[quote=Allan from Fallbrook][quote=CA renter]Whatever happened to Hank Paulson’s claim that we would look for the guilty parties when the “crisis” is averted. Gosh, with all the green shoots an’ stuff, you’d think they’d be beating the bushes already looking for the “guilty perpetrators.”
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CAR: Paulson’s claim is going to rank right up there with O.J.’s claim, post-acquittal, that he’d be beating the bushes and looking for Ron and Nicole’s murderer. Of course, beating the bushes was code for playing golf.
The American people have shown themselves willing to be gulled into just about anything, whether it’s standing by idly and watching as our civil liberties are stripped from us (FISA, Patriot Acts I & II, wireless wiretapping) or allowing the government to fully co-opt shareholder/bondholder owned businesses (Chrysler and GM) or spend our money to enrich or bail out their cronies (everything from Carlyle Group and Halliburton under Bush to AIG and Goldman under Obama).
And we’ve stood by and done nothing. When we have protested or dissented, we’ve been referred to as un-American (Pelosi) and this while engaging in the most American activity of all.[/quote]
Allan,
I don’t know much about history so I found the excerpt of Morris Dickstein’s “Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression” in Slate enlightening:
“In the inner lives of Americans, a deep strain of depression was one mark of the Depression, a tendency for people to turn the crisis inward, to blame themselves, to target their own shortcomings and failures, not those of the system. This self-blame, rooted in American individualism and self-reliance as well as in Protestant notions of personal accountability, was where the still-dominant American success ethic played its baneful and destructive part. As one psychiatrist who had trained with Freud later told Studs Terkel, “Everybody, more or less, blamed himself for his delinquency or lack of talent or bad luck. There was an acceptance that it was your own fault, your own indolence, your lack of ability. You took it and kept quiet.” …. Thanks to this “kind of shame about your own personal failure … there were very few disturbances.”
There was anger and rebellion among a few but, by and large, that quiet desperation and submission.” Unlike Europeans who turned to Fascism, Communism, or militarism in those hard times, most Americans remained passive, even self-accusing, in the face of Depression conditions. They neither rebelled nor submitted to the despotic rule of a would-be savior. This looks even more remarkable today than it did then.”
I think many would argue, like you Allan, that people today are all about the blame others and not themselves these days. I would agree there is a difference but not enough to make it meaningful; there will be riots for any reason in USA. People have moved from self-blame to indolence?
PS
TG may work up some witty prose from this quote:
“Thanks to both the economics and the psychology of depression, the early 1930s saw a decline in the marriage rate, the divorce rate (people couldn’t afford to separate), the birthrate, and even, as far as it can be known, the frequency of sexual relations. “Sketchy evidence suggests that due to the tensions of hard times, sex within marriage decreased,” writes Susan Ware. “Fear of pregnancy was a major factor, but feelings of inadequacy on the part of the male and lack of respect for the unemployed man from his wife also played roles.” One woman told Lorena Hickok of her fear of pregnancy, balanced by a fear of withholding sex from her depressed husband:
I suppose you can say the easiest way would be not to do it. But it wouldn’t be. You don’t know what it’s like when your husband’s out of work. He’s gloomy and unhappy all the time. Life is terrible. You must try all the time to keep him from going crazy. And many times—that’s the only way.”
