History's not done yet

William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream

While looking for the Keynes quote, I came upon an article by William Ecenbarger in the Baltimore Sun, from 1991: DEPRESSING TIMES RECESSION RECALLS THE BAD OLD DAYS OF THE 1930s.

This paragraph floored me:

Men really did sell apples on the street. People did actually starve to death. There were entire towns where not a single person had a job. Good health was a luxury -- indeed, there were so many deaths in Logan, W.Va., that coffin-making was established as a work-relief project. Some two decades ago, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. lamented: "I don't know what is to be done to persuade people that the Great Depression took place. So far as I can tell, more and more Americans are coming to believe that it never occurred. . . . The whole thought of widespread economic collapse a generation ago in a nation as spectacularly opulent as ours is now, has for many -- perhaps for most of us -- no more reality any longer than a bad dream. Worse, the actualities of the Depression -- bread lines, soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, etc. -- have become cliches rejected by the sophisticated as corny and by the unsophisticated as communistic."

You find that depressing? Okay. But at least the focus is on the problem, on the economy. I'm more put off by thoughts like those in a "Wednesday Editorial" from 2018, from the Florida Times-Union: History shows Amercia overcomes its challenges.

I'm pretty sure they meant "America" but they wrote "Amercia".

I'm troubled by their apparent belief in history as a problem-solver. In ancient Rome they doubtless thought the same thing: History shows we can overcome any challenge. But as Toynbee showed, it's not just a matter of "challenge". It's a matter of "challenge and response". If we respond successfully, we overcome the challenge. If we don't, we don't.

When the Florida Times-Union tells me "history shows" that America overcomes its challenges, my response is: History's not done yet.

I'm gonna quote the whole Wednesday Editorial:

By Times-Union Editorial Board
Posted Jul 4, 2018 at 2:01 AM

Americans have survived periods of intense division when the nation took a step back but eventually recovered its bearings.

Author Jon Meacham reminds us of this in his new book “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.”

As he notes: “History shows us that we are frequently vulnerable to fear, bitterness and strife. The good news is that we have come through such darkness before.”

Klansmen held office

During the 1920s, members of the Ku Klux Klan held 11 governorships, 16 U.S. Senate seats and seats in the House. The KKK had about 2 million members in 1925, and 30,000 Klansmen took part in a march in Washington, D.C.

Overcome by fear of immigrants, The National Origins Act of 1924 set immigration quotas reducing the number of immigrants from 805,000 in 1921 to 164,000 by 1929.

Darkness of the Great Depression

Asked whether history had ever seen something like the Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes said, “Yes. It was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted 400 years.”

McCarthyism fueled intolerance

Journalist William Shirer, who covered Nazi Germany, said about America during the McCarthy era of the 1950s: “There was an atmosphere throughout the land of suspicion, intolerance and fear that puzzled me.”

Leadership has been key

One reason why America has been able to move beyond the virulent racism of the 1920s, the crushing economic weight of the Great Depression, the Red-baiting 1950s and much more is because at critical points, America’s leaders showed true leadership.

So it’s worth reflecting on some insightful observations made by our past leaders.
• President Lyndon Johnson: “I recognized that the moral force of the presidency is often stronger than the political force. I knew that a president can appeal to the best in our people or the worst; he can call for action or live with inaction.”
• Johnson in a speech to Congress after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: “America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation’s bloodstream.”
• President Dwight Eisenhower: “I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know ... ”
• President Theodore Roosevelt: “Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction and purpose, not of creed or birthplace.”
• President Harry Truman: “You can never tell what’s going to happen to a man until he gets to a place of responsibility.”

Let us resolve

In his book, Meacham aptly sums up the challenge both our leaders and citizens face today:

“We cannot guarantee equal outcomes, but we must do all we can to ensure equal opportunity. Hence a love of fair play, of generosity of spirit, of reaping the reward of hard work and of faith in the future,” Meacham writes.

“In our finest hours, the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists.”

So on this July Fourth, let us resolve to listen to each other.

Let us resolve to look for the best in each other.

Let us resolve to work with each other.

Let us resolve to take to heart the stirring words of another great American, Robert F. Kennedy, whose name might have been among the list of presidents quoted above were it not for an assassin’s bullet 50 years ago.

In April 1968, less than two months before he was killed during his surging campaign for the presidency, Robert F. Kennedy said this to an audience in Cleveland:

“We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.”

You probably like it. It's hopeful. I feel it too. But there's nothing there except "faith in the future". There's no hint of a solution, other than that we should "resolve" to be better people. And what does that mean -- that we should complain less? That's not gonna solve the problem. That's not gonna fix the economy.

That whole big section in the middle there on leadership -- there's really not much there. "Moral force". "Persuasion and conciliation and education and patience". "Spirit, conviction and purpose". And for Truman, character. But what are we going to DO? How are we going to SOLVE THE PROBLEM? We don't know, but we'll do it with our heads held high.

Challenge and response, man. Challenge and response.

The best of those leadership quotes is the second one from President Johnson:

“America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation’s bloodstream.”

Trouble is, we have become those "fanatics of the far left and far right".


People have given up. We no longer believe the economy can be fixed. This is why we're so divided politically: because of the desperation arising from our underlying belief that The End Is Near.

What was that thing from the Sermon on the Mount?  Look at the birds of the air. Their Father takes care of them... Today we might say that nature takes care of them. Or, for people, we could say that the economy works.

But it doesn't work all the time, the economy. It didn't work for that 400 years Keynes was talking about. And it's not working for us. And it's not gonna work for us if we focus on claptrap like leadership and morality. We have to focus on the economy.

We have to understand what needs to be done to fix the economy. Why? Because our "leaders" take their cues from their "followers". From us. If we know what needs to be done, they will do it.

If we think we know what needs to be done, they'll do that -- even if we are wrong. Then, when it doesn't work, we'll blame them, call them corrupt, and say the system is "broken".

What we need is to stop insisting that we know what needs to be done to fix the economy. We need to rethink this. Since the 1980s, the 1970s, maybe even the 1960s, we have been unable to fix the economy. If we don't stop and realize that our plan to fix the economy is part of the problem, pretty soon it will be too late.

The failure for the last 50+ years to fix the problem is not evidence that our politicians are the problem. It is evidence that our plan to fix the economy is the problem.