From the wiki: “By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, the mascara Lash lure, which caused blindness, and worthless “cures” for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through Congress for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.”
I believe I’ve heard that the FDA was actually beneficial for capitalism as consumers would entirely avoid certain products out of fear, making it difficult to sell even legitimate goods.
That’s not true:
They exist because pure unadulterated capitalism WILL kill you, not would.
It wasn’t chalk, it was borax. And that was because it neutralised the sour taste of turned milk.
Safety regulations are written in the blood of those who died from unsafe practices.
Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.
I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.
When I told my parents how we got things like the 40 hour work week they were fucking mortified. Something seemingly so inconsequential, many people died for.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.
but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hell, I’d even settle for more people watching classic movies and TV shows. People need to maintain some link to the past to see the mindset of those who lived through fascism, wars, etc. and absorb what a society that rejects those ideas looks like.
Culture is a big part of our collective memory, and a society that can’t look back will just reinvent the same problems.
It would be cool if someone made a “transported through time” miniseries that showed exactly what living in that period with those problems was like. I think it could be very popular.
I can see that being an isekai manga. Say, by the person who did Spice & Wolf?
Oh, by the way, check out Barefoot Gen. It was written by a person who was a boy when the atomic bombs hit Japan. It covers the post-war period, including the corruption and day-to-day life of a shattered Japan.
