Category Archives: Week 2: Cold War Origins

The Lavender Scare was a moral panic pertaining to gay people in government. It coincided with the Red Scare in terms of mass hysteria about otherized boogeymen infiltrating and sabotaging the American system. The Red and Lavender Scares received relatively little serious resistance, as all involved parties were happy enough to use associated buzzwords toContinue reading “Gay or Soviet?”

After the end of WWll, there was a huge concern about the spread of communism throughout the world. The Soviet Union was controlling the nations it took from the Nazi party rather than freeing them. The huge presence of the Soviet Union caused widespread fear of communism and gave birth to the time known asContinue reading “A True American Man”

The “Red Scare” and the “Lavender Scare” go hand in hand as the “Red Scare” gave way to the “Lavender Scare”. The “Red Scare” was a wave of fear of communism in American politics. The “Lavender Scare” was a wave of fear of homosexuals in American politics. Both scares allowed politicians and journalists to smearContinue reading “Week 2 Lavender Scare”

                                                      Landon Thompson       The “Lavender Scare” was a mass persecution of suspected homosexuals in the United States government and American industry that was influenced by the decisions of senator Joe McCarthy. These persecutions of homosexuals took place simultaneously to the Red Scare of the 1950’s (Friedman, 2018). Ironically, McCarthy later was targeted by thisContinue reading “Blogpost #2”

The lavender scare was a part of the new rising fear of homosexual men and women and how they could be a possible threat to the United States. Gay men and lesbian women were becoming more common during the cold war. And though the majority of the U.S. population did not agree with it atContinue reading “What did we fear more, Communists or Homosexuality?”

The national security state is a newfangled term for a function of government that has always existed. Part and parcel of governance is deciding just how much the public needs to know — even the best-intentioned policies of transparency must reconcile with the fact that there is simply too much information passing through government serversContinue reading “Counting Sheep”

After WWll, there were huge amounts of tension between the United States and its former allies the Soviet Union, which today is known as the Cold War. The United States used a nuclear bomb to end the war with Japan, which set off an arms race with the Soviet Union. The United States needed toContinue reading “Cold War”

The national security state is an institution developed during the early years of the Cold War. Originally, as Dean states, the national security state was “designed to provide the executive branch with intelligence concerning the intentions and capabilities of actual or potential enemies, and to provide the capacity to wage covert campaigns against those deemedContinue reading “National Security State: The Sheep Didn’t Deserve This”

  HIST: 218                                                          Landon Thompson     The National Security State is a nation where the executive branch of the government, in coordination with its associated government agencies, provides the federal government with intelligence about actual, perceived, and potential threats to the nation (Dean, 2011). The actions of this state involve the overthrowing of other independent countriesContinue reading “Blogpost #1”

This week our class is focusing on the nuclear weapons tests that occurred after the end of the Second World War. These tests took place in the desolate deserts of Nevada and while the explosions were heard about and known. Many of their details were kept out of the eyes of the American public. ThisContinue reading “Blog Week 1”