I've been seeing some political signs around town that say "America First!"
Americans are, I'm afraid, notoriously dense about history, which doesn't keep Americans from citing it. Just recently, for example, as I already noted here, the state's populist's caucus cited Operation Overlord as a great example of American virtue and heroism, apparently dim to the fact that Operation Overlord was made necessary by the US sitting out the post 1917 to 1941 world stage's drama and that the heroism was made necessary by the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, not the US waking up one day to the dangers of fascism. Indeed, recently populist have been itching to repeat the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, in the form of Ukraine, so we can finally bring World War III about, although they are dim to the fact that's what they're doing.
Part of that late 1920s and 1930s drama that it seems people have forgotten (in addition to massive tariffs being a horrific idea, and that taxing upper income levels at the 50% rate actually doesn't hurt the economy at all) was the rise of the America First idea, which was that the US could just sit around and ignore the world, safely. It turned out, of course, that ships going down daily in the Atlantic, numerous people being murdered due to their religion, and the Japanese fleet proved that concept wrong in a bloody fashion, but populists are imagining it again. This time its pretty likely, I'd estimate in the 75% range, that the Chinese navy and ballistic missile force will prove that idea wrong again.
Anyhow, when I read "America First!" on political signs, having a sense of history, I can't help but recall this Woody Guthrie song:
While I suppose it's not directly applicable to the current times, I love the last line of the song:
And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checksThey say "America First, " but they mean "America Next!"In Washington, Washington
