The Second Great Depression

by on April 28, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The people I’ve talked to who lived through the Second Great Depression remember a time of plenty and opportunity. And a time of horrible division. They could buy anything they wanted from food to electronics. They could move from coast to coast on a whim, or play in virtual worlds better than the real one. And at the same time, the political and cultural divisions were beyond anything a people can survive for long. Political parties taught their members to hate people based on their race, their heritage, and their religion. They called their political foes mentally deficient, crazy, or hypocrites. They attacked political rivals with demonstrations and riots. Political assassinations, both virtual and real, became commonplace. Homes of opposition supporters were vandalized, and businesses were protested out of existence. The politics of destruction allowed no one who believed differently to survive. Many people just checked out of politics and tried not to pay attention to it. Others wallowed in it and moderates faded from the political landscape. Most people just didn’t care what was happening in Washington by the end. Apathy is the five-dollar word people toss out for why people let it get so bad. I suppose there are worse ones out there.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 27, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

One of the things that made the Second Great Depression as bad as it was is the decades of political and cultural division that preceded it. Identity politics divided people by race, sex, religion, politics, and more. Those who had friends in other groups were called race traitors, or the like. And there was always a protest group happy to march with signs held high to call for someone to lose their job, their business, or worse if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. By the time the economic crisis hit its peak, the time when people really needed to hang together for the good of everyone, too many people no longer cared what happened to those outside their close group of trusted friends and associates. And too many others took a delighted glee out of watching those who’d attacked them lose their jobs or homes in turn. And when the governmental social safety nets failed, those who depended on them had to sink or swim. Far too many of them pulled others down with them in their frantic attempts to avoid drowning. It wasn’t just the economic crisis that hurt. It was the political crisis. The culture crisis. The moral crisis. It all came to a boil at once, and when it hit America, it hit the rest of the world like a thunderbolt.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 26, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Most historians separate the history of the United States of America into the Colonial Era, the American Confederation, and the four American Republics. The Colonial Era of course speaks about the time under British Rule, which ended with the Revolution against the Crown. The Confederation was the first formation of Free Colonial Rule, before the adoption of our current Constitution. The First American Republic started with the passage of the new Constitution and was generally characterized as a mutual assemblage of Sovereign States. The Civil War, or the Second American Revolution as some name it, transformed America into the Second Republic, with a far more powerful Federal government. The Second Republic ended with the First Great Depression and the New Deal. This Third Republic grew up in World War II to become the new guarantor of peace in the world. Some call it the First American Democracy. Whether a Democracy or a Constitutional Republic, many Americans alive today were born and grew up in this time. They lived through the Second Great Depression in living, bleeding color.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 25, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

I know people who lived through the years leading up to the Second Great Depression. They’ve told me what it was like back then. They had access to the best technology ever invented. They could talk to anyone in the world via electronics designed in The West and built in Asia. And Western vaccines had erased many of the worst diseases mankind had ever known. They were on top of the world in many ways, with the best living conditions ever enjoyed by mankind. But not everyone had it so good. I know people whose company’s shut down because they couldn’t compete with foreign sweatshop construction. High-paying jobs were hard to find, and people worked longer and longer hours to take care of their families. They lost the houses they’d owned for decades or longer, and some cities even began tearing the vacant houses down to fight the rising crime and poverty levels. The gulf between rich and poor had never seemed so vast. That’s part of what drove us to the edge.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 24, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Many people called it the Second American Republic at the time. The result of the Civil War. Most historians call it the Third Republic. The result of Roosevelt’s New Deal. America’s been through a lot of changes over the centuries, echoed or begun by both the culture and the government. Southerners rebelled in the 1860s. Civilization hung by a thread in the 1930s. Hippies checked out in the 1970s. Everybody was checking out by the 2010s. The Culture Wars were hitting their stride and America was on its way to becoming at least two entirely different peoples who really didn’t like each other. There were actually three, or more major cultures at the time, but the noisiest two were the ones that got the news and the network ratings. And most of the history books. It was flash points like the 2010s that serve as warnings that the cultural differences between two or more groups are becoming critical. We saw them in the 1760s, the 1850s, the 1920s, and the 2190s as well. I really wish more people had listened before things got worse. Worse like the Second Great Depression.

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