Reply #45: You might have something there... [View All]

I'm not sure it's cyclical, as in a predictable, repetitive event over a given time period, like Halleys Comet, but certainly most of the conditions that existed in the US in the Teens and 20s are present now. Those decades were a time of massive accumulation of wealth by the top 1 percent, while the rest held starvation-wage jobs with obscene hours and lethal working conditions. The '20s "boom" was fueled by the same kind of lunatic speculation that keeps the Dow over 13,000, while everybody who isn't getting stock rich knows the system's broken in just about every way possible.

And, of course, the Great Depression followed, which forced people to finally examine the fundamental assumptions they held about how this country works, and for whom. And as soon as they began to question the basics of capitalism and how it works to enrich the few at the expense of the rest, a fairly significant socialist movement arose.

Seeing the potential threat such a movement posed to business as usual, FDR began putting together the New Deal, which was absolutely socialist in nature, but nobody gave a damn because the workers had work and the elites' heads remained attached to their shoulders -- unlike the justice they got in the French revolution.

Whether FDR was an altruist or a pragmatist I haven't a clue. Certainly his programs brought great good to a great many people. Also certainly, his programs prevented what could have been a powerful enough socialist movement to at least unionize the vast majority of the workforce, which would have given them much needed leverage next time the elites decided to tighten the screws.

Sadly, we're now a country of rugged individualists, compelled by culture to fight each other for the scraps the elite leave for the peasantry to squabble over. If by some miracle the lower 90 percent of the population can ever unite behind the idea that the upper 10 percent is the source of most if not all their problems, critical mass would develop for real, progressive change.

So I hope your cyclical theory proves true. If so, it's about damn time we had a little progressive legislation in this land infested by wingnuts and paleofascists.


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