A Tale of Two Depressions 2
Donald Kaul points out, one more time, that the past is not even past, in a particularly depressing context:
Conservative leaders, then as now, were absolutely clueless as to what regular people were going through. There’s a reason they call what we’ve just experienced the “Great Recession” and the 1930s economy the “Great Depression.” The Depression was much more devastating, with 13-15 million people unemployed, leaving as many as 34 million men, women, and children with no income at all.
Their safety net was often a garbage heap in which they foraged for food, or worse, begged for it. Yet President Herbert Hoover actually said: “Nobody is actually starving. The hobos, for example, are better fed than they have ever been.”
And when it was suggested that the Du Pont family’s corporation sponsor a Sunday afternoon program during the Depression, a member of the clan rejected the idea on grounds that “at three o’clock on Sunday afternoons, everybody is playing polo.”
Does that sound like Mitt Romney talking to his country club friends or what?
Read the rest.
May 14, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Interestingly, William Randolph Hearst did eventually get his comeuppance. He became a laughing stock, got horribly upset over Citizen Kane, lost most of his properties except for a few newspapers and San Simeon. San Simeon, BTW, is awesome. I got interested in Hearst when we visited it out here. If you had his money, San Simeon on the central coast is quite something, particularly when overlooking the ocean from the hills. However, the Hearsts of today, never get what they have coming. And, like the article, the GOP theme that poor people in the US don’t need help because they’re “obese,” the fattest bums in the world, is a common and repellent trope that is undying. The entire Republican Party still believes the vicious lie that people getting the foodstamp benefit use it to buy liquor.
May 14, 2013 at 10:33 pm
Blame the victim. It’s the American Way.
In other news, the Coast Starlight goes through a gorgeous horseshoe curve at San Luis. You can be in the rear coach and shake hands with the engineer. I once took a picture from the rear coach of the headend of my train. Showed it to someone who asked, “What train is that?” “It’s the one I was on.”
I’m tired. This stuff wears on one.