The recent economic crisis has prompted me to think of my father's stories of the Depression. I have been remembering the lessons my generation learned from Vietnam during the recent political debates about Iraq. Too many of our common national memories, and nightmares, seem to be haunting us now.
Years ago when I went to a therapist to work through some personal issues, we talked about how sometimes the old fears would come back to haunt me. We called them the "ghosts at the fire", the images you can see almost see flickering just beyond the edge of the firelight. They were no longer real, but, their effect was real.
I believe that the recent problems in our nation have many of us seeing old ghosts closing in around the fire. The economic problems remind us of the Depression. The war in Iraq reminds us of earlier wars and other deaths.
My surfacing memories prompted me to write a diary about my family's history with our ranch. http://www.dailykos.com/... I was groping to explain how that history seemed relevant to our current situation. Then, in a rescued diary,http://www.dailykos.com/... Janusdog wrote movingly of her family narrative of the Depression. Many of us shared in comments that we have similar family narratives which remind us of that time of national trauma, even though we were not alive. I believe that her family narrative, like mine and that of so many others, are part of our shared national character which drives us, even in times like this when we seem so divided politically.
The children of the Depression are now gone, or nearing the end of their lives. My father was born in 1928. His earliest memories are of the Depression. Our family had - and still has - a ranch so he had enough to eat, but there was not cash for anything they could not grow or raise. The ranch was mortgaged because my grandfather had needed extra cash to buy some adjoining land. The threat of losing their home was always with them. FDR ordered the killing of stock and restricted crops to try to prop up farm prices. My grandfather shared what he was no longer allowed to sell with those in town who were hungry. Those are among my father's early memories.
I did not live those experiences, but, in a sense, I did. I grew up with my father's memories and stories. I grew up with his fears. I grew up with the same fear of poverty burned into me. I look at the old family pictures and I see my father, his siblings and my grandparents with the look of people living on the edge.
We didn't have much money when I was young, but I never experienced hunger or deprivation. We always had plenty of food. Thanks to my mother's skill at sewing, we always dressed well. But, even in the days of 24-cent gas, my parents limited the number of trips into town (about 8 miles round-trip) to once a week if possible to save on gas money. I remember going to the local Wynn's store and looking at the little trinkets. I thought to myself then that I would know I was really rich when I could go to Wynn's and buy any of those I wanted without counting the pennies in my wallet to see if I had enough.
For my father's generation, the Depression is still fresh in their mind. It colors their view of economic stability, of the stock market, of Social Security. And, through him, it still affects my generation. While the next generation may not share that national memory, it is a common thread at least through those of us who are baby-boomers. I believe that national memory has been part of what has been going on in the country in the past week as the majority of us have wanted something done about the financial crisis, even though many of us have concerns about the particular form of the rescue bill and are not happy about bailing out those we view as responsible for the problem. Until this national memory was triggered so strongly, the Republicans in the past have been able to block government intervention into the private sector by railing against "socialism". That old argument is not as convincing with that haunting memory of the Depression and the "socialist" programs which FDR instituted to try to end it.
The Democrats remain the party of FDR, willing to get the government involved in Wall Street to stop its excesses. I'm not saying that the Bush rescue plan should be characterized as an FDR-quality intervention. But, it was the Democrats who seemed most willing to step up and step in with attempts to protect those in the middle class. And I see the old Depression themes in other areas of the election, such as health care. The Democrats are willing to put the government into the private health care sector to protect those in need. The Republicans are raising the old arguments of socialized medicine. Those arguments don't seem so convincing to me, or my usually Republican parents, as the economic situation becomes more dire. We can recall more clearly the socialist programs which FDR was accused of instituting, such as Social Security.
The other old ghost which is now haunting us is the ghost of war. Our national memories of war are varied. My father's generation remembers their brothers and friends fighting and dying in World War II. My generation has the Vietnam War burned into our memories.
I grew up with the knowledge that my father's brother - and closest friend - died in World War II. I saw the effect that the Vietnam War had on my generation. I saw the different reactions to the war and the tremendous damage it inflicted on our national unity.
I remember a boy a few grades ahead of me in high school who intentionally jumped out of a moving pickup to injure himself before his draft physical. The risk of that injury seemed less than the risk of Vietnam to him. My husband enlisted in the National Guard, and was one of the medics on the scene when students were killed at Kent State. Other friends served in Vietnam. One dear friend stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. He was lucky and survived with nothing worse than some shrapnel left in his knee. Another, my husband's best friend from college, was a medic in Vietnam. He has permanent hearing loss. He can't talk about his experiences. He has never told his wife anything about what happened to him. But, one night, when he and another veteran were having dinner with us, the two of them left us to go outside. They talked for hours, sharing the experiences that they can't share with those of us who have not truly experienced it.
I know that in the case of the Vietnam War, the lessons we have taken from it have varied from person to person. John McCain, with his experience of the war from an enemy prison camp with his captors no doubt telling him that the U.S. was losing because it did not have the heart to support its soldiers, took the lesson that we must never give up on our troops and must always fight until we achieve victory. Many of the rest of us, who experienced the war from a different perspective, took the lesson that we must always be cautious before entering into a war, particularly a civil war, and that some wars cannot be won. We took the lesson that entering into an unnecessary war costs us valuable lives and damages our nation in countless ways for decades thereafter. Those different lessons seem to be, in some part at least, driving the current differences in view about the war in Iraq.
As many have said, this may be the most critical election since those days of the earlier wars and Depression. I believe that is why our national ghosts are closing in around the fire for so many of us. Like my personal ghosts, the ghosts are from the past, no longer current reality. But, if we allow the old ghosts to drive us irrationally, we risk repeating the old painful history. If we do not learn the lessons from the past experiences, we risk repeating that old painful history. In this election, more than others in recent past, it is vital that we elect leaders who have learned the useful lessons from our shared past and will apply them to the future.