Darkness is good.

March 14, 2017 5:28 PM

The 1930s were humanity's darkest, bloodiest hour. Are you paying attention?
The Guardian takes a special look back at an era bookended by the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the outbreak of the second world war, and asks: what lessons can be learnt from this 'low, dishonest decade'? which was for Roald Dahl a golden age for chocolate.
posted by adamvasco (13 comments total)

The 1930s were humanity's darkest, bloodiest hour.

i think the plague wasn't great either
posted by listen, lady at 6:59 PM on March 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

The plague was hardly a self-inflicted wound though.
posted by kokaku at 7:06 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

...okay, maybe not in mood with the thread, but the Dahl piece led to me looking up Forrest Mars, which led me to discover that a single user has carefully inserted a fourth child, "Janet Henderson" into pretty much every Mars-related Wikipedia article. Prankster? Fantasist? Actual resentful illegitimate child editing away?
posted by tavella at 7:09 PM on March 14, 2017 [6 favorites]

The plague was hardly a self-inflicted wound though.

FAIR

i think i'm just tired of provocation masquerading as analysis

R U LISTENING AMERICA
posted by listen, lady at 7:29 PM on March 14, 2017 [5 favorites]

Last week it was 1914 all over again, this week we're living in the 1930's. Which is it, now?

Personally what makes me hopeful is the idea that Trump, like Carter, is a "disjunctive" president. Hard to say what's going to happen in Europe but perhaps the populist tide is ebbing.
posted by My Dad at 7:52 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Totally a tangent, but...the chocolate history is pretty fascinating. What happened in chocolate in the 30s depended a great deal on the spread of the cold chain and AC, which could keep chocolate candy shelf-stable throughout the year for the first time. Until then, chocolate candy was a seasonal treat and not available in summer. Also, chocolate is difficult and highly technical to produce. The major chocolate companies kept their methods very carefully guarded, and the rapid expansion of the market due to technological advances in cold production produced an intensification of corporate espionage that was pretty serious. Set against this historical backdrop, Willy Wonka's bizarre paranoia and proprietary pride makes all the sense in the world.
posted by Miko at 8:13 PM on March 14, 2017 [21 favorites]

Miko: "Totally a tangent, but...the chocolate history is pretty fascinating. What happened in chocolate in the 30s depended a great deal on the spread of the cold chain and AC, which could keep chocolate candy shelf-stable throughout the year for the first time. Until then, chocolate candy was a seasonal treat and not available in summer. Also, chocolate is difficult and highly technical to produce. The major chocolate companies kept their methods very carefully guarded, and the rapid expansion of the market due to technological advances in cold production produced an intensification of corporate espionage that was pretty serious. Set against this historical backdrop, Willy Wonka's bizarre paranoia and proprietary pride makes all the sense in the world."

Well, that and the fact Kit Kats are around 80 years old.
posted by Samizdata at 10:26 PM on March 14, 2017

The Dutch far-right is tanking in the polls now just ahead of the election. I hope this is a sign that the winds are turning again here in Europe. An abysmal election result for France's Le Pen in May would be icing on the cake.
posted by Harald74 at 1:10 AM on March 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

TFA mention that the 30s are brought up all the time because that's what most people are familiar with. That mostly describes me as well, but I've been listening to Mike Duncan's excellent History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts, and my-oh-my have we ever made mistakes in the past, forgotten them and made them again. Duncan's background is in political science, so the podcasts don't dwell on battles and campaigns, but bring the people and politics into the light. Highly recommended!
posted by Harald74 at 1:21 AM on March 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

The thing that changes all this, but not necessarily for the better, is the HUUUGE change in communication around the globe, channels, bandwidth, speed, spectra, etc. We're in the other side of the looking glass, almost, with information bombarding everybody, multiplicative and exponential. In the past the world was deaf and blind to rapid change. We got the opposite problem, to an extent that I doubt that the past has all that much to teach us, unfortunately.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:42 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Speaking of podcasts, Patrick Wyman's Fall of Rome podcast seems relevant to the current era as well. Particularly because it takes a skeptical view of the traditional "Barbarians showed up and everything went to Hell" narrative.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:46 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I found that Guardian article pretty terrifying. It summed up in one place in black and white all the various threats to democracy that I've been feeling and seeing, all in one place.

When I woke up the morning after Brexit and saw the results, for the first time I felt a terrible foreboding that Trump might actually win the election - until that point I'd been pretty optimistic that cooler heads would prevail. The morning after the US election I woke up to a text from my Norwegian best friend saying "I'm so sorry. God help us all." And that's how I feel still. How do we stop this awful thing from happening? It feels like we're not reaching the people who need to be persuaded. I'm a fairly optimistic and pragmatic person, but my alarm bells are also going off pretty insistently and frankly, I'm pretty scared.
posted by widdershins at 8:12 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Dahl''s school was near the Cadbury factory; the boys were frequently sent test samples.
posted by brujita at 12:07 PM on March 15, 2017