One of my liberal nieces made the mistake of telling my grandmother “the truth” about the great depression today with the greedy bankers stealing all the farms and leaving people destitute.
My grandmother read her the riot act starting with the fact that “the great depression” wasn’t even a term that was used till well afterward. She said that most rural people didn’t lose their farms unless they lived beyond their means and tried to live on credit that they couldn’t pay off. She pointed out that there were no grocery stores so almost all their food was grown or bought from other local farmers. She told my niece, “You kids can’t last 10 minutes without a cell signal. A few hours of radio per day was all the luxury they saw in our lives”.
She basically told my niece that she had better buck up and learn to cope or her life was going to be getting a whole lot worse in the near future and the greed that most of society seems to expect was going to crush them.
It made me proud that I was one of the few who grew up with daily contact with her and my great grandmother who taught me to accept what I have and not expect more. It made me into much sterner stuff.