Terry and Sledge

With Terry, I was astounded at the extent to which she was in the dark. She says herself, "If you can go half your life and not recognize how you're being manipulated, that is sad and kinda scary." Everything from working conditions to the realities of war, she knew nothing about. It makes me think how different a society from the one I live in it takes to create a person who doesn't question things like how healthy it is to be around the Tetryl in the ammunition and the paint remover. I suppose if you don't know anything else, then you have no way of knowing that you're getting screwed by your employer, but I thought that the women who opened the way for equal work opportunities for women would be aware of the poor conditions they worked in and be fighting for better conditions rather than being satisfied with what they've been given.

With Sledge, I noticed a couple of things. The first was when he talked about everyone's dependence on their "buddies," and how you fight for them because your country is too broad a concept to feel so strongly about. He brings up a good point with this. For a while now, I have been skeptical of the idea of exploring what it means to be an American. My first identity chart at the beginning of the year did not have "American" on it, and I stand by that. I don't deny that America is a unique country with a unique history, culture, and set of ideals, all of which I am a part of, but it is such a broad concept that unless it's brought to my attention, I barely even notice it. It's not something to fight for, as Sledge understands. He fights for his "buddies," whom he only met because he went off to fight. It's an infinitely recursive idea. It took a war to bring him together with his "buddies," but there have to be other ways to bring people together besides killing other people.

The other scene which caught my attention was the Okinawan woman. I don't really understand why he did what he did and why he got so angry when someone else put her out of her misery, because putting her out of her misery is exactly what happened. He admitted that her wound had developed gangrene and that she was going to die. It's understandable that she would want to die quickly and painlessly rather than suffering through the rest of her life in constant pain from her wound. If he really preferred, he could have let her pull the trigger if she had the strength, but if she doesn't have a chance to survive, I think it's only right to let her die the way she chooses.

Introduction and Rasmus

What the Introduction says a lot is that World War Two was the best thing that could have happened for the American people, that it changed America for the better. I have to wonder about this. I know that my knowledge of the Cold War and Vietnam are limited, but they were results of this war. I feel like there has to have been a better outcome than that. World War Two was a war similar to the first World War in that it was fought for the sake of preserving world peace. But after we ruined the lives of Japanese Americans and saw the horrible things Nazis did to Jews, we repeated the same mistakes and ruined thousands of innocent American lives during the McCarthy era. And, the peace wasn't kept because we obviously continued fighting after that and again today. So, perhaps the war was good for the nation economically, but morally America was no better off.

With Rasmus, there was a scene he described which really caught my attention. The scene I'm talking about is when Rasmus was in a basement with a Russian soldier, and the Russian was strangling a German soldier, saying that the German had killed his friend. What caught my attention is that Rasmus had the morals to tell the Russian not to kill the German. He said that even after he knew that what the Russian had said was true, he still didn't want the German to die. It amazes me that with all of the propaganda and everything pushing his belief that every German was evil, he still was able to recognize that he was looking at another human being strangled and that he didn't want to let that happen, enemy or not.

Yoder, Terry, and Owsley

When Yoder talks about her attitude towards extraneous things that aren't essential to life, she says that the views she compared herself to are very separate worlds, and I'm inclined to agree. What she says is that even now after she can afford more than just staying warm and keeping fed, the Depression had such an impact on her that even now she lives with close to the bare minimum.

My grandparents also lived through the depression, but their response was the exact opposite of Yoder's. My grandfather loves eating as much as he can and cracking jokes about eating more. My mother tells me that when she was a kid and she didn't want something my grandparents made, my grandfather's response was, "Oh, good, that's more for me then." That's basically his attitude on life. Where Yoder shies away from things that are excessive, my grandparents all revel in those things. Perhaps it had to do with how badly the family was during the depression, as it did with the doctor's daughter. Obviously Yoder's family had trouble staying warm and fed. My grandparents couldn't have been doing much better. Perhaps fed and warm, but nothing else.

With the section on Terry and Owsley, I was interested in what Terry said about how the poor were treated versus how they are treated now. She says that back then, it was understood that the poor weren't at fault for their poverty. She said that today, people feel that poor people are just lazy and unmotivated. Having no experience with anything of the sort, I wouldn't have any first-hand evidence, but I have to wonder if this is really true or if it's just one of those "back in the good ol' days" musings which the elderly seem to love doing. Obviously there's more opportunity in this day and age, but when you think about it, there has to be a lower class for the upper class to exist. It's the idea of the Golden Mean. There will always be people who aren't as fortunate as we are, and we should never just assume it's their fault. My other worry is that it is just a general feeling which she describes and not something which she actually has evidence of.

Arthur A. Robertson and Oscar Heline

Reading about Robertson was very confusing for me. I personally am not interested in economics, so a lot of his talk about the stock market and whatever else went in one ear and out the other, so to speak. Actually, since I read it, it would be in one eye and out the other. From what I understand, Robertson was one of the people who foresaw the Great Depression. From what it I understand of what I read, what Robertson did was basically what everyone else did, except that he did it in May of 1929 and everyone else did it in October. Such a small difference, and yet the depression left him rich and many other people poor.

The other thing I can't understand about him is how he could turn down loaning money to so many close friends. It has to take a heart made of stone to turn them down and later learn that they committed suicide as a result. I realize that there's a limit to how much he can give people and still keep some for himself, but to turn down even your closest friends just seems heartless.

With Heline, I once again didn't understand what he was talking about in terms of economics. Why wouldn't you feed 45c corn to a $3 pig? Why is that bad? Perhaps it makes sense from a certain perspective, but it seems stupid to think you can't feed corn to a pig, regardless of what their prices are. It's like people who value the economy and money over everything else live in a different world with entirely different rules. I think that Heline realizes this to some extent, as exemplified by his conversation with another farmer about the war: "This neighbor one day told me what we needed was a damn good war, and we'd solve our agricultural problems. And I said, "Yes, but I'd hate to pay with the price of my son." Which we did. [He weeps.]" From a purely monetary standpoint, a war creates jobs and technological innovations, but there's the human element that you don't want people who had their lives in front of them to have them suddenly taken away. I think that it's this human element which Robertson is missing which makes him feel that he has no responsibility to help those that are close to him.

I also want to respond to what he says about the Federal Governments involvement. He specifically says that people should be more willing to accept help from it because "Individuals have too many different interests." I think that this is exactly why the government should be less involved in the lives of Americans, obviously exempting times of emergency such as the Great Depression. When there isn't an urgent threat which requires immediate and forceful action, I believe that it's important to hear all of those different interests and try to represent all of them in the government's decisions. To have faith that the government will always do what is best for people is to have a mistaken faith. As soon as a new president is elected, things can change and perhaps the government will begin to act in its own interests rather than the peoples', which goes directly against the American values of freedom and democracy.

New Deal Response

It seems to me that after looking through the slideshow, a lot of the things which were developed as a result of the New Deal were primarily long-term goals that would take some time for people to come to appreciate. For the webquest, I read the criticism of Roosevelt's Social Security system, and at the time, the concerns this critic raised were reasonable. Nobody should be forced to live on $8 a week, not even back then. But, what that critic failed to see was the potential the program had which it eventually realized. Social Security is very important in today's world as money to fall back on so that not as many people will be out on the streets should another economic crisis arise. In the same way, the slideshow said that the Lincoln Tunnel was only barely used when it was first opened and is now one of the busiest tunnels in America. In a way, the programs Roosevelt introduced, as well as his presidency in general, was built on the foundations of hope for the future. It may have seemed shaky to many people at the time, but the slideshow and webquest show that it payed off.