In 1932, unemployed veterans marched on Washington, DC demanding payment of a bonus due in the future. The "bonus marchers" were routed by the military on orders of President Hoover. The idea of World War I veterans who had come home as heroes being confronted by the army was a national shock and doomed whatever hope Hoover had for reelection.
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I remember speaking or more importantly, listening to WW1 vets at the American Legion and VFW posts, my grandfather had signed my brothers and I up as Sons of the American Legion and Sons of the VFW, both of them lifetime membership.
ReplyDeleteThe intense screwing they took at the hands of the Hoover administration and such "heroic" leaders as Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton during that period, not just the bonus march but the entire time starting from answering the draft notices in 1917, bonds in which they were paid half their salary, bought out at 80% of their value... by the same robbers who caused the Great Depression with their Ponzi scheme of investing in credit... selling credit as though it were real money. Same as the mortgage scam that crashed the market this time.
Drafted into a war fought for nothing more than deciding which Capitalist power would be THE Capitalist leader, paid in the fake scrip of Capital, half of that taken away and replaced with something that turned out to be worth even less than their greenbacks, paid Corporate Bank Government shills convincing them that the "patriotic" thing to do would be to buy even more bonds...
Then, as now, the resulting crash was described as a "Market Adjustment" by those who were NOT in danger of homelessness and starvation, cushioned from the worst of the ravages by a huge wad of (stolen) money... and calling those who WERE starving and homeless "bums" and chiding them for not having enough cash or enough faith to "ride out the market correction".
It's when phrases like "I'd rather be Red than starving and dead" and a song "Oh, there'll be pie in the sky when we die by-and-by" came into our language.
The Hooverite regime then and now insist that Roosevelt was a traitor to their class and do their best to paint him as a demon.
He saved their collective bacon. There was a revolution fomenting in America that could have gone far worse than those in Russia, China, and Germany. But the very first victims would have been the very richest.
Whether such an upheaval would have been bad or beneficial for America we'll never know. Roosevelt bought it off. The rich bastards should thank God every day as soon as they waken for being allowed the privilege to wake up. And thank Mr Roosevelt.
And the Bonus Army and the Unions.
And "radical" organizations ranging from the VFW to the CWP and all points in between.