Last night's film: Hester Street
Really good film about Jewish immigrants. Tight little plot about a marriage in a NY neighborhood with the Carol Kane character ending up re-inventing herself most successfully. America is about that chance to reinvent yourself. These immigrants would never want to go back, no matter how strange and hard things were in America.
Don't we all use changes to reinvent ourselves? I changed cities in grade 5, and again at grade 10, and each time I reinvented my place in the school social hierarchy.
After the film we went out for beers and I met an actual follower of Glen Beck. Proud to be one! I bit my tongue, suppressed giggles, and just listened to him gently foam at the mouth. And he seemed like such a normal guy.
POLITICS
Gilded Age Politics are pretty confusing, partly because some labels and parties have basically switched since then. Republicans were for big Federal government, the party of blacks, the party fighting for fairness for everyone. Democrats were more into keeping minorities down, keeping traditional values and ways, and holding back "progress". I'm still confused, because it doesn't line up well with our red state/blue state understanding of politics. liberal and conservative meant different things then.
The corruption was breathtaking. All levels of government were corrupt. The important thing was to hide what was really going on. Get people voting certain ways to give a fig leaf of cover, as if democracy were going on. Anyone could vote, even without citizenship in some cases.
- all about party loyalty
- mostly works around "Friendship"
- Friends met socially and arranged things before they happened in legislatures or markets
- ballots were passed out by the party, and people mostly voted a straight party line
- employers could tell how you voted.
I actually prefer the idea of party line voting, as opposed to our current infatuation with individuals. You should vote for the party you agree with most, not the one you like as a person.
Democrats:
All former Confederacy supporters were Democrats
not ideologically pure
Republicans:
All Union supporters were Republicans
wave the bloody shirt
Catholics:
brought traditional European conservatism
anti-Catholicism was rabid; "the foe of all progress, free thought and free speech"
Distrusted public schools because they pushed Protestantism
conservatives:
All property must be protected
Horatio Alger - Rags to Riches stories, based on the old ways of being able to make it on your own
William Graham Sumner - freedom, competition allow anyone to succeed. inequality is natural, based on survival of the fittest. Severs liberty and equality. Those on top deserve to be on top. It's poor's own fault they're poor. What a bastard. Twisted Darwin's ideas into nonsense.
Friends:
They didn't really like each other
Friend Huntington hated Friend Stanford
This is what the Anti-Monopolists fought against
do favors; reciprocity; share info and bribes; patents, land use
deeply corrupt - Congress is the place of economic competition; not a real market
You could never fully trust a friend; could be something "inward" going on
Josiah Strong - wanted to promote domestic missionary activity in the American West. Encouraged support for imperialistic United States policy among American Protestants. "God has conferred on this geeration the power of unprecedented wealth." His manifest destiny stuff makes me retch. He wrote about the "perils of Romanism". The Catholics seemed as strange, threatening, foreign and different as Muslims today.
Populists:
Anti-monopolists:
opposed rise of corporations
Henry George - "everyone owns what he or she creates, but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity."
belief: the masses work and all the wealth flows unfairly to the privileged
crisis: ordinary people cannot succeed in the new unfair America
corporations had to hide who they supported in elections
Very high percentage of the population voted in Gilded Age elections. Active attempt to suppress some participation (blacks, poor, Chinese, etc.) At the turn of the century, there were so many regulations and restrictions placed on voting. Deliberately.
It's all about who can turn out their base, not who can convince the middle. There was no middle. Congress was more powerful than the presidents.
Today's battles over internet access are like railroad battles - issues of equal access. When Verizon and Google meet behind closed doors to decide who can access the internet when, that's not the original idea of America. It's very Gilded Age.
Things are never black and white. There are always two or more impulses driving people. It's never clear or easy to understand people's choices. Even my own choices are a mystery to me half the time.
Where does each person draw the line? What is rich enough or too rich? Too black? Black enough? Are you American enough? What is OK? Who can marry whom? We all draw the line in a different place, and the line moves constantly. Together, we make the moving picture that is America.
