Thurman Arnold, FDR's Head of the Anti-Trust Division of the Justice Department from 1938 to 1943 characterized his experience in government trying to created new entities to deal with the Depression as a sort of "holy war." The attempt to introduce local financing or changes in economic relations to deal with immediate problems produced charges of fascism or communism and eventually came to describe a conflict between good and evil. No matter what the suffering of how many people was involved, relief, rural electrification, or the building of dams, Arnold found that Americans required a new mythology to be constructed to properly characterize the change in terms that were black and white, us and them, god and devil.
Arnold's book, The Folklore of Capitalism published in 1937 describes his early participation in FDR's administration's attempts to try and stop the collapsing economy. Given what we are seeing with the Republican Party descending into an atomized puddle of hysterical "teabaggers" who see evil everywhere, Arnold's experiences are quite interesting, but perhaps depressing given what they predict for the future of America.
Niccolo Caldararo, Ph.D.
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University