What Happened In 1933

The Wild-Ride Journal of a Hollywood Bookseller, Series 2, Episode 4

Mickey:  All right.  This one happened in 1933 when we were living near Crotona Park in the Bronx.  Big apartment house.  My mother used to go into hysterics for no reason at all.  The slightest perceived insult would get her raving.  She loved tapping into her inner Blanche du Bois.  Weeping, thrashing around, hollering…it was all very theatrical.  My father, mother and I were home one day; I don’t remember where my brother Irving was, but I’m sure he wasn’t there.  When my mother was really stressed out she would dash out of the apartment, run up to the roof and threaten to throw herself off.  I dreamed of the day she would go through with it; I longed for it. One time she dashed up there with my copy of Bomba the Jungle Boy , a book I loved.  I ran after trying to get it back.  She got to the edge and ripped it apart and threw the pieces into the air and they fluttered down to the street below.  I was so upset I started running toward her intending to push her over the parapet.  Before I reached her though, I stopped, realized what I had nearly done and fell into a swoon.   As I lay there, she rushed over and started beating me; she must have sensed the murder in my eyes.  It probably frightened her so she responded in the only way she knew how:  she drubbed me into a coma. Anyway, on this later occasion, she went tearing up to the roof.  I don’t remember what set her off, but she was screaming hysterically.  Foaming at the mouth too.  My father who was seated at his desk turned to me and said “Go up and see that she doesn’t hurt herself.”  I asked him “Why don’t you go up?  You’re an adult.  I’m just a kid.

Harper's (magazine) Intellectual Implosion

When factual truths become so evident that they can no longer be ignored, you will always find defenders of the status-quo gnashing and wailing against what they believe is a very assault on their identities.  To them, there are some things they just cannot understand nor accept and will go to any lengths, however ridiculous, to continue living a lie.

Take, for example, the cover story in July 2011 edition of Harper’s written by Thomas Frank .  Our supposed friend Frank doesn’t just get things wrong, he gets them spectacularly wrong.  From basic history, to basic economics it is a non-stop exposé of what goes on in the mind of your common government fanboy.  In here you won’t find common sense, reason or anything resembling a coherent set of principles or theories; just endless cheerleading for government control.  To Frank, people that see value in gold are “cranks” and must be in some sort of cult.  And yes, that’s really what it all boils down to. As far as Frank is concerned, if he can’t understand it then anyone that does must be crazy.

Like Keynes, Frank considers gold to be the “barbarous relic” that FDR liberated us from.  His lengthy prose (Frank’s got a salary to earn here, folks!) is peppered with things worthy of history Ph.D’s everywhere, as when he calls gold “those effulgent, dragon-guarded piles of precious metals” and goes on to castigate its supporters for not wanting a government “guided and structured by human intellect.”  Just whose intellect, exactly, Frank never says but we can only assume that he thinks his own or some other master that he personally approves of.

Like most advocates of a command-based society, he’s fearful of anything that might impose discipline on the people he views as the great and wonderful leaders of a modern, scientifically-controlled age.  They must be freed from the legal and moral restraints placed on the common people because they’re just so wise and wonderful.  These people don’t have to obey the law, they are want to be dominated by Frank & Friends Inc.??

The article greets us with the suggestion that what FDR did in 1933 actually benefited the average American and spends much of the article trying to convince us that departing the gold standard was a net benefit to the nation.  Frank either doesn’t know what happened in 1933, or doesn’t really care and thinks he can convince people he’s right simply by being Thomas Frank.  Back in ‘33, the majority of people weren’t in the stock market.  They didn’t have to be.  With a stable monetary system built on gold at $20.67/oz it was easy to preserve and expand your wealth and prepare for retirement simply by accumulating money and bonds.  It was the safest way to do it, and it was working quite well for the vast majority of people in the country for the vast majority of the country’s history.