Timeline

 Timeline of events relating to individualism

1. 1922 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button published (reproduced piece)

2. 1925 - The Great Gatsby published (anchor text)

3. 1955- Beginning of organized civil rights movement (historical event)

4. 1970 - FBI’s Kent State shooting report published internally (reproduced)

5. 1974 - President Richard Nixon resigns as a result of the Watergate scandal

6. 1975 - Who Lost Vietnam? cartoon published (reproduced)

7. 1998 - Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged (historical)

8. 2000 - GW Bush wins presidency despite minority of votes (historical)

9. 2006 - WikiLeaks created in Iceland (historical)

10. 2009 - Notorious film review published (reproduced)

11. 2011 - Occupy Movement begins (historical)

Historical events

3. The civil rights movement was included on this timeline because the momentous social upheaval that it caused impacted society in innumerable ways, and expanded the hopes of individual freedom and self-determination to a far wiser segment of society than in previous years.

5. The Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation betrayed the American people’s trust in the government to an irreparable extent, and hedonistic cynicism in regards to governmental affairs took root after this scandal. Even today, the suffix “-gate” is used to denote political scandals throughout the world.

7. By the time “Sexgate” emerged in 1998, faith in the trustworthiness of the government was at an all-time low, and the revelation that the President himself was a philanderer came as no surprise to Americans, nor did his dishonest, self-serving testimony to Congress.

8. For only the fourth time in American history, a presidential election was won by the candidate with less popular votes than his opposition, in the case of George W. Bush in the year 2000. Approximately half of Americans were satisfied with the result, while the other half were completely outraged. Despite the supposed unity of American, the election in 2000 showed that people in the United States were just as bitterly opposed to one another as people in the world’s worst war zones.

9. WikiLeaks was created as an organization dedicated to truth and transparency in all facets of public life, and despite the attempts of governments worldwide to prevent them from working towards this goal, the bombastic and unprecedented use of force to stop protesters from revealing injustice did not stop the revelation of documents that caused public embarrassment to the US government and led people to question the motives of their leaders in attempting to control the spread of information. Technology allowed innumerable people to make their own decisions with the facts presented to them, rather than blindly drinking from one, government-approved source.

11. Beginning in New York with Occupy Wall Street, a protest against financial mismanagement and socioeconomic inequality blamed on financial speculators, the Occupy movement quickly grew into a worldwide protest with various branches dedicated to protesting governmental and organizational ineptitude when dealing with social and economic issues. Although opposed by governments worldwide and subverted by the FBI in the United States, Occupy succeeded in awakening people’s consciousness to social issues.