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Anxiety During The 1950s

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During the 1950s the whole nation was filled with extremely high levels of anxiety. This was due to a ton of different factors that ended up changing the country as a whole. One of the main factors that contributed to the high levels of anxiety was not being able to trust the government and threats both inside and outside of the country. Because of all of the anxiety there was an increase in conflict and tension. Although there were some positive outcomes such as the United States having big growth in the economy and turning it into what it is today.
Many things caused anxiety but a huge one was the fact that the government was being portrayed to be disloyal and untrustworthy by a man named Joseph McCarthy. According to “The Gilder Lehrman …show more content…

A big fear of the people during the Cold War was that Russia could launch an atomic bomb at us at any time. We had just witnessed what happened to Japan and we did not want that to happen to us. According to “The Fifties AP US History Study Guide from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History” it says, “Then, in 1950, only a week after Hiss’s conviction for perjury, a British atomic scientist named Klaus Fuchs, who had worked on the Manhattan Project during the war, turned himself in to Scotland Yard in London and admitted that he had been passing to the Soviets all the atomic secrets to which he had access.” People already had so much anxiety about an atomic bomb and now someone in our own government went and told Russia all of our secrets. Knowing that information was in their hands was terrifying. Also during this time the US and Russia were fighting to see who could get to space first. According to “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort.” President Kennedy says, “We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.” Kennedy addresses the fact that Russia is threatening to use space as a huge weapon if they get there before us. Space was extremely unknown which caused a lot of people to have fear and anxiety especially with Russia making threats to use it as a

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