America’s Untold History by Oliver Stone has been running on Showtime. Stone goes into fairly good detail and the series begins with WWII, though to me he could have easily gone back to WWI or even the Civil War to show how much our wars of conquest – and make no mistake they have been wars of conquest – have been influenced by, supported by and funded by Wall Street, corporate America and the banks.

He (Stone) paints a sordid picture of how we have stolen land and resources over the years from other countries to build and maintain prosperity at home and to fill the coffers of those on Wall Street, using propaganda to justify them which the vast majority of Americans would swallow hook line and sinker. Not really caring much about how this country was able to maintain their life style, just as long as it did.

Americans like to put their leaders up on pedestals and praise them, turning a blind eye to their actual legacy. Stone does neither – leaving little unexposed. Stone never actually points the finger of blame but pulls no punches, naming names of all those involved, with quotes from many of them. We here tend to revere our leaders but if you watch the whole thing you may find yourself reviling more than a few of them as well as their administrations and their political parties.

A good part of the series concentrates on anti-communist propaganda – championed initially by Harry Truman and his cabinet here and by Churchill in Britain – and how this would direct American foreign and domestic policy up through the 1990s. He also shows how this propaganda came from Wall Street and the Wall Street people that every president had as advisers. It is a shame, however, that there is no mention of how much the Bolshevik revolution struck at the hearts of the western capitalists.

Not the overthrow of the Czar but the overthrow of the capitalists and the defeat of the White Russians, who we had supported in the civil war that followed, striking fear into their hearts. Or how socialism and communism had become extremely popular here especially during the depressions of the late 1920s and 1930s and how Wall Street and political propaganda would make damn sure this popularity was completely crushed.

Stone at least questions whether communism simply became Raison d’être for our military adventurism and continued military spending even as early as the mid 1960s. It is interesting to note that Stone refers to the taxes the rich had to pay during the cold war as “War Tax” and after the fall of the Soviet Union this was no longer seen as necessary. That even Clinton would squander and “Peace Dividend” by throwing even more money at the Pentagon. This becomes even more evident with the “War on Terror” supplementing the War on Communism, which begot the War on Drugs.

The series also shows that with few – if any – exceptions the US intervened in and help topple any government that might want to kick out any American corporation. And this was anywhere in the world, Asia, Africa, South America …….

What really strikes me is that with no exception and without missing a beat, every administration has carried on in a business-as-usual manner from the previous one with regards to the military and financial sector since President Truman’s.

I highly recommend watching each one and though they are each around 59 minutes long, he does put a lot of information out in each one. He also does a pretty good job of tying together previous history with the subject of each chapter.

Here is a link to the first episode. With luck they will remain up for a while.