The best fascism.....is anti-fascism.
People are stupid enough to believe anti-fascism isn't fascism.
Friday, 17 May 2019
Political Chatter
"As I like to tell the president when he says he likes tariffs, I try to remind him that Smoot-Hawley brought about the Great Depression, brought about Adolf Hitler, brought about World War II, brought about 60 million people losing their lives as a result of it."
-- Senator Chuck Grassley (Rep, Iowa)
Well, lets take a handle to this and discuss Chuck's poor vision of history.
There's at least a dozen 'warning' signals that were occurring from 1920 to 1929 that massive collapse of Wall Street was going to occur. Various signals were taken and explained to the major banks, Senators, Congressmen, the Fed, and the Presidents. None of them reacted. You can count through dozen-odd speculation events that went into stock, real estate, and bonds.
The Smoot-Hawley Act? The idea (roughly a year into the depression era) was to prevent cheap products from overseas from coming to the US market. In a sense, it was to protect US jobs. If the priority was NOT US jobs, then this could have been avoided, and some other fake stance by the House and Senate could have easily been accomplished.
The suggestion by economic historians of some great 'evil' being done with the Act? The Depression was already into the first entire stage, and nothing that Hoover had done....had accomplished much of anything in terms of resolving this issue. Action by the Fed? Almost non-existent.....they were the last people on Earth who wanted to resolve the Depression. Some felt that the dire warnings for almost a decade....now had to be dished out in painful amounts to prevent the massive amount of speculation that had occurred.
As for this bringing about Hitler? No. There are three key observations here:
1. The Weimar Republic was one of the weakest democracy platforms ever created. It was doomed from day one.
2. Hitler was already enjoying from the 1925 era on....the great benefit of radio. He had a platform to pump out speeches, and talk about suffering of the 'people'.
3. All that hostility and resentment by vets of Germany over WW I? No one ever wants to go and discuss their hostility and how that brewed for almost an entire decade.
Senator Grassley and his assessment? Mostly worthless. But this is why the general public has such a low opinion of the bulk of GOP Senators and Congressmen in DC.
Do Southerners Discuss Civil War and Pre-Civil War History Much?
No.
This is a rather odd piece of misunderstanding that journalists and intellectuals seem to have....that 153 years later....it's just not that big of a deal.
If you find a guy who did family research and found that six members of his family were members of some state militia....then he gets into this, and maybe the guy starts attending Civil War reenactments.
Most folks go back on family history and find in 99-percent of cases....their family never owned any slaves.
Structure in high school history? You can go and pull out the history books used for 8th grade or 10th grade American history and find that there's one single chapter on the period, and it's mostly over the northern perception of the war. Some teachers might try to force kids to go and read Uncle Tom's Cabin.....to ensure they have some understanding. Beyond that? Nothing much.
If you held a history test over the 1800 to 1865 period.....General Lee and President Davis are about the only two southerners brought up by a majority. Some might bring up another five or six generals, but otherwise, they really don't know much of this period.
All these statues? Well....the vast majority were put up around twenty to fifty years after the war ended. Most were paid for by private donations or private parties. In the vast number of cases, this whole statue phase ended by the 1930s (having peaked out between 1900 and 1920).
The Klan business? That's another odd thing. The FBI says, for the most part....real membership hasn't existed in over forty years. Even today, they hint that official members is probably in the 1,000 to 2,000 range across the entire US. It would be safe to say that 99.9-percent of people who live in the state of Georgia....aren't members of the Klan.
The sad truth? More people in Alabama know more about the University of Alabama football record over the past forty years, than about the Civil War or the sixty years prior to the war.
Black emergence over the past couple of decades? That's another curious development. Go look at the number owning relatively new cars and having a home-ownership situation....the statistics have rapidly risen over the past five decades. Kids in a two-parent black families continue on to educational goals....end up in a community college, trade school, or college.....then get jobs and pay taxes. Kids in the disjointed family situation get into screwed-up situations and then don't rise.
So all this hype over the Civil War and the years since? Just fake chatter? One might get that impression.
This is a rather odd piece of misunderstanding that journalists and intellectuals seem to have....that 153 years later....it's just not that big of a deal.
If you find a guy who did family research and found that six members of his family were members of some state militia....then he gets into this, and maybe the guy starts attending Civil War reenactments.
Most folks go back on family history and find in 99-percent of cases....their family never owned any slaves.
Structure in high school history? You can go and pull out the history books used for 8th grade or 10th grade American history and find that there's one single chapter on the period, and it's mostly over the northern perception of the war. Some teachers might try to force kids to go and read Uncle Tom's Cabin.....to ensure they have some understanding. Beyond that? Nothing much.
If you held a history test over the 1800 to 1865 period.....General Lee and President Davis are about the only two southerners brought up by a majority. Some might bring up another five or six generals, but otherwise, they really don't know much of this period.
All these statues? Well....the vast majority were put up around twenty to fifty years after the war ended. Most were paid for by private donations or private parties. In the vast number of cases, this whole statue phase ended by the 1930s (having peaked out between 1900 and 1920).
The Klan business? That's another odd thing. The FBI says, for the most part....real membership hasn't existed in over forty years. Even today, they hint that official members is probably in the 1,000 to 2,000 range across the entire US. It would be safe to say that 99.9-percent of people who live in the state of Georgia....aren't members of the Klan.
The sad truth? More people in Alabama know more about the University of Alabama football record over the past forty years, than about the Civil War or the sixty years prior to the war.
Black emergence over the past couple of decades? That's another curious development. Go look at the number owning relatively new cars and having a home-ownership situation....the statistics have rapidly risen over the past five decades. Kids in a two-parent black families continue on to educational goals....end up in a community college, trade school, or college.....then get jobs and pay taxes. Kids in the disjointed family situation get into screwed-up situations and then don't rise.
So all this hype over the Civil War and the years since? Just fake chatter? One might get that impression.
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