Finishing this one

The Rest of the “More of the Same”:

MMe. La Passionaria Perkins will introduce collective bargaining for panhandlers. Henry Morgenthau, the male Alice-in-WOnderland, no doubt is already busy on schemes whereby the United States will guarantee the integrity of the Japanese Yen, the Austrian schilling, and the Siamese tical. And Jim Farley — why, Jim is going to get rid of the last of those annoying Civil Service people; then perhaps Albany; and then — well, why not? — The White House. If Jim can elect Dr. Roosevelt twice, surely he can elect himself once.

So we will have to grin and bear it. The grinning is easy enough — except when we come to pay the bill. And bear it we must — until that day, not so far distant, when the incense smoke clears away from Dr. Roosevelt’s thaumaturgies and we find ourselves face to face with a reality which is going to be as unpleasant as it is stark.

Just at this time The Mercury would like to make one obvious prediction: that the Republic will shortly be deluged by a torrent of franked literature from Washington, calling upon free-born citizens to forget bygones, to bury the hatchet, to put a shoulder to the Wheel and Work for the Future of a Unified America. When translated into English, this high-sounding call will merely ask the population to forget the most obnoxious, inefficient , and despotic Administration in our history — an Administration which, manned by a political machine of almost unbelievable corruption, now enters upon its next term with a national debt of thirty-five billion dollars.

Well, if certain free-born Americans want to forget their first draught of the New Deal, there is nothing to be done about them. But just to keep the record straight, The Mercury will continue to expose the absurdities and stupidities of the new New Deal just as strenuously as it exposes the absurdities and stupidities of the First Crackpot Riech, 1933-1936.

(December 1936)…

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