Downwards Funnel/US History

* Benedict Arnold supported the British and ended up being seen by Americans as Super Evil because of it.
* The 13th Amendment stated that no African American would be enslaved (it even said no one would be enslaved unless it's to repay a debt). Even with the 13th Amendment enforced, however, southern states put in Black Codes and eventually the Jim Crow laws, both gone by the end of the 1960s.
* Monopolies and trusts went into a spiral while three Presidents were in office:
	+ Theodore Roosevelt is known as a "trustbuster" since during his presidency, Roosevelt ordered the Supreme Court to sue 44 different trusts, breaking up a number of them. The next president, William Howard Taft, took a level in trustbusting and claimed that *all* trusts were harmful to the American economy (basically "if it's big business, it's Super Evil"). Finally, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, an act was signed that not only strengthened the weakening Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which was brought in to *regulate* monopolies), it also outright made monopolies and acquisitions that result in them illegal.
	+ On the other hand, Taft appointed Richard A. Ballinger, who in turn took millions of acres of land and possibly sold them *and* fired Gifford Pinchot from the U.S. Forest Service, angering a lot of Progressive Republicans.
* The temperance movement (especially Carrie Nation) resulted in the 18th Amendment getting passed. The Volstead Act defined all "intoxicating liquors" as containing more than .5% of alcohol by volume, making all "hard" drinks illegal (as opposed to beverages such as Coca-Cola, which revised their formulas to remove alcohol and thus remained legal during Prohibition).
* This trope, combined with scientists discovering that radium was dangerous, is what buried the fortunes of both US Radium and Radium Dial Company into the ground after the 1920s. After Marie Curie discovered the element, people started thinking radium brought health benefits despite radium instead having the opposite effect. But what finally brought the two companies down despite this was a massive series of lawsuits, settlements, and a whole lot of Radium Girls. Additionally, the Radium Girls' stories (and more importantly, successes in court) finally convinced other workplaces to stop using dangerous quantities of radium, and by the end of WWII, radium was restricted to select (and safely-conducted) purposes.
* Al Capone ended up going through a famous inversion of Innocent punishment- the only crime Al was convicted for was tax evasion because *nothing else would stick*.
* Herbert Hoover lost his re-election bid due to the worst of The Great Depression. People blamed Hoover for not printing more money to combat the deflationary cycle, yet Hoover ignored them. And then the Bonus Army demanded immediate cash that was supposed to be paid out in 1945. When the Patman Bill was voted down, Hoover then decided to *disband* the Bonus Army. When he gassed the Bonus Marchers, people not only got angry, they decided it was time for change. And where did they get change? Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would give the nation the New Deal.
* Martin Luther King, Jr. (no, he didn't create the 95 Theses) took offense towards Jim Crow laws and segregation, and after a big speech (and the passage of an Amendment banning the poll tax), the Jim Crow laws were more or less gone. Despite this, there is still discrimination against African-Americans.
* Richard Nixon, while not admitting to be a crook, went on a downwards spiral so quickly, he was almost impeached for it. Thanks to Watergate and Nixon releasing edited tapes, Nixon resigned from office, the only U.S. president to do so.
* Bernie Madoff wouldn't have been documented here had he not literally created the worst Ponzi Scheme in United States history. Basically, unlike stocks, which go up or down depending on how well the business was doing, Bernie Madoff offered a flat return. Which was a big mistake on his part- once the 2008 recession hit, people who demanded, say, *$7 billion* found out about it. And now he's In Jail for More than Life. 150 years, specifically.
* In the 2012 elections, in an effort to get Mitt Romney the presidency, there were several ads that said that "the private sector is not doing fine". There was also one campaign ad with somewhat of a catchy tune that urges the public to vote for Romney. Naturally, Democrats were furious at these campaign ads, and since at the time they held the majority of seats in Congress, Obama received a second term (like Clinton and Bush before him).
* Pat McCrory went on a downwards spiral during the 2016 election over a controversial part of House Bill 2 (also known as HB2). This caused the *NBA* to pull most games from North Carolina, and the U.S. Department of Education reportedly *threatened* to cut off funding from North Carolina schools. And if *that* wasn't bad enough, *PayPal* decided to cancel its entrance into the state because of this. Thankfully, the controversial portion was repealed as of March 30th, 2017.
* Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, went on a publicity spiral during his four years in office:
	+ His first executive order after becoming president limited immigration. The order, predictably, was struck down by the courts. But *then* a revision was upheld by the court. Naturally, Joe Biden struck down said order with an executive order of his own once he took office.
	+ His border wall proposal was apparently enough to cause a government shutdown. Yes, you heard that right- a government shutdown occurred *over a wall*. In 2021, Biden, upon becoming President himself, immediately cancelled construction of the Border Wall via executive order.
	+ Trump was eventually impeached (but predictably acquitted) in 2019, and this wouldn't even be the only time he was impeached, even.
	+ Trump's publicity spiral worsened between Election Day 2020 and Inauguration Day 2021. COVID-19 and the ensuing chaos was already enough for Trump to lose his re-election bid (complete with his catchphrase being turned on him), but he then filed dozens of lawsuits, claiming there was election fraud. Predictably (and luckily), they were all laughed out of court one by one. Unfortunately, his supporters had enough and stormed the Capitol. Besides the fact that most people strongly condemned the actions of the rioters (Tropes Fanon itself does not condone the actions the rioters took during the incident), Trump also lost a huge chunk of what support he had left, and eventually got impeached a second time (the first time a US President was ever impeached more than once). This meant that the resulting impeachment trial was the first to take place when the President in question is no longer in office (even if it resulted in an acquittal).
		- It also caused people who *supported* this incident to get rightfully punished in humiliating ways- a permanent ban from Twitter and/or Facebook, being made pariahs across the Internet, and in some cases they even got arrested and charged with felonies.
* There's a golden rule of medicine: don't sabotage a vaccine. A pharmacist intentionally tried to forget said rule, and thus was arrested for letting hundreds of doses of the COVID vaccine rot.
* Ajit Pai, former head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), went on a downwards spiral once he repealed net neutrality. It got so bad, the FCC received a multi-state lawsuit over this. In the face of an incoming Biden administration, this may be one of the reasons Pai handed in his resignation letter, effective January 20th, 2021.