Betty - The Second Great Depression -
The Second Great Depression, The Cybernetic Wars, and the rise of the Chinese and Russian blocks helped create the world we live in now. Some histories say that it all started when America defaulted on her foreign debt and kicked off the Second Great Depression, but that is simplistic thinking. The fact is that The Second Great Depression was just one step on a long path all of us walked to get to where we are now. It was simply one of many crises we have seen. Probably the reason it sits in our cultural baggage is because of how many people alive today saw it happen. It was the greatest crisis of their lives until The War came upon us all. So of course they remember it as world changing. And they’re right in a way. It did change the world. But it wasn’t the cause of the change. It was the result of the change.
Jack - The Second Great Depression -
I didn’t know anybody who lived through The Second Great Depression when I was young. Or if they had, they didn’t advertise. That’s Northern Minnesota for yah. We all have history, so why talk about it? I’ve met a few people after The War came who did, and the thing that gets me is that most people never saw The Depression coming. They thought there was always another person, bank, or country to borrow money from back then. They thought the credit lines would never end. All they wanted was enough credit to buy the next television, phone, or gaming console. And if they watched the news at all, it was about places far away like Washington, Europe, or Asia. None of it meant anything to their world. Until it did. And then it was just far too late to save the world they knew.
Charles - The Second Great Depression -
The Second Great Depression came as s surprise to most people of the time. They had not listened to the economists who said the deficit spending was unsustainable. Or the foreign policy experts or the businessmen who said that America could not maintain her position in the world without making hard choices. They thought the good times would never end. It was too late to stop the train of history by the time they realized the truth. The American government had lost all faith and credit with the last constituency it could not afford to lose. The American people.
Betty - The Second Great Depression -
The Second Great Depression started when the American government defaulted on its foreign loans. That’s the standard lesson taught in history. It’s more accurate to say that a newly elected Congress stopped paying the interest on certain foreign loans to geopolitical foes in an effort to balance the yearly budget. When China reacted by demanding immediate repayment of all outstanding loans, the government could not have done so if they’d wanted to. They did not. What started as a budget battle turned into a geopolitical crisis. China soon nationalized all American-owned property in their sphere of influence, and then began impounding American cargos traveling through their waters. I will remind you that they had already laid claimed to the entirety of the South Chinese Sea at the time. The economic impact on America was…bad.
Jack - The Second Great Depression -
The Fall of Japan and Taiwan. The Korean Unification. The Invasion of the Philippines. I’ve talked to people who lived through all of it. The funny thing is, most of them never even knew it was happening. America had her own domestic difficulties after the American government began to fail. Many State governments collapsed under the dead weight, and the fall of law and order in their own backyards is what most people noticed. But I’ve also talked to people who lived in those other nations when it started. People who came to America as refugees looking for a new home, only to find us in nearly as bad a shape as their homes had been. The difference was that we were far enough from China that we had time to rebuild. And with a whole new pool of Asian refugees to draw workers from, we had the people to do it with. It’s a matter of faith to them that they built the Republic of California. That without them, the entire West Coast would have collapsed into an apocalyptic wasteland of civilization. I’ve played more than a few games that started with that scenario. It’s scary dark, let me tell you.
Charles - The Second Great Depression -
Most American citizens did not care when the American government stopped paying the interest on certain foreign loans. They did begin to care when the Chinese raised their prices and cheap Chinese goods became expensive Chinese goods. They cared even more when China began shipping American crewmen home, with only the clothes on their backs, after impounding their ships in the South China Sea. The news carried stories of them being unable to find new jobs after companies stopped shipping anywhere near China, and the people lost their last vestiges of faith in America’s ability to defend them beyond our borders. When the people lost faith in the government’s wish to defend them inside our borders, it was the beginning of the end of what many called the Second American Republic.
Betty -
Many people called it the Second American Republic at the time. The result of the Civil War. Most historians call it the Third Republic. The result of Roosevelt’s New Deal. America’s been through a lot of changes over the centuries, echoed or begun by both the culture and the government. Southerners rebelled in the 1860s. Civilization hung by a thread in the 1930s. Hippies checked out in the 1970s. Everybody was checking out by the 2010s. The Culture Wars were hitting their stride and America was on its way to becoming at least two entirely different peoples who really didn’t like each other. There were actually three, or more major cultures at the time, but the noisiest two were the ones that got the news and the network ratings. And most of the history books. It was flash points like the 2010s that serve as warnings that the cultural differences between two or more groups are becoming critical. We saw them in the 1760s, the 1850s, the 1920s, and the 2190s as well. I really wish more people had listened before things got worse. Worse like the Second Great Depression.
Jack -
I know people who lived through the years leading up to the Second Great Depression. They’ve told me what it was like back then. They had access to the best technology ever invented. They could talk to anyone in the world via electronics designed in The West and built in Asia. And Western vaccines had erased many of the worst diseases mankind had ever known. They were on top of the world in many ways, with the best living conditions ever enjoyed by mankind. But not everyone had it so good. I know people whose company’s shut down because they couldn’t compete with foreign sweatshop construction. High-paying jobs were hard to find, and people worked longer and longer hours to take care of their families. They lost the houses they’d owned for decades or longer, and some cities even began tearing the vacant houses down to fight the rising crime and poverty levels. The gulf between rich and poor had never seemed so vast. That’s part of what drove us to the edge.
Charles -
Most historians separate the history of the United States of America into the Colonial Era, the American Confederation, and the four American Republics. The Colonial Era of course speaks about the time under British Rule, which ended with the Revolution against the Crown. The Confederation was the first formation of Free Colonial Rule, before the adoption of our current Constitution. The First American Republic started with the passage of the new Constitution and was generally characterized as a mutual assemblage of Sovereign States. The Civil War, or the Second American Revolution as some name it, transformed America into the Second Republic, with a far more powerful Federal government. The Second Republic ended with the First Great Depression and the New Deal. This Third Republic grew up in World War II to become the new guarantor of peace in the world. Some call it the First American Democracy. Whether a Democracy or a Constitutional Republic, many Americans alive today were born and grew up in this time. They lived through the Second Great Depression in living, bleeding color.
Betty -
One of the things that made the Second Great Depression as bad as it was is the decades of political and cultural division that preceded it. Identity politics divided people by race, sex, religion, politics, and more. Those who had friends in other groups were called race traitors, or the like. And there was always a protest group happy to march with signs held high to call for someone to lose their job, their business, or worse if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. By the time the economic crisis hit its peak, the time when people really needed to hang together for the good of everyone, too many people no longer cared what happened to those outside their close group of trusted friends and associates. And too many others took a delighted glee out of watching those who’d attacked them lose their jobs or homes in turn. And when the governmental social safety nets failed, those who depended on them had to sink or swim. Far too many of them pulled others down with them in their frantic attempts to avoid drowning. It wasn’t just the economic crisis that hurt. It was the political crisis. The culture crisis. The moral crisis. It all came to a boil at once, and when it hit America, it hit the rest of the world like a thunderbolt.
Jack -
The people I’ve talked to who lived through the Second Great Depression remember a time of plenty and opportunity. And a time of horrible division. They could buy anything they wanted from food to electronics. They could move from coast to coast on a whim, or play in virtual worlds better than the real one. And at the same time, the political and cultural divisions were beyond anything a people can survive for long. Political parties taught their members to hate people based on their race, their heritage, and their religion. They called their political foes mentally deficient, crazy, or hypocrites. They attacked political rivals with demonstrations and riots. Political assassinations, both virtual and real, became commonplace. Homes of opposition supporters were vandalized, and businesses were protested out of existence. The politics of destruction allowed no one who believed differently to survive. Many people just checked out of politics and tried not to pay attention to it. Others wallowed in it and moderates faded from the political landscape. Most people just didn’t care what was happening in Washington by the end. Apathy is the five-dollar word people toss out for why people let it get so bad. I suppose there are worse ones out there.
Charles -
Whether it existed as a Constitutional Republic or an effective Democracy, many began foretelling the Third American Republic’s downfall as early as 2000 or 2010. While the elections of 2008 and 2016 certainly proved to be clarion calls when it comes to the health of the Republic, most historians agree that the government limped along for the next quarter century without observable historical change. There was great cultural and rhetorical outrage, but true political or cultural change was slow and minimal. The cities went one way, while the rural areas went another, and as time passed they had less in common with each other. The end years of the Third Republic were times of division, and it became common to call people on any side un-American if they did not agree with a chosen slate of values. Gridlock and savage rhetoric ruled the era, and political violence of a kind not seen in decades, or centuries, rose to become almost commonplace. But for all the news and thunder of this violence and rhetoric, little actually changed in how the country worked. The Second Great Depression became that change.
Betty -
The Second Great Depression changed everything for America first, and then the rest of the world. We’d all been spending more money than we had, and global debt had skyrocketed long past any ability to pay back. Most people and corporations lived on credit so elastic that paychecks just went to their ever-expanding debts. Saving money was something that most people just didn’t do. So when America crossed the limit of the payments on the debt it could afford to make, everyone suffered. America stopped paying the Chinese, and some other nations. Other allied nations followed America’s example, and the Chinese responded by nationalizing all foreign assets in Chinese territory. Russia stepped back, stating distrust of all foreign trade partners, and the global trading and economic network collapsed in a matter of months. That was the true beginning of the Second Great Depression.
Jack -
It’s interesting to talk to people who lived through the Second Great Depression. The first thing most of them say is that they never saw it coming. The signs were there. Economists had warned them. Geopolitical experts had said it was coming. But the vast majority of those who actually lived it simply hadn’t believed it. It was crazy. It was never going to get that bad. Surely someone would do something to make things better. Or somebody would invent something to sidetrack the whole issue. And then one day they woke up and realized it had gotten that bad. Even today, they just shake their heads in confusion, wondering what they could have done to stop it before it happened. But none of them could. Oh, there might be a few people out there still alive who were in the right positions of authority who could have done something. But outside of them, there’s not a single person alive out there who could have stopped it.
Charles -
Most historians say the Second Great Depression began when the American government stopped paying on the national debt to China and a few other nations. That is not entirely truthful. You can chart the economic trends for decades before, but governments and banks papered over the cracks as each crisis came and went. Instead of accepting small corrections that would have been relatively painless, they attempted to move the goalposts further and further out. The stock markets hit record highs every decade, wages increased, and more powerful computers came out every year. Life was good. The day most people say the Second Great Depression began was simply the day the bubble finally burst. It was the day the experiment of a united humanity finally came crashing down for all to see.
Jack -
No one person could have stopped the Second Great Depression. That’s real hard for people to accept. They can know it, but most of the people I’ve talked to feel like someone could have stopped it. They feel that they could have if they’d just paid more attention to the news. Maybe listened to the right news. The warnings were there, but they dismissed it all as loony tunes. Just conspiracy theorists, UFO hunters, or people who believed in honest politicians. The funny thing is, we’ve found out that the first two are real. The hard part is proving the third one. Almost as hard as convincing the survivors that they’re not at fault for everything that happened.
Charles -
The Second Great Depression ended the world created by World War II. The United Nations was a grand experiment of the Western World after we defeated our enemies. What we failed to understand at the time was that not everyone in the world wanted to be like The West. The Chinese believe they are the greatest civilization in all the worlds, and forever resented being forced to play by our rules. And Russia never did believe in doing anything that did not benefit them. They and others joined our game because we were the strongest game in town. But they were never willing participants, and they always looked for other games to play. It is not accurate to blame them, though. We made our own mistakes. Probably the most correct answer to the question of why the Second Great Depression happened is that we never truly cooperated. We each in our own ways tried to game the system to beat the other guys. And that stressed the system beyond its ability to survive. And that is how we broke it all. That is how the grand experiment failed.
Betty -
The Second Great Depression’s opening months were pretty easy in most ways. There was no stock market crash for people to point at and say that’s the day everything changed. The American government simply announced that it was going to stop payments on Chinese debts. That was big news in the financial markets, and those people still interested in politics knew all about it, but most people didn’t care about any of that. Nobody lost their homes. No businesses shut down that day. No banks failed. It was a pretty normal Friday afternoon followed by a weekend of spending time with family and returning to work on Monday after some new scandal hit the networks. It was an underwhelming start to a global economic crisis that changed the world.
Jack -
So what did most people do when the Second Great Depression began? Most of those I’ve talked to didn’t notice it. Not for months, anyway. The networks chattered about it, but they chattered about a lot of fake news and most people had long since stopped taking them seriously. A few people I know did take it seriously. They saw the writing on the wall and if they weren’t already in a safe place, they got to one. That generally meant some family farm at least a hundred kilometers from the nearest major city. Some tried bunkering up a bit closer, but they didn’t have as much luck in the long run. The ones that survived the best made friends with their neighbors, and joined the local PTA, American Legion, or VFA. They took their kids Scouting or to the local 4H. They attended the county fairs and jacked their jaws at the local bars on Friday nights. They were an established and recognized part of the local community when things went downhill.
Charles -
It began with a whimper, not a bang. A Friday afternoon announcement that the United States of America would no longer make payments on the debt to China a few other select nations that did not have America’s best interests at heart. It was part of the traditional weekend infodump on the networks that included a line item about reducing funding to a few cherished political third rail programs. The networks did report on it, and many analysts of the time said that was the most dangerous part of the entire infodump. But there was far more outrage about the suggestion that the government would limit grandmother’s social security payments than whether or not they would pay some Chinese banker on the other side of the world. It is amazing how an event so important can be utterly invisible to the people of the time. That Friday was another Archduke Ferdinand moment for our world. It was a day few noticed at the time but that started the irreversible tumble into the abyss that was The Second Great Depression.
Betty -
By the time the Second Great Depression hit America with its full steam, it was far too late for anyone to prepare. People were either in a region that was able to weather the economic collapse or they were not. Those in the good areas sometimes barely even noticed it. Oh, they knew things were bad for other people, but a surprising number of people were barely inconvenienced at all by the greatest collapse of civilization in modern history. Other people died of starvation or rampant crime waves, and some entire cities became ghost towns. Where people were when it started greatly determined whether or not they survived at all.
Jack -
So what did most people do when everything fell? Well, most of the ones I know found a safe place, hunkered down, and waited for the chaos to fade. Those lucky enough to be in places like Texas had a good life. The Republic was about as ready as it could be to survive the end of everything. Good weather, natural resources, and a government willing to knuckle down and do the hard things that needed doing. People in the largely rural Midwest States did pretty good for themselves too. Those in Chicago had a rougher time. Detroit was pretty much a nightmare. I’m good friends with one who survived Detroit and she wishes the army had just burned it all to the ground when they rolled in. She and her friends certainly did their part to make certain it was as rough as possible on those in charge at the time. Let’s just say that I never want to be on their bad side.
Charles -
The Second Great Depression was far more than merely an economic crisis. It included a diplomatic crisis that morphed into a series of conflicts one step removed from the fabled World War III of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century fiction. The Western World had maintained dominance for a century, with Western laws commanding the seas and international relations via the United Nations. But the economic crisis weakened that world, and many foes rose up to challenge it. Russian ruthlessness, Chinese calculation, and Middle Eastern extremism vied to replace The West as ruler of the world, just as the first primitive artificial intelligences began to see everything around them and understand both life and death. It was a crisis of economic integration, geo-political power, cultural dominance, and the very definition of life as we knew it. There are so very many ways it could have gone all wrong. The fact that we are here today at all is proof that we found a way through it. That alone is victory enough in my book.