Nixon, Reagan, Vietnam, Iran-Contra, Moral Majority. I could go on. Have we tried to do good? Yes, but we need to stop fooling ourselves that our shit don't stink.

The Iran-Contra-Cocaine affair.

When I started researching what the U.S. was doing. I got into it heavily after 9/11. I was 22. I guess it can go back to, and start with, researching as far back as the 50s and 60s for me with not just JFK but also Vietnam, but in modern times it was probably the Gulf War and Bush 1's dealings with Iraq.

Even more recently with checking out the mentality of someone like James Madison and his Federalist Papers. He was a shit eating status quo ass licker of rich people who wanted to give Americans the illusion of freedom and autonomy.

It has just been an avalanche of information and reading over the years. Seeing how the government deals with issues. Reading about wealthy U.S. people and politicians and how they deal with topics like eugenics and Nazis and corporations etc. The world, and especially the U.S., has a disgusting history.

Well for me, an damn ex-foreigner, it was back in the 60's (that's the 1960's ) during the Vietnam war era. I remember the protests and demonstrations that took place in both Australia (where I grew up) and the U.S. (news reports). I can recall the first American that I met was in the U.K. and I was surprised that he didn't have horns and a pitchfork! Really. I couldn't get over how 'normal' he really looked.

Around the age of 28, with Desert Storm, and it grows worse with each year. There was some hope but the more I hear from people writing books, and such, leads me to realize that hope was false. Now I think the environment is going to kill us all off in 50 years.

For me the force of the allegation came from returning missionaries who claimed the peasants were trapped in a subsistence economy on banana and coffee plantations by American corporations. This was first in the late 50s or early 60s.

I was perturbed by the Vietnam war; really upset by Nixon & Kissinger supporting Pakistani crimes against Bangladesh in 1971; upset again by the serial crimes and coverups of the Clinton era; very uneasy when Bush 2 said we were war with terrorism, not radical Islam; perturbed again about a Kenyan becoming US President (here's his genuine birth certificate [wasobamaborninkenya.com] ). But when I really knew we were in deep trouble is when Tina Turner renounced her US citizenship in 2013! Fortunately, Trump has promised to make America great again, and I hope he is successful.

For me it was in Highschool in the 90s. I learnt about the Japanese internment camps and that was it for me.

Vietnam....l was in the Army and saw the deception that was going on. I grew up in politics and was pretty cynical anyway.

Watergate wasn't a tipping point for me because there were hearings and an investigation and people in the Congress who were OF the President's party were active in this. I didn't believe that the US was a country where there would never be wrongdoing at the top, but I believed that there would be consequences and that both parties in their own way wanted what was best for America. In those days, I felt like there was still a lot of progress to be made where racism, discrimination, poverty, and sexism were concerned, but I had that sense that the moral arc of the nation was always bending towards justice. I don't feel that way anymore, a feeling that has been steadily growing over the last decades. I feel like our system is driven more by money and feelings of personal resentment than by goals and ideals that we normally would call "American".

As soon as I heard about American tent cities - that was it. I knew the American dream was a lie.

Tho I still retain the "idealized" picture of America in my mind that I was originally taught, & that I wish we aspired to, it was the Viet Nam war, more than anything, & the lies & brutality that was exposed, that made me a cynic & a skeptic. The more real history I discovered & learned, the more disillusioned I became. I still yearn for & build towards, as much as I'm able, the 'vision' of what America can & should be, & that isn't an empire or the world's police force!

Missed being born in Florida by just a few weeks, but spent my childhood going back and forth between NJ & FL. Got to witness A LOT of intolerance and irrational hate in both regions. Got to hear a lot of adults spew vitriol towards hippies, gays, blacks, Puerto Ricans, women who dared protest anything, college students, and anyone who wasn't white and catholic. That was just the late 60s.
Then the 70s came along and I became aware of politics. It got exponentially worse from there.

9 or 10 actually. Riot in hometown. Desegregation. Watergate, Kent State.

Noticing racism at a very young age.

Unfortunately, I never thought the USA was the beacon of freedom and integrity. It is a class society from the beginning and it has gotten so much worse in my lifetime.