We had several things still going for us in the 1930s:
1. We had stronger local communities of well rooted people.
2. We had a better sense of whom we were, now confused by politically correct responses, suppressing such awareness in the flood of 3rd World Immigration since 1965—some illegal, some subsidized by the Government.
3. We had stronger Faith involvement in dealing with local community problems, since undermined by a two generation plus ACLU attack on Faith in community affairs.
In short, our abilities to respond to hard, challenging times, have been undermined. This may be well and good, if you want sheep looking to an all powerful Central Government to solve every problem, but it is not the America won in the Revolution. Nor is it one that reflects anything that might be expected to really work well in the experience of Mankind.
and we started it with a government that was a mush smaller part of the economy so was not able to do as much total damage as Hussein can do.