Posted on 05/01/2020 10:23:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
As of April 30, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 61,500 Americans in two months and induced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
And if history is our guide, the economic crisis, which has produced 30 million unemployed Americans in six weeks, may prove more enduring, ruinous and historic than the still-rising and tragic death toll.
The Spanish flu of 1918-1919, the deadliest pandemic in modern history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, a third of the planet's population, and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including 675,000 Americans.
"Adjusting for the difference in the size of the American population then and now," writes Chronicles columnist Roger McGrath, "that number will be equivalent to two million deaths today."
Yet, the Spanish flu did not shut America down.
As the Spanish flu hit and spread in 1918, the U.S. raised, trained and equipped an army of 4 million men, sent 2 million soldiers to France, broke Gen. Erich Ludendorff's army, and turned the tide in favor of the Allies.
By December 1918, Doughboys were arriving in New York harbor -- having sailed home from Europe's battlefields on flu-infested transports.
As the scourge continued to take its toll, Woodrow Wilson sailed to Europe, participated for months in the Paris Peace Conference, returned, went on a national train tour to sell his Paris treaty and League of Nations, and suffered a stroke.
In September 1919, Gen. Pershing led his victorious troops in victory parades in New York City and Washington. This writer's father, a teenager then, was in the D.C. crowd.
In the history books of the 1950s, World War I, Wilson and the Senate battle over the treaty he brought home and U.S. membership in the League of Nations loomed far larger than the Spanish flu that had killed as many U.S. soldiers as the Kaiser's armies.
But the Great Depression, to which our current crash is now being compared, did not last for just a year like the Spanish flu. The Depression lasted from the stock market crash in October 1929 to the eve of World War II.
Economically, it was devastating. Unemployment during the 1930s never fell below 14%. In 1937, it was back up to 17%.
At the bottom of the Depression, the stock market had lost 90% of its value, and the GDP had fallen 50%. Not until the end of FDR's second term, in 1940, when the U.S. began to gear up for the war, did America really begin to pull out of it.
FDR's New Deal, however, while it did not cure the Depression, was a historic political triumph for both the president and his party.
From 1930 through 1946, Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress every year, elected and reelected FDR four times and gave him a 46-state landslide in 1936, losing only Maine and Vermont.
What this suggests is that the economic devastation we have brought upon ourselves to battle the pandemic may prove more lasting and historic in its impact than the terrible losses of human life to COVID-19.
Politically, the Depression worked for the Democratic Party like no other event in history. After the Crash of 1929 under Herbert Hoover, the GOP held the House and Senate for only four of the next 50 years.
From 1932 to 1968, the GOP lost the presidency in seven of nine elections. Only Dwight Eisenhower's two terms in the 1950s interrupted a 36-year reign of the Democratic Party in the White House.
Richard Nixon broke the Democratic dominance and took back the White House for the Republicans in 1968. But it would still take another dozen years before the GOP won control of either house of Congress.
President Trump predicts a V-shaped recovery, the greatest boom in U.S. history. But it is well to recall what happened to the GOP when it failed to deliver in the last Depression.
Just as the Civil War was the defining event of the 19th century, giving us 13 Republican presidents from Lincoln to Hoover and only two Democrats -- Grover Cleveland and Wilson -- how and when we emerge from this new Depression may tell us which party not only wins 2020 but also dominates the new era.
And as one sees the growing divisions along political lines, with conservatives and populists calling for the country to be opened up, and liberals and Democrats calling for continued sheltering in place, both seem to realize the stakes.
Democrats may proclaim that they are eager to see the pandemic come to a swift and early end and the economy to return quickly to the robust state it was in last February.
But the cold political interests of the Democratic Party today are what they were in Hoover's time, to pray that the president fails, and fails badly, so that they inherit the estate.
+100!!
My uncle was an Army doctor stationed in Ft. Riley during WWI. He went on to a lucrative practice, married twice, and had 5 children before he died in 1976. Research Ft. Riley Kansas and influenza.
+100!! That’s why we cannot have an election!!
Hysterical...you.
“...Personally I see enough evidence to discount that number....”
A lot of folks see the same thing. The head of the PA coroner’s association last week said that the numbers were intentionally being inflated to include anyone who passed away as having died from covid-19.
SO one must conclude then that there is a plan on some governors parts to make things look worse than they are to intentionally crash the economy by keeping the lockdown as long as possible.
TIn foil hat? Maybe. But nothing is coincidence anymore.
Plan A Russia Russia Russia failed.
Plan B Pornstar Pornstar Pornstar failed.
Plan C Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine failed.
Plan D Impeach Impeach Impeach failed.
So now it’s Plan E, Corona Corona Corona.
Look for Plan F soon; Food Shortage due to Corona... you already have the Clintons’ good buddies Tyson foods talking about it.
From what I’ve seen of your posts your barely possess a marginal understanding of political, scientific or law enforcement issues. You should stick to movie and entertainment reviews which are on par with mediocre intellectual and critical thinking skills!!
Those who don’t realize the gravity of what we’re facing had better wake up. The United States has never been in more danger that right now. Never!
What makes you say that?
This is not a public health issue. The evidence that has been released so far is pointing to this as being a Asymmetric Warfare type of even perpetrated by the CCP and other globalist entities. There are things I know that U cannot talk about as of yet. I’ll send you some interesting reading via Freepmail which should help you out about this.
+1000!!
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Trying to use the Big Lie, the Dems hope to steal the election.
Not going to happen - esp with Slo Joe running.
This upcoming election is going to make the election in 1972 look like the bush leagues.
OOOOOFFFFFF!!!!! It’s like when Alderaan was blown up.
It will affect the Republic’s Fate, and it already has.
LOL! I just look at the evidence then analyze it.
Talk about an understatement! FDR prolonged and worsened it. The damage he did to liberty was so cancerous it plagues this country still today. FDR got good press because he would crush the opposition. Read up on "Liberty League" to find out.
This country can pull out of this morass quickly but only if the RATs lose power and don't get it back!
I have always found that people like you harbor severe inferiority complexes which you attempt to compensate for by name calling aggression whenever someone disagrees with them.
It’s why you get hysterical.
This is where it gets interesting. If there is no election, then we have no duly elected HOR and 1/3 of senate and President. What happens?
I don’t have an inferiority complex I call it out as I see it and your friends see you in the exact same way. Maybe you should listen,reevaluate yourself and grow up.
Stafford Act of 1861. I have to go look and get an outstanding post that someone pinged me to on it. I will go ping you to it or send to you via Freepmail.
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