The years that sucked more than 2008
Thursday, January 01, 2009
By TigerHawk at 1/01/2009 02:45:00 PM
tigerhawk.blogspot.com
Unless you were short the S&P 500 and oil since July, 2008 was probably not a great year for you. A lot went wrong, and we will bear the consequences for a generation, at least. It was, however, hardly the worst that Americans have faced, even within the oral tradition of the Baby Boomers. If you are over 45 and knew your grandparents well, your own "family memory" might go back as far as 1900. So, how does 2008 compare to the worst years since the beginning of the 20th century? Such comparisons are difficult to make, since one year's suckiness is different in kind from another year's, but we will not let that stop us from boldly looking for even crappier years. Therefore, behold my nominations for the years since 1900 that were worse, in the aggregate, than 2008, in reverse chronological order, with links to the Wikipedia pages and highlights, or rather low lights, of the year.
• 1979 - Iranian revolution; oil price shock with gas lines; Mr. Ed dies; Jimmy Carter attacked by a rabbit; Susan B. Anthony dollar introduced; Chrysler asks for and receives a federal bailout the first time; Iranian hostage crisis begins; Pakistanis attack the American embassy in Islamabad, are repulsed; the U.S. dollar falls to record lows against the Deutschemark; the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan; dollar inflation hit 10%, and "core" inflation was over 9%.
• 1975 - Real GDP falls more than 9% in the first quarter, inflation exceeds 14%, and the unemployment rate tops 9%; Bill Ayers' organization, the Weather Underground, bombs the State Department headquarters in Washington; South Vietnam collapses, and America withdraws in humiliation; Cambodia falls to the Khmer Rouge, and the slaughter begins; the Mayaguez incident, in which American hostages are rescued and some small quantum of American honor is restored at the cost of 38 servicemen; Jimmy Hoffa disappears; crazy women try to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford, twice; the United Nations declares Zionism a form of racism; New York City asks for and gets a financial bailout; a bomb goes off at LaGuardia; and Carlos the Jackal and others kidnap OPEC delegates.
• 1974 - The Watergate crisis dominates the news, with Nixon resigning under threat of impeachment in August; Patty Hearst kidnapped; the Arab oil embargo, in force since late 1973, continues until March -- the price of oil rises from around $3.29 to $11.58 per barrel; dollar price inflation exceeds 10%; a "super outbreak" of tornados hits the United States on April 3, with 149 tornados killing 315 people and injuring 5000, and George W. Bush had nothing to do with it; the Symbionese Liberation Army, reinforced by Patty Hearst, terrorizes California; the Cleveland Indians sponsor a "ten cent beer" night that turns out to be "ill-advised"; the IRA bombs Parliament and the Tower of London; Ted Bundy is killing women right and left; Japanese "Red Army" terrorists attack France's embassy in the Netherlands, just one of numerous radical left terrorism attacks over the next several years; the United Nations grants the Palestinian Liberation Organization "observer status" at the General Assembly, just two years after Munich.
• 1968 - the "Prague Spring" begins, only to be crushed by the subsequent Soviet invasion; the Tet offensive begins, including an attack on the American embassy in Saigon -- the United States achieves a decisive military victory but the American press declares it a defeat and Walter Cronkite throws in the towel; the Norks seize the USS Pueblo, which they hold to this day; My Lai; RFK assassinated; MLK assassinated; students riot across America, and take over Columbia; France narrowly avoids revolution after weeks of general strikes and protests; radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol; Saddam Hussein becomes Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq, after a coup; the Cincinnati Bengals are founded; the candidates for president are Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace (in case you did not like your choices in 2000, 2004, or 2008); and the Democratic National Convention is even harsher outside the convention hall.
• 1950 - the Korean War starts, the United States intervenes under the auspices of the United Nations, and after the victory at Inchon General McArthur overplays his hand and provokes the intervention of China, a mistake that tragically prolongs the war at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American, Korean, and Chinese lives; Joseph McCarthy launches his campaign against alleged Communists in the State Department; Klaus Fuchs is convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets; Harry Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb to stay ahead of the Soviets; L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics; and China invades Tibet.
• 1949 - China falls to the Commies; the Berlin blockade, which has been ongoing since 1948, is broken by the airlift and lifted in May; George Orwell publishes 1984 , anticipates web cams, and scares the hell out of everybody; South Africa establishes its policy of aparthied; the Soviet Union breaks the American nuclear monopoly, further scaring the hell out of everybody; World War II vet Howard Unruh goes nuts and shoots 13 people in Camden, proving that even the "Greatest Generation" had a few depraved loons; the Soviet Union plays hardball in the UN, vetoing membership for Italy, Finland, Portgual, and other real countries; the fake country of East Germany is established.
• 1939 - 1945 - World War II. These were all brutal, harsh, years for a huge part of the world. More than 60,000,000 people died, and the result set up Communism as the new totalitarian threat to the West. The early years were terrible -- from 1939 through 1942, it was far from clear that the West would win, even with the involvement of the Soviet Union. The Axis powers rolled up one strategic victory after another, at least until the "turning point" battles of El Alamein, Midway, and Stalingrad during 1942. From 1943 to 1945 the tide had turned, but the human suffering had only just begun. From the Holocaust to the strategic bombing campaigns against the Axis to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is hard to match the human suffering of 1943 - 1945. Nothing else comes close.
• 1938 - Edouard Daladier, an advocate of appeasement, is elected prime minister of France; Neville Chamberlain goes to Munich, returns declaring "peace for our time"; Germany invades Czechoslovakia; Kristallnacht, harbinger of the Holocaust -- Nazis burn Jewish businesses, arrest thousands of Jewish men, and kill 63 Jews; the U.S. economy endures the "second depression," and GDP drops more than 6% after four years of recovery.
• 1933 - Adolph Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany; in the United States, the Great Depression reaches its nadir, with GDP down more than 40% from its peak in 1929 and unemployment at more than 30% of the work force; the Oxford Union approves a resolution stating, "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and country"; the Reichstag burns, and the Nazis use the event to revoke civil liberties; FDR declares an eight day "bank holiday" in March, and hundreds of banks do not reopen; the Germans open their first concentration camp at Dachau; Congress passes the "New Deal," and the permanent welfare state comes to America; the United States goes off the gold standard, and permanent inflation comes to America; Germany establishes the Gestapo; and Albert Einstein flees Germany for the United States, changing history and Princeton forever.
• 1932 - The global economy simply blows; U.S. GDP falls 23% in a single year, the steepest one-year drop during the Great Depression, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level in July, just over 41 (down from a peak of 381 in September 1929), and the "bonus army" marches on Washington; FDR elected president; the Nazis rise in Germany, but nobody really understands what that means.
• 1920 - The Reds defeat the Whites in the Russian Civil War; the United States Congress refuses to ratify the League of Nations, and the United States effectively turns its back on the Paris Peace Conference; the League of Women Voters is founded; the "Red Ruhr Army" rises in Germany, plunging that country into a low-grade civil war; Poland and the Soviet Union go to war; Mexico revolts; Ireland revolts; presaging the car bomb, a bomb in a horse wagon is set off in front of the offices of J.P. Morgan; Because there are so many mixed-race persons and because so many Americans with some black ancestry appear white, the US Census stops counting mixed-race peoples and the "one drop" rule becomes the national legal standard.
• 1919 - the United States prohibits alcoholic beverages by constitutional amendment because hard-drinking politicians are terrified of temperate women voters; the Paris Peace Conference begins, laying the groundwork for a century of war in Europe and the Middle East; Mussolini forms the Fascist Party in Italy; Oregon levies the first gasoline tax in the United States (there's a shocker); the Bauhaus architectural movement is founded in Weimar, Germany; anarchists set off bombs around the United States; "Palmer Raids"; Democratic President Woodrow Wilson warns against "hyphenated-Americans" who "the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life"; women get the right to vote in the United States, and promptly start drinking; the Treaty of Versailles is signed, effectively ending World War I and essentially starting World War II; the American Communist Party is established; the World Series is corrupted by the "Black Sox" scandal; Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, and leaves the governing to his wife; Andy Rooney is born.
• 1918 - World War I stretches into its fifth bloody year, finally ending on November 11; Woodrow Wilson delivers his "Fourteen Points" speech, which gives 80% of the world that they have some sort of right to self-determination -- this proves to be the cause of enormous suffering in the next 90 years and it confirms the fear of the rest of the world that the Americans are as naive as they are powerful; the Bolsheviks cut a deal with Imperial Germany, allowing the Jerries to concentrate on the Western front; the Spanish Flu pandemic begins with a case in Kansas in March -- in the ensuing 18 months the disease will kill between 50 and 100 million people, or between 2.5% and 5% of the planet's human population; the United States and other Western countries invade Russia in support of the Whites (the Reds will remember this); Woodrow Wilson sails to France for the Paris Peace Conference.
• 1917 - World War I continues apace; Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe, foreshadowing the attitude of early 21st century American Democrats; the first "Red Scare" begins in the United States; Germany (maybe) offers to give the American southwest to Mexico if it attacks the United States; Tsar Nicholas abdicates; Bolsheviks take power in Russia; the United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I; the Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for a national home for Jews in Palestine; the British take Jerusalem from the Turks, which I am sure they regretting for most of the ensuing 30 years.
• 1914 - 1916 - the first bloody years of World War I, a conflict that consumed 20 million European lives, demolished three great European empires, weakened a fourth, exhausted the West to the point that it would not confront Hitler until it was too late, and set the stage for catastrophic conflict in the Middle East during the Cold War and later. The United States kept out of it in the first three years, but the impact of British propaganda and German ham-handedness brought the Americans into the war in 1917. It all sucked.
That's my list of the years that clearly sucked more than 2008. Other plausible candidates include 2001 (September 11 and its aftermath), 1982 (recession, inflation, and crippling interest rates), 1980 (massive inflation), 1969 (a continuation of the hideousness of 1968), 1929-31 (the Crash of '29 and the start of the Depression) and 1907 (big financial panic). What years would you add to the list?
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2 Comments:
1861 - The Year the War Between the States started in the US. The "fights" between the Republicans and Democrats in 2008 are nothing compared to the death toll of our civil war.
By tyree, at Thu Jan 01, 03:07:00 PM
In my lifetime, 1968 remains the worst. I was just a kid at the time, but I could watch t.v. and the world from that perspective looked very scary indeed.
(frickcom is my verification word. Has that been copyrighted yet?)
By sirius_sir, at Thu Jan 01, 04:35:00 PM |
