​A World War economy is taking obvious shape in a virus ridden and conflict inflamed world. In complete global unison, all nations from around the globe have entered into a literal wartime economy. There is nothing figurative about that. A wartime socioeconomic life includes strict rationing, curfews, forced closures of social events and public venues. These are serious limitations on typical freedoms most Americans take for granted; such as the ability to hang out at the park on a Saturday to BBQ with friends and family, or, the impulse ability to buy as much food and gas as you want too whenever you want too.

Curfews are imposed on the public to keep casualties minimal in wartime. Propaganda and rhetoric is important to pay attention too as well by leading officials. These are typically national promotional narratives that are composed by government and media agencies. These are entities who work in concert to promote a visual and audial sense of national unity in times of war or unrest.

In WWII you would have seen a "WORK OR FIGHT" propaganda campaign pushed nationally. "Rosie the Riveter" posters beckoned housewives to leave the home and enter the nation's factories. According to the Independence Hall Association, “About 6.5 million females entered the workforce during the war years, many for the first time. African Americans continued the Great Migration northward, filling vacated factory jobs. Mexican Americans were courted to cross the border to assist with the harvest season in the BRACERO GUEST-WORKER PROGRAM. Thousands of retirees went back on the job, and more and more teenagers pitched in to fill the demand for new labor.”[1]

In WWI the United States was able to raise up enough food and raw materials by voluntary measures only. With the outbreak of WWII and the growing size of the population, federal officials concluded that rationing was the best and only option for demands to be met. Books of stamps were sent out to every American family. These stamps allowed you to purchase gasoline, sugar, meat, butter, canned foods, fuel oil, shoes, and rubber. Any purchase of these supplies without a wartime issued stamp was made illegal.

In fact, the Office of Censorship decreed a code of conduct for newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters. The OOC did not use government censors to pre-approve all articles and radio programs however. The government relied on voluntary cooperation to avoid sensitive topics. Military movements, weather predictions, and the locations of high ranking officials would have been information considered beneficial to the enemy. Journalists however were not required to publish positive propaganda only like in WWII.[2]

The office did not use government censors to pre-approve all articles and radio programs. It relied on voluntary cooperation to avoid subjects, such as troop movements, weather forecasts, and the travels of the President, that might aid the enemy. Journalists did not have to publish positive propaganda, unlike during World War I. The Office of War Information would sponsor posters and public rallies to appeal to patriotic Americans. Entertainers like Bing Crosby; also including filmmaker’s like Frank Capra, would all help to boost continuity in public morale.

Energy supply was a sacrifice on it’s own to American’s equally. To conserve the national gasoline and oil supply for war, “Victory Speed Limits” were imposed.[3] This required Americans to drive at a slower speed. Rotating blackouts were instituted to conserve petroleum, which was to be shipped overseas for the war effort. On the Home-front, social groups such as the Boy Scouts and Salvation Army would lead scrap metal and donation drives. You would have seen large consumer products like refrigerators and vehicles just not being made at all. Backyard gardens would end up bringing in 8-million tons of food for Americans all over the country.[4]

The successes made on public advancement by the effects of the World Wars were ones demonstrative of American unity. This is an American unity that is continually solidified in history. Out of these great World Wars would bring in new economic industries like Synthetics, and old industries would be brought back to life. All of this action was made on behalf of tremendous costs to the typical American citizen and taxpayer.

Of course today is a much different situation as we are all being led to believe that this is a unified global World War on a biological virus. You can kill off influenza as quickly as you can stop global acts of terrorism. Much like the revolving door of response and retaliation, it tends to be cyclical. You cannot declare war on a virus. That is not viable to any society. So how should it be dealt with? Well that’s not my job to figure out. However the way I see it today and moving forward, you simply can’t expect American society to ever be the same again. The politicization of today's ugly biological event signals a shift in how American and global society operates from here on out. Like all World Wars, even when the enemy is a biological one, it is politicized to some degree.

 
Daniel L. Smith,
​ComplexAmerica.Org
 
 
Resources:
[1] Independence Hall Association. "The American Homefront." US History. Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.ushistory.org/us/51b.asp.
[2] "Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and The American Press and Radio in World War II." Central Intelligence Agency. Last modified 0715. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no3/article10.html.
[3] Perrone, Catherine. "Home Front Friday: The “Victory Speed” Limit." The National WWII Museum Blog. Last modified January 11, 2017. https://www.nww2m.com/2015/12/home-front-friday-get-in-the-scrap/.
[4] Future Farmers of America. "Victory Gardens History." Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.futurefarmers.com/victorygardens/history.html. 

So here we are. In a great modern-day national and statewide quarantined lock-down. A new procedure for every American today. Has anyone ever heard of the Great Flu of 1918? The Great Influenza of 1918 might arguably resemble the CoVID-19 flu that we are seeing today, at least to some degree. For instance, we notice that Iran is dealing with the brunt of the viral outbreak with over 1,000 casualties that they are allowing to be officially reported inside of their borders.[1] Of course they are also hyping up the situation by calling for “over one-million deaths” from this unfriendly influenza.[2] During the Great Influenza the global economic and social effects were catastrophic for everybody at that time, not just Asia and the Middle East.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention wrote: “The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated (although China rumored to be the likely cause), it spread worldwide during 1918-1919.  In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.

“It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.

“While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.”[4]

After doing some research, I found out that Iran (Persia) suffered the most casualties from the Great Influenza of 1918. A telegram from The Minister in Persia (Caldwell) to the Secretary of State. “American Relief Commission en route to Persia (Iran), headed by Doctor Judson, are scattered on the Pacific at Seattle, Bombay, Kermanshah, and Harakiri. They have immense supplies of much-needed medicine, supply of which is almost entirely exhausted in Persia. Epidemic of influenza prevails and quinine retails at $125 a pound.”[5]

In this transcript, the American Relief Commission was charged with supplying Iran specifically with viral medication for the pandemic’s relief efforts. The point that is being made here, is that these viral and bacterial outbreaks do happen and these things will continue to happen. There will be war, there will be sickness, there will be pestilence and famine.[6] People will be injured, and people will lose their lives. It is the way of humanity, as we can see today when we look into our more recent history. It is obvious people know this fact, as panic and fear have driven people nationwide to hoard supplies at grocery and department stores.[7] Shelves are empty. Supply simply cannot keep up with demand.

Was the 1918 Influenza epidemic bad? Sure it was. It certainly wasn’t great. It's obvious here by the way the United States, Britain, and Germany have been unleashing their national “war-time powers” not seen since WWI and WWII.[8]  And there good reason to be aware to the history behind this whole “Pandemic” feature of post-Modern America.[9] With the United Nations and WHO taking aim at uniting country’s across the globe to fight CoVID-19 in unity and paralleled coordination, it should make you ponder the political freedom’s that everybody has taken for granted here at home. I feel as of right now our American liberty is being thrown under the bus in some sense. Some might say all for an illusion of a false sense of security.[10] A certain security that absolutely no government can offer you, or your family.

Statistical numbers on fatalities due to this global pandemic just aren’t matching up with the reality of this fully overblown response and lock-down of millions upon millions of people across the globe. Here’s the breakdown for infections: “COVID-19: Approximately 247,400 cases worldwide; 14,250 cases in the U.S. as of Mar. 20, 2020*. Regular Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year. And here’s the breakdown for Deaths: COVID-19: Approximately 10,067 deaths reported worldwide; 205 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 20, 2020.* And for the regular Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.”[11]

As we all in America sit and wait out what the mainstream media has dubbed the newest pandemic to affect humanity, we should take time to appreciate everything that we have in our own lives. This means educating ourselves on issues that we do not understand. This also means we should also take this time to reflect on our own household and community. As we endure our newest and most politically uncharted direction in human history, we should also ponder taking on an old-time responsibility and obligation to our American solidarity, heritage, and traditional acts of participation in community affairs. We have hit a crossroads in humanity’s timeline. From here on out, regardless of your social class and occupation, we are all prisoners of the political and social cycle that we as individuals choose (and don’t choose) to be part of.
 


Daniel L. Smith,
ComplexAmerica.org
 
 
​
Resources:

[1] "Iran Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 600, Syria Shuts Schools." Worthy Christian News. Last modified March 14, 2020. https://www.worthynews.com/47764-iran-coronavirus-death-toll-passes-600-syria-shuts-schools. 
[2] "Coronavirus Ravages Middle East As Iran Warns of 'Millions' of Deaths." Worthy Christian News. Last modified March 17, 2020. https://www.worthynews.com/47862-coronavirus-ravages-middle-east-as-iran-warns-of-millions-of-deaths.
[3] "The Minister in Persia (Caldwell) to the Secretary of State. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Supplement 2, The World War." Office of the Historian. Last modified October 2, 1918. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1918Supp02/d709.
[4] "History of 1918 Flu Pandemic." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm.
[5] Ibid., Office of the Historian.
[6] "African Locust Swarm Headed for Middle East." Worthy Christian News. Last modified March 17, 2020. https://www.worthynews.com/47840-african-locust-swarm-headed-for-middle-east.
[7] Solé, Elise. "Hoarding Toilet Paper Amid the Coronavirus: Why Are People Doing It?" Yahoo. Last modified March 19, 2020. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/hoarding-toilet-paper-amid-the-coronavirus-why-are-people-doing-it-203046290.html.
[8] Rawlinson, Kevin. "'This Enemy Can Be Deadly': Boris Johnson Invokes Wartime Language." The Guardian. Last modified March 18, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/enemy-deadly-boris-johnson-invokes-wartime-language-coronavirus.
[9] "Trump Says He Will Invoke Wartime Act to Fight 'enemy' Coronavirus." U.S. Last modified March 19, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-trump-act/trump-says-he-will-invoke-wartime-act-to-fight-enemy-coronavirus-idUSKBN2152XL?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews.
[10] "COVID-19: Is A Psyop – Cabal Wants To Turn The World Into A Militarized Police State." Investment Watch – Spreading the Truth. Empowering the People. Last modified February 19, 2020. https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/covid-19-is-a-psyop-cabal-wants-to-turn-the-world-into-a-militiarized-police-state/.
[11] Dr. Maragakis, Lisa L. "Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vs. the Flu." Johns Hopkins Medicine, Based in Baltimore, Maryland. Accessed March 19, 2020. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu. 

It was certainly polarizational issues that made the 19th century a true “wild west," and I really find "wild west" fits in every sense of the phrase.

​The American Settler’s from back east came over the Rocky Mountains with both broken dreams and real optimism for a new successful life. Each miner, settler, businessman (or woman), and government employee had their own personal reasons for leading a new life in California. The financial burden of the 1837 financial collapse was a national hardship all on its own for the soon-to-be Settler headed out west.[1] American Economist Martin Armstrong wrote, “The U.S. entered a serious economic depression following the failure of the New Orleans cotton brokerage firm, Herman Briggs & Co in March of 1837. Inflated land values, speculation and wildcat banking contributed to the crisis, which became known as the “Hard Times of 1837-1843.” New York banks suspended payments in gold on May 10th and financial panic ensued. At least 800 US banks suspended payment in gold and 618 banks failed before the year was out.”[2]

With the discovery of gold in California and the resulting influx of emigrants and immigrants; it seemed almost inevitable that the U.S. government would openly authorize the 1862 Homestead Act. This decree would guarantee all American citizens permanent private ownership of newly acquired territory west of the Mississippi river.[3]  Economic growth would boom for the nation given the limitless resources of the newly acquired land. Timber, hunting, fishing, mining, commercial business, and government would take over. It was the principle economic body that California would come to offer a rapidly expanding nation, which was now recovering from a financial meltdown. This new economic and cultural opportunity didn’t just benefit the legitimate law-abiding Settlers, but this new world also opened up to the criminal and unprincipled elements of American society as well. A somber reality to the preceding historical events throughout to the mid-19th century.

This same reality applies to the cultural similarities in unprincipled behavior that both Settlers and Natives exhibited equally between each other, as both played a part in hostile antagonization. I stand with Michael Medved when the word genocide in no way fits as a description of the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists or, later, American Settlers. Further, in “the 400 year history of American contact with the Indians includes many examples of white cruelty and viciousness --- just as the Native Americans frequently (indeed, regularly) dealt with the European newcomers with monstrous brutality and, indeed, savagery. In fact, reading the history of the relationship between British settlers and Native Americans its obvious that the blood-thirsty excesses of one group provoked blood thirsty excesses from the other, in a cycle that listed with scant interruption for several hundred years.”

“But none of the warfare (including an Indian attack in 1675 that succeeded in butchering a full one-fourth of the white population of Connecticut, and claimed additional thousands of casualties throughout New England) on either side amounted to genocide. Colonial and, later, the American government, never endorsed or practiced a policy of Indian extermination; rather, the official leaders of white society tried to restrain some of their settlers and militias and paramilitary groups from unnecessary conflict and brutality. Moreover, the real decimation of Indian populations had nothing to do with massacres or military actions, but rather stemmed from infectious diseases that white settlers brought with them at the time they first arrived in the New World.”[4]

UCLA professor Jared Diamond, author of the acclaimed bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," writes:

"Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Colombian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdom's, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600's, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River (page 78). The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus rank top among the killers." (page 212). As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers and advancing ahead of them" (page 374)."

Obviously, the decimation of native population by European germs represents an enormous tragedy, but in no sense does it represent a crime. Stories of deliberate infection by passing along "small-pox blankets" are based exclusively on two letters from British soldiers in 1763, at the end of the bitter and bloody French and Indian War. By that time, Indian populations (including those in the area) had already been terribly impacted by smallpox, and there's no evidence of a particularly devastating outbreak as a result of British policy. Medved writes, “For the most part, Indians were infected by devastating diseases even before they made direct contact with Europeans: other Indians who had already been exposed to the germs, carried them with them to virtually every corner of North America and many British explorers and settlers found empty, abandoned villages (as did the Pilgrims) and greatly reduced populations when they first arrived.”[5]

Sympathy for Native Americans and admiration for their cultures in no way requires a belief in European or American genocide. As Jared Diamond's book (and countless others) makes clear, the mass migration of Europeans to the New World and the rapid displacement and replacement of Native populations is hardly a unique interchange in human history. On six continents, such shifting populations – with countless cruel invasions and occupations and social destruction's and replacements - have been the rule rather than the exception.

I have found a lot of evidences difficult to obtain through large institutions bureaucratic archives. These are crucial for a more thorough and explicit observation on specific events that had occurred in relationship to the unprincipled behaviors and actions of those few individuals or groups. Some of these evidences that I have been able to successfully retrieve truly illustrate this particular viewpoint. Is this finally a small beam of light on the topic of relational nuances that occurred on both sides of the cultural aisle? The truth of the matter is that all of the overall regional hostility came down to certain specific cultural customs or traditions; which also included the erosion (or complete absence) of any personal ethical and moral values. 

This information is a rigid “shock-and-awe” to the individuals not necessarily awake to the “woke narrative” and still intellectually drowning in today’s public school and social-media propaganda. The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our "original sin" fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatsoever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in all Americans ignorant of the facts..

Finally, a nation ashamed of its past will fear its future. "One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness. The right place to begin is to confront, resist and reject the all-too-common line that our rightly admired forebears involved themselves in genocide. The early colonists and settlers can hardly qualify as perfect but describing them in Hitlerian, mass-murdering terms represents an act of brain-dead defamation."[6]


Daniel L. Smith,
ComplexAmerica.org



Footnotes:

 [1] Smith, Daniel L. "New American Settlers." In 1845-1870 An Untold Story of Northern California: The American Settler's First Documented Accounts of their Unwelcome Arrival, 20. Publication Consultants, 2019. Print.
 [2] Armstrong, Martin A. "Panic of 1837." Princeton Economic Institute. Last modified January 12, 2014. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/panic-of-1837/. 
 [3] "Act of May 20, 1862 (Homestead Act), Public Law 37-64 (12 STAT 392); 5/20/1862; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC." DocsTeach, 20 May 1862, www.docsteach.org/documents/document/homestead-act. Accessed 5 Mar. 2020. 
[4]Medved, Michael. "Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans." Townhall. Last modified September 19, 2007. https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelmedved/2007/09/19/reject-the-lie-of-white-genocide-against-native-americans-n989275. 
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.