put a government together, but had ethnic difficulties (darker-skinned v. lighter-skinned Rwandans)

  • Darker-skinned Rwandans viewed themselves as more African

• UN tells peacekeepers in Rwanda to fly home (essentially doing nothing)

• Half a million deaths in 100 days

“Workfare” / Crime Bill

two conservative reforms started by Clinton in the mid 1990s that helped him win re-election in 1996

• Both were extremely controversial, but as this brought Clinton towards a more centrist political stance, this got him more votes in the 1996 election

• Mandatory Work Requirements: for you to get welfare as an able-bodied person, you need to work 20 hrs a week and must have proof for it

• Pregnancy Prevention/Teen Parent Requirements: included money for condom distribution in American high schools, as teen pregnancy is detrimental to a young adult’s life

• Crime Bill: “3 strikes and in” - if you were on your 3rd felony, you couldn’t escape going to jail, which was detrimental to those who didn’t commit severe crimes

Timothy McVeigh

domestic terrorist who destroyed part of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995

• Came from an upper-class family and joined the Michigan militia

  • Believed that the government was going to come and take their guns one day

  • Disliked Affirmative Action, and believed the government was anti-white

• McVeigh rented a U-Haul and got a lot of drums of gasoline with a remote detonator to bomb Oklahoma City

• There was a daycare in the building that he bombed, and upon knowing that he murdered multiple children, he said he didn’t care

• Asked for the death penalty because it would show how unfair the government is for it to resort to killing its own citizens

  • He received the death penalty

Columbine

most infamous school shooting in American history in the late 1990s that killed nearly 20 students in Colorado

• Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the perpetrators) called themselves the “Trenchcoat Mafia”

• Harris and Klebold waited until lunch, and opened fire in the cafeteria & library to maximize casualties

Bush v. Gore (2000)

Supreme Court case that ended the Florida recount and declared Bush the winner

• Al Gore was VP under Clinton

• Al Gore beat Bush by 1.5 million votes in the popular vote

George W. Bush

president during the 2000s, and was the president during 9/11

Al Qaeda

terrorist organization responsible for 9-11, formerly led by Osama Bin Laden

• Manhunt for him lasted roughly a decade after 9/11 and was he found in Pakistan

9/11/2001

date of the worst terrorist attack in American history

• World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 because it was a symbol of American opulence and overreach

  • Learned that if it was hit at the top, there would be more destruction to the buildings

• The Pentagon consisted of 5 layers, with most people living within the 2nd to the 5th layers

Bush Doctrine

foreign policy where the US reserves the right to attack terrorists or any country harboring terrorists

• Made in the wake of 9/11

PATRIOT Act

gives the government additional authority to look into your private life

• Passed for 10 years and was renewed by Obama, where it was authorized for 10 more years, and was also renewed by Trump

Iraq War

refers to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that devolved into a civil war

• Obama won 2008 election due to running for ending the Iraq War

• Obama removed all American forces on January 1, 2010, and ISIS is established by the terrorists in the Middle East

The “Great Recession”

refers to the 2009 economic slowdown that took place because of a real estate bubble

• Bush Administration says that if people are close enough to getting a home, they were given the home

• Home prices rise due to more people buying homes, which make them harder to afford

• People start selling houses which makes housing prices drop a lot

• People file for bankruptcy, which cuts off what banks received

• 10.5% to 11% unemployment at the time of Obama’s inauguration

Barack Obama

president in the early 2010s that passed the first national healthcare system

• Known as “Barry” Obama in high school

• First priority as president was healthcare motivated due to his mom dying from cancer

Affordable Care Act / “Obamacare”

extends Medicaid and makes private insurance easier to buy

Benghazi

refers to the US Embassy in Libya which was destroyed by terrorists in September of 2012, and was lied about by the administration

• Worst moment of Obama’s presidency

• This happens 2 months prior to the Election of 2012, and hurts Obama’s campaign as he couldn’t claim that he’s kept the country safe for the past 4 years

  • Despite this, Obama still wins re-election in 2012

• September 12, 2012, the US Embassy in Libya is set on fire

• First time since 1979 that an American embassy was destroyed

• Obama claims that this was a protest that went too far (although it was technically a terrorist attack)

• Hillary Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State, and Congress gave her a hard time

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage using the 14th Amendment

• 14th Amendment: passed to get rid of the idea passed in the Dred Scott Decision, where slaves were viewed not as citizens, but as property

• States should have control over marriage laws, because you don’t want people marrying people/things they shouldn’t be

• Opposition to same-sex marriage was more about protecting the sanctity of traditional marriage rather than gay rights

• Chief Justice Roberts’ voted against the legalization of same-sex marriage despite supporting it due to the fact that it was never mentioned in the Constitution

Donald Trump

businessman that became president in 2016, and was the 2nd president to be elected to 2 non-consecutive terms

• Trump was sent off to a military academy

• Beat out expectations during the 2016 election, as he wasn’t into politics even in 2015

• Billionaire president that was supported mainly by people that don’t have a college education and were making less money

Coronavirus

2020 pandemic that killed over 1 million Americans

George Floyd

African-American man murdered by police in 2020 and caused a national protest

• Floyd hands cashier a fake $20 bill

• Police officer asks Floyd to get out of his car as he’s about to leave the area (not trying to flee, just leave)

• Officer kneels on Floyd’s neck and suffocates him to death, which causes nationwide protest in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic

January 6, 2021

date of the riot on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters who thought the 2020 election was stolen

• Worst thing from this was that 40% of Americans believed that the 2020 election was rigged

• Trump pardoned all people involved in the January 6th riots upon his 2nd term

2024 Election

first election in American history where a sitting president won his party’s nomination, and didn’t run for president

• Joe Biden stepped down from running for president, and nominated his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic Party’s Vice President