On Aug 10, 2007, at 12:52 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> I know, I know. A cheap thrill. But I love it.
Quoting myself <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/LBOAt20.html>:
Let's get back to the 1987 crash, and the smashup that didn't happen. In 1991, this newsletter predicted that the 1990s would not be a rerun of the 1930s after all. Banks were failing, indebted corporations were going under, but things never cascaded into crisis like they did sixty years earlier. A friend who's a long-time LBO reader wrote me a "say it ain't so!" letter. He was hoping for a smashup and was disappointed to hear me say it wasn't going to happen.
What is it with people on the left? So eager to put 30 million people out of work — the modern equivalent of the 1929–32 rise in unemployment — to make a political point! I can understand the temptation of looking to some big smashup — in many ways, the 1930s stand out as a period of enlightenment and innovation in American politics. I guess leftists are always hoping that some kind of crisis will once again lift the scales from people's eyes, and a lot more quickly than conventional agitation, organization, and education ever will. (Or as Edmund Wilson said after the 1929 crackup: "One couldn't help being exhilarated at the sudden unexpected collapse of that stupid gigantic fraud.") But what guarantee would there be that people would look to humane collective action in a crisis? They could just as easily fall in step with jackbooted xenophobes.