History Repeats

The Republican Party dominated the early 1900s politics. Their laissez-faire hands-off approach to economics was based on limited government, free trade, tax cuts, reduced government spending, privatization, and no social service programs. It was all about personal responsibility, and the overarching ideal was Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. If you were poor or of ill health, that was your problem. There was no social security, disability, or social services. Life was bleak if you were poor. Muckrakers, investigative journalists, and photographers brought awareness of the suffering of the masses. The Robber Barons, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, to name a few, were prominent men who amassed immense wealth by creating monopolies of ownership and treated their workers like slaves. Anyone who criticized them was fired, and some were put in jail.

The economy crashed. Like the game Monopoly, there are only a few winners, and everyone else loses. Life just isn’t fun when a few have all the money and everyone else is poor. When Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR, swept most states with his New Deal, he reversed that trend, investing heavily in social services and making a government that regulated the economy. The Dust Bowl exacerbated the economic collapse, and the new Democratic government subsidized farms to leave their fields fallow to have the land rest.

His New Deal was so popular he was elected for four terms. The Republicans hated him and have wanted to dismantle Social Security, social services, farm subsidies and government oversight ever since.  

It’s been a100 years. We have forgotten. So, history repeats itself. Now with a more cynical edge. The stakes are higher. If you are caught protesting, the government can now freeze your assets, deport you, or put you in a jail – a secret jail constructed in Gautama.  This is a nasty government. It’s no longer about just not taxing the rich, it’s about dismantling the safeguards that protect people’s rights.

FDR was elected by 57% of the people. 39% were for Hoover. 39% is about the same as today. These are the m*aga, the capitalist-christian idealist who believe in no monitoring or control by the government, no gun regulation, and religion taught in schools. Basically - government, don’t tell us what to do! The idea is that life is so much better when the government stays out of the way and people do whatever they want.  Well, just check out history to see how that went.

This graph shows gray areas where there are recessions, and blue areas where there is unemployment. Recessions roughly correlate with long stints of Republican rule.

Are we doomed to go through this cycle every 100 years? Do the stakes get higher and higher, where eventually, we end up living in the story Star Wars, blowing up planets?  I’m getting tired of the ultimate evil power taking over. Isn’t there another storyline? It seems like humanity is just not imaginative enough to consider another way. We will keep going around and around with this same projection. And indeed, our imaginations form reality. We have invested so much of our fantasies into doomsday scenarios that now we are creating our worst fears.

It may be that we must repeat this cycle- the capitalist taking over the socialist society, things degrade because the economy can’t thrive in an unstable society, then social stability is reclaimed, democracy is made better, money flows, greed grows, then the capitalist takes over again.  The only way to step out of this circular drama is for people to really understand history and the cost of this repeating pattern, then vow not to repeat it. Perhaps it needs to be so bad that it is burned into people’s minds that it’s a terrible idea to let the wealthy few control a government. But history has shown how bad it can be, and yet here we are again. History is either not being taught, or we don’t understand how the events of the past relate to today.

This graph shows red for registered Republicans, blue for registered Democrats and gray for registered independents. Interesting to see that it is the independents that really decide the vote.

If the public applied knowledge of history, they may realize it’s not the government that is the problem—it’s the people who run it. Only then might we stop attacking our own systems like an auto-immune disease and start being a healthy society. Until then, we may be stuck on a merry go round of forgetfulness.