Kansas City Defines American Experience

A worthwhile think piece and a bit of writing that shouldn't be overlooked inasmuch as most of the content about this town is either manufactured by bots or REALLY BORED newsies who desperately want better jobs in PR.

But I digress . . .

Here's the line that stands out . . .

But it’s really in the twentieth century that Kansas City itself sat at the heart of the American cultural experience. How so? To begin, Kansas City was a textbook example of machine politics. Tom Pendergast built a political machine so thorough and efficient that is has been studied ever since. Most Americans have heard of Tammany Hall, but Kansas City is another place that we can examine the role of machine politics in our past.

Out of that machine actually arose one of our most upright presidents, Harry S. Truman. Truman got his start in Kansas City and was a farmer before he was a politician. He was our last president without a college degree and was a war veteran—two traits shared by a vast number of twentieth century Americans. Harry Truman made the decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan. He desegregated the U.S. military. He launched the “Truman Doctrine.” It’s hard to imagine our country without those interventions.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Kansas City at the center of the American experience

The Kansas City Chiefs just won the 2023 Super Bowl earlier this month. This is a moment in the sun for Kansas City. But it's also a good opportunity for me to bring up a pet theory I have. I think Kansas City sits right at the center of the twentieth-century American Experience.