Heather Cox Richardson - May 4th, 2020 - Letters From An American

[applegrove]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

"SNIP.....


I mean, if the protesters really wanted to protect workers, wouldn't they be demanding laws that replaced lost wages? Other developed countries have passed exactly those sorts of measures, putting their economies into a holding pattern as the pandemic passes, but the Trump administration has focused largely on protecting those at the top of the economy. Reopening states will also keep us from expanding unemployment programs, since they will keep workers from being able to claim unemployment benefits. They must work or starve, as opponents of welfare legislation used to put it. And, of course, people are waiting too long to get medical care for Covid-19, and thus are spreading it, not simply because we have insufficient tests but also because they have no healthcare insurance for treatment anyway.

“It’s not a pandemic,” said a speaker at a rally at the Boston State House today demanding that Republican Governor Charlie Baker reopen the state. “The reason why they’re doing this… to turn the United States of America into the United Socialist States of America.”

This is ridiculous of course, but it sounded very like what Republicans said in the 1930s as they insisted first that there wasn’t a Depression, and then that if there was a Depression it was the job of the destitute states to fix it because federal government intervention in the economy was socialism. Indeed it sounded so much like Republican speeches from the 1930s that it instantly brought to mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1932.

“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose…. I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”

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