History Repeats Itself, First As Tragedy...

It's beginning to feel awfully 1970s out there

Inflation and a slowing economy. Energy shocks. Shortages. Waiting in long lines. Soaring crime. Nation-changing Supreme Court decisions. Rising risk of famine in the developing world. A Russian invasion. And a widespread sense that, for the first time, the next generation will be worse off than the generation before it.

Then there’s the rage. Some days it seems everyone’s constantly angry, like we’re all turning into Howard Beale in Network — sweaty-faced, glaring into the television camera and shouting, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”

Imagine getting this angry without Twitter.

Network was released in 1976. In fact, everything above is from the 1970s. But it sure feels like today, doesn’t it?

And that reminded me of a chapter in Future Babble. I wrote it in, I believe, 2009. The chapter is framed around the 1970s, a time when economic and political shocks spawned a cottage industry in grim forecasts. The chapter looks at that time, but then shifts to examine our profound psychological aversion to uncertainty, and how we cope with it. (Plot spoiler: not well.)

Given how 1970s everything is feeling these days, I thought readers of this newsletter might be interested. So over the next few instalments, I’ll share that chapter.

Here’s episode one, in which Jimmy Carter is a real downer.

You think gas is expensive? Imagine how much it costs when there isn’t any.

“During the Great Plague of London, in 1665, the people listened with avidity to the predictions of quacks and fanatics. Defoe says that at that time the people were more addicted to prophecies and astronomical conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales than ever they were before or since.”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841

Two years and three months after President Jimmy Carter had his “unpleasant talk” with the American people, he did it again. Except this time he was really grim.

“I had planned to speak to you about an important topic – energy,” Carter said solemnly to a television camera. It was July 15, 1979. The president sat at the big desk in the Oval Office. “For the fifth time, I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to solve our serious energy problems? It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper – deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession.”

It had been a rotten year. Inflation was rising and the economy was stumbling into recession. Carter’s greatest triumph – the signing of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel at the White House – was forgotten days later when an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania seemed to confirm Americans’ worst fears about nuclear power. Meanwhile, revolution in Iran had produced a militant government and uncertain oil supplies, a tenuous situation that opec exploited by jacking up prices.

The gas shortages started in California and spread east. Lineups were massive. It could take hours to get to the pumps. Frustration and exhaustion spawned fist fights – even shootings and stabbings. In one infamous incident, a pregnant woman was beaten. The shortages were especially tough on truck drivers, so a national strike was called. Most truckers stopped work, leaving food rotting in fields and store shelves growing increasingly bare. The minority who kept driving suffered vandalism and assaults so widespread that the National Guard was called out to provide armed escorts in at least nine states. In one incident, a trucker who refused to join the strike was told via cb radio that he was losing a tire; when he pulled over to check, he was shot. “If someone shoots at you, threatens you, then you can use full force against them,” advised Alabama governor Fob James after a trucker was murdered on state highway 72. In June, truckers and teenagers in Levittown, Pennsylvania, set fires and fought running battles with police in the first full-scale gas riot. “This country is getting ugly,” a White House staffer declared.