Thursday, November 6, 2014

The Gilded Age Part I: The Disney Movie

Bill O'Reilly writes history books.  This is an important fact, at least I think it is. He's one of the few people that include a works cited in his books, at least one of the few conservatives.  Still, he ignores things like the Jewish Wars while writing about Jesus which is about as jarring a void as the time he left out the regulators when he wrote his tell-all of Washington.

In reality it just makes for good propaganda.  Without things like the Jewish Wars, the Jews could have easily killed Jesus.  You add the Jewish Wars into play & it suddenly becomes glaringly obvious that the Romans killed him & why.

The same thing with Washington, it wouldn't be prudent to let the American people know that the founder of our country sold one of his biggest cavalry units to the British because they supported Thomas Paine & wanted an egalitarian nation with no slavery.

Those two tiny facts rewrite a pretty good chunk of history.  They also turn history into politics.
Now, if you are American, the only people that know what the hell the Jewish Wars were are the Jews.  It was their great epic of failure to shake off the Roman Empire. When you know why happened and what they were, it's easy to see that Jesus was killed because he was a threat to Rome.  When you don't know about them Jesus was killed because the Jews are greedy.

Little things like that make the difference between learning to hate Empires for killing Jesus & learning to hate the Jews for it.

It's kinda sorta a big deal.

In America the real big one is the Gilded Age.  It was a term coined by Mark Twain
It's important because if you are Libertarian, Republican, or conservative, it's the economic policy that you are supporting & the one that was flag shipped by Ayn Rand.

NO! NO! NO! NO! IT'S AN ORIGINAL IDEA!!!  IT'S NEVER BEEN TRIED BEFORE!!!  NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Now hold on this is actual history, you learned it in high school.  They made a Disney musical about one of the things we're going to cover here and...

NO! NO! NO! NO!  LIAR!  COMMUNIST PLOT!  CONSPIRACY!  LIBERAL INDOCTRINATION!  NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!  OUR IDEA IS NEW AYN RAND CAME UP WITH IT AND IT WILL WORK!!!!!!  I WIN!  I WIN!  I WIN!
I know, I know, this is a touchy subject.  It's hard to talk about because it takes us back to a time when there were no regulations on business.

NO! NO! NO! BUSINESS HAS ALWAYS BEEN REGULATED!  WE'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!  NEW IDEA! I WIN!  I WIN!

And this was about the time that there was no minimum wage, no unions, no labor protection, no OSHA Laws, where it was just the worker & the employer that determined wages & the government had now interference in how business or trade operated.

So let's take a step into the Wayback Machine &...

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! LIES!  LIES! LIBERAL LIES!  WE WENT STRAIGHT FROM WASHINGTON TO LINCOLN TO REAGAN! THE GILDED AGE IS A LIBERAL LIE!  THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS STANDARD OIL!  LIES!  LIES! LIBERAL LIES!
Unfortunately, as you can see, this is going to be a political post.  There are no two ways about it.  You can't get in the Wayback Machine & go to the time when the conservative economic policy failed, & not have it instantly turn into the political.

LIES! LIES! LIES LIBERAL LIES! LIES! LIES! NYAH! NYAH! THIS NEVER HAPPENED! DON'T LOOK IT UP!  ALL LIES!
So If you can ignore the conservatives trying to shoot down their own history, we'll start in 1899 New York & talk a little about the News Boys Strike....Why?  Because being a Disney musical it's really the only part of the Gilded Age that you're probably familiar with.

Just, um, just try to ignore the conservative talking points.
This was a strike of homeless children.  They were mainly orphans & runaways that slept in the streets & worked all day selling newspapers in New York City for maybe enough money to eat.  This was a child labor strike.

NO! NO! NO! NO! THERE WAS NEVER CHILD LABOR IN AMERICA!  THIS IS ALL LIES!  LIBERAL LIES!  DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!

Anyway, the strike was over wages.  What happened was that there were no work regulations against Child Labor, no regulations concerning the eight-hour day & no minimum wage laws.  If you owned the business you could pay your employees anything you wanted, & in almost every case that meant you were paying them as little as possible.

In New York there were two major papers in competition with one another. 

One was owned by Joseph Pulitzer called The New York World
And the other was owned by William Randolph Hearst & called The New York Journal.
LIES! LIES! LIES! LIBERAL LIES!  NEWS PAPERS WEREN'T INVENTED UNTIL 1942!  DON'T LISTEN TO THE LIBERAL LIES!

Anyway, Hearst & Pulitzer spent most of their time at one anthers throats as they competed for more business.  They were fierce business rivals that would do anything to undercut the sales of their rival papers.

But they weren't about to compete about labor.  What they decided is that they could get more money by paying their child labor as little as possible, so they came together & negotiated the wages that they would pay their starving child labor force.  This way they would both make higher profits without undermining their own work forces.
And that caused the children that worked for them to strike.  They were already living in the streets & now they weren't making enough to even eat.  What did they have to lose?

NO! NO! NO! NO! THERE WAS NEVER CHILD LABOR IN AMERICA!  THIS IS ALL LIES!  LIBERAL LIES! REGULATIONS FORCED CHILD LABOR NOT CORRECTED IT!
And then when the strike actually happened they split the cost of the private paramilitary strike-breaking forces that they hired to beat & murder their striking labor base.  That's right, they hired people to beat & murder orphan children to assure they can continue to keep the orphaned kids starving to death.

The concept caught on in Newspapers across the country.

The strike spread as far as Butte Montana & it wasn't until the authorities stepped in to keep orphans from being killed that it actually broke, which forced Child-welfare programs in both the Federal & State Governments in order to keep children, employed full time, from living on the streets.

NO! NO! NO! THOSE POLICIES ARE BAD!  LET THE CHILDREN STARVE!  DOWN WITH REGULATIONS!  DOWN WITH WELFARE PROGRAMS!  IGNORE THE LIBERAL LIES!
Anyway, Disney went on to turn it into one of their worst musicals ever, I mean, who wants to listen to Bill Pullman sing?  Besides, they cut out all those gruesome murders of children in order to keep it family friendly.

But it stars Batman.
I

I'll leave you with this:


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