![World War I propaganda poster "keep these [boots] off the U.S.A."](https://cromulentmanifesto.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/boots-off.jpg)
Selling a war is no easy feat; Pearl Harbor doesn’t often fall into the laps of war hungry politicians so how do you whip the public into a frenzy? In the case of World War I, Woodrow Wilson simply changed the optics from a run-of-the-mill fight between European imperial powers over control of the continent into a struggle for freedom, liberty, democracy, and civilization itself.
Throughout the 19th and into the early 20th centuries, the vast majority of Americans held firm to anti-interventionist sentiments, particularly with regard to Europe. There was a lingering suspicion of European imperialism and a sense that the petty infighting on the other side of the Atlantic would only bring chaos to our shores if we chose to get involved.
