Political turmoil, and American citizens willingness to be at each others throats, reveals the now urgent need to draw the stark contrast between our grandparent's and parent's generations, and many of the offspring of those generations. I happen to be a member of that "offspring generation" who approaches things from a different perspective.
During the Great Depression President Roosevelt led the beginning of the building of modern America. In spite of tremendous hardship the generations of the Great Depression built:
- The Golden Gate Bridge
- Hoover Dam
- Most of the Canal System in the United States
- Most of our existing, electric power delivery system
- Trolley car systems in every major city, (later torn down as revealed in the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car”)
- The continuation and expansion of the New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. subway systems
- The first major city airports from coast to coast
- and a myriad other major undertakings by our Government, much of which we benefit from, to this day
All this happened during the hardest economic times our Country has seen in a hundred years, while the Great Depression was at it's peak.
How did they do this in the most challenging of times? The answer is, strong silent resolve. Gritty determination to pull together, and do whatever they could to get through impossible times, together. They did this with Government playing a major role as facilitator, encourager and implementer. Franklin Roosevelt led with a fearless determination, highlighted by his challenge during his first inaugural address that, "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."
In stark contrast, many of the children of the Franklin Roosevelt generations live their lives in constant fear. As a result they build virtually nothing. They have no vision of the future, other than wanting to live by the original Constitution. The original Constitution, which does not allow women the right to own property, effectively blocking them from voting. The original Constitution which only counts three fifth's of blacks as people, and specifically in writing, did not allow American Indians rights of any kind, (Article I, Section II, Paragraph III).
These "original constitutionalist" are clearly able to be frightened by whatever talk show host they subject themselves to, on a daily basis, that feeds them a steady diet of untruths. "Obama's a Muslim, he’s a really bad Christian, he's not a citizen, he's a Marxist, Sharia law is taking over America, the new Black Panther's are coming to get you, (all two of them)". "Valerie Plame was just a secretary, Obama's spending 200 million dollars a day to go to India", and on and on and on. These gullible souls gulp these lies down like little birds, with their mouths open wide, eating worms from their mother’s beaks, all the while not realizing the relevance of who they are listening to. 400 million dollar Rush Limbaugh, 200 million dollar Sean Hannity and 40 million dollar Glenn Beck and many others. They never correlate the agenda's these wealthy people have, that work directly against their own best interest.
They whine about electric cars. When they call into Rush he has them programmed to greet him with, "gas guzzling ditto's Rush", without understanding or caring about the irresponsibility of such a comment. They rail on about the evils of clean power, high speed rail, infrastructure improvements and anything else that would get our Nation back on track, and help restore our National pride.
It seems to me the only time these people are proud is when they are building terrible weapons of war at the multitude of factories that make up our military industrial complex, (by far our largest social program in history). How sad that we have become so adept at killing on a mass scale in so many different ways.
To me, it is sad to see these folks in action, overwhelmed by fear, whipped into a frenzy over what they see as "threats to their freedoms". Most of the Tea Party people we see on T.V. are in their fifties, sixties and older. They claim they don't want big government, but they take advantage of our largest, Roosevelt created social programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They are completely clueless regarding all the government facilities they use as a simple matter of living their lives. Things like airports, train stations, highways, mass transit systems (however old they may be), and sewage and water treatment plants, all built by the government.
Unemployment in 1929 was 23%. Ten years later in 1939 it was still a staggering 19%..... and yet the American public saw the importance of supporting a leader who represented new ideas to turn things around. They continued to elect President Roosevelt over and over again through it all, in spite of the extended pain of the Great Depression.
They knew he stood for them, and they were willing to give him the freedom and the time to fix things in whatever ways he could. Some of what he tried failed, so he discontinued programs that did not work, but much of what he introduced through the New Deal saved America, and continues on to this day.
That generation did not forget the disastrous effects of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations. That generation’s memories were fully functional. They knew it would take time to fix the mess they were in. As a result they did not let their immediate pains result in shortsightedness, which could have deteriorated into backbiting, discontent and ill advised change of direction.
Spring forward eighty years, America finds itself in another economic catastrophe as a result of policies from a previous administration. So we elect a new President, by a large majority in 2008, who has new ideas and who promises change.
He gets two major pieces of historic legislation passed in record time in spite of the obstructionist republicans, Health Care and Financial Reform. The stock market nearly doubles in under two years and many people see their 401k’s partially recover from the abyss of the 2008 crash as a result. There are 15 strait months of economic growth, but many Americans live in constant fear. Why? As a result of the crashing economy he was left with in 2009, including the 750,000 jobs a month that were being lost, unemployment was quickly rising towards double digits. He has since been able to arrest that free fall, and actually turn the job loss numbers into gains over the last nine months, but he has only moved unemployment down slightly since it's peak in January 2009.
Due to big business refusal to stop off shoring jobs in the middle of the Great Recession, and people who have been off the roles of job seekers re-entering the workforce as job growth starts, it has been challenging to move the actual percentages significantly.
In spite of these gains, many of those in the electorate live their lives watching Fox "News", whining about whatever they are told to whine about, and fearing whatever they are told to fear.
Somehow, we have gone from a bold fearless people, to a bunch of chicken little's. Many of us are now showing a shocking willingness to follow right wing pundits off the cliff of economic ruin. They are doing this by actually believing, that the crisis created by the right’s disastrous low tax and war without pay policies, is now to be fixed only by far right wing shock and awe austerity implementation. The insanity of this reasoning can only be explained by the total effectiveness of mass fear mongering.
As much as it pains me to draw this conclusion, America may need another Great Depression. We may need times to get so bad, due to Hooveristic austerity and Rand Paul Libertarianism, that we hit another all time, self imposed, economic disaster. We may need a crisis that makes us so desperately poor at the hands of the new, ultra rich, ultra powerful Robber Barons, that we find ourselves so busy working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week just to feed ourselves, that we finally learn, once and for all, the hard lessons we have not been willing to learn from a history that begs to teach us.
I am 55. Believe it or not, I have been known as eternally optimistic. When I travel, I see the progress other countries have made. High speed rail, that we built in Japan. More HSR in China, Germany, Spain, Italy and Taiwan to name just a few. Clean energy growing exponentially in China. Solar continuing to expand in Germany, Spain and Italy.
Today, two days after a disastrous, fear driven, mid-term 2010 election result, my eternal optimism has taken a blow. The Tea-Party folks showed up and carried the day. Many who supported Obama less than two short years ago could not find it within themselves to continue their support of a man they suppossedly were crazy about in late 2008. Somehow people's desire for instant gratification took over and they decided that when all wasn't made right in 20 months than it wasn't worth their time to heed the storm we all saw coming on the news every night. Now the storm is here, the Republicans are back in power ready to repeat what they did to us for nearly a decade. As a result, I am down, but only for a short while. I will bounce back by this afternoon.
My wife and I will be taking delivery of our Nissan LEAF all electric car in early 2011. We are truly thrilled about the prospect of being that much closer to freedom from oil.
We will continue to promote clean transportation and clean energy. We will do this in spite of the dirty, corrupt oil and energy giants that continually, and now in almost complete secrecy thanks to Citizens United, plot against us to destroy our health and our planet so they can make unfathomable amounts of money.
We refuse to have our hope crushed. We stand with our President, a good, honest and highly capable man. He is not perfect by any means, as we are not, but his intentions are to lead us out of a deep crisis, created by his opponents.
Whether we have economic prosperity, or economic ruin, it will not change us. We will not whine, we will not cry. We will lift up our fellow citizens with the message that hope is the light that will always eliminate darkness.
As our grandparents and parents learned, overcoming darkness during the Great Depression, and then during World War II, takes incredible sacrifice and determination. It takes consistent resolve, unity, strength of mind, body, soul and spirit.
Their sacrifices were unimaginable to most of us today. Their capacity to overcome hardship seems forgotten. They were not perfect, but in spite of their failings, we aspire to their greatness, to be victors in the tradition of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. We aspire to assist others in a vision of the future like Dr. King’s and Bobby Kennedy’s, to sharpen and hone the content of our individual and National character.
May our hope soar to heights far above our fears, so we too can leave a better world to our children and grandchildren.
Ken Muir
