Reading A People's History of the United States put that on my radar. I hadn't given the idea any thought until a college course assigned this book. I was educated in a standard American public school during the Reagan and Clinton eras, complete with Pledge of Allegiance. The standard schoolbooks omit a lot of atrocities and smooth over the ugly reality.

Whatever legitimate criticisms you lay on it, Zinn's takedown opened my worldview and intensified my pre-existing anti-authoritarian streak.

9/11 happened shortly after and by then I considered Bush an illegitimate president. I watched him wage an unjustified war, and with the whole of our bloody rampage across the globe that clicked neatly into place. "America #1" is a sick joke.