07-27-2020, 03:17 AM
(07-26-2020, 09:47 PM)Marc Lamb Wrote: A solid case for the most dominate issue of the 1932 political campaign was not the 1929 market crash, but rather repeal of the 18th Amendment. Kinda destroys the notion of a sudden catalyst, resulting in a world-changing epiphany...
... but the victors tell the history, so Schlesinger et al were "right" and 1929 remains the cause of it all.
Repealing Prohibition was a pragmatic idea based upon several realities:
1. Gangsters were making the money from the trade in alcoholic beverages instead of Big Business. Alcoholic beverages could be produced or imported less expensively without the high costs (including public corruption) by entities that did not have to pay bribes or fear raids destroying their products.
2. Alcoholic beverages are easy to tax, which made them attractive to tax-thirsty state and local governments -- but only if the product is lawful.
3. Prohibition had certifiably failed. Alcohol consumption initially went down precipitously at the start of Prohibition but was rising steadily in the 1920's. States were not collecting sales taxes on customer purchases and income taxes from liquor traffickers.
4. As is normal in any illicit product the worst elements come to dominate the business. Standards often fail as people seeking more profit cut corners. Bad techniques caused much of the brew to become a witches' brew containing methyl alcohol (wood alcohol) far more toxic than ethyl alcohol. The "bad booze" contaminated with methyl alcohol could blind people by causing permanent damage to the optic nerve... which explains why some "speakeasies" were known as "blind tigers".
5. As a consumer good available in large quantities from huge production lines it was much less expensive -- and created large numbers of jobs.
The harm? Vehicle deaths per capita, which had been falling through the 1920's, increased sharply in 1934, possibly as the result of more inebriated drivers on the road.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.