What slows progress?

What slows progress? According to LIFE magazine that profiled GM’s extravagant “Futurama” exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair’s “World of Tomorrow: “America in 1960 is full of a tanned and vigorous people who in 20 years have learned how to have fun. Of course, cars would travel on 14-lane superhighways controlled by radio signals from towers. Of course, the happiest people would live in one-factory farm-villages producing one small industrial item and their own produce. Of course, liquid air is by 1960 a potent, mobile source of power. Of course, houses are light, graceful, easily replaced. Of course, almost everyone is a high school graduate. Finally, of course, politics and emotion still slow progress. But these obstructions are treated with dwindling patience in 1960. Not in soon-to-be, 2013. Politicians and their media servants and feelings-driven living today stymies progress. Technology and democracy were the dual themes of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, but in soon-to-be 2013, technology ( at the discretion of government) barely breathes and democracy’s dead. How did we get here from there? Boss Ed Crump from Memphis, Tenn. was elected 25 times and assisted in 92 elections without a single defeat. Being a consummate machine politician ( but honest) Crump advised: “ If you drive hard, others will hit the same stride. If you hesitate in forcing an organization, those down the line will also hesitate. Don’t sit down in the meadow and wait for the cow to back up and be milked – Go after the cow.” This, of course, explains the triumph of liberal, Democrat politics as of 2013. Good advice for Republicans would be: “Never put a sponge on the end of a hammer if you expect to drive a nail.” Of course, the answer to life in the 1930’s holds true today. Sherwood Anderson said: “The big world outside now is so filled with confusion. It seemed to me that hope, in the present muddle, was to try thinking small.” Of course, here in soon-to-be 2013, all things loom large. Very large. Common wisdom in the 1930’s supported FDR and New Deal for America. Yet, Father Charles E. Coughlin, 2nd in popularity to President Roosevelt as a political speaker, took a strident opposing view to America’s savior. Coughlin evaluated the hailstorm of programs and regulations created to help America out of the Depression. “President Roosevelt has both compromised with the money changers and conciliated with monopolistic industry. This spirit… has not disdained to hold out the olive branch to those whose policies are crimsoned with the theories of sovietism and international socialism. … He who promised to drive the money changers from the temple has built up the greatest debt in history, $35,000 000,000… When any upstart dictator in the U.S. succeeds in making this a one party form of government, when the ballot is useless, … Mr. Roosevelt is a radical. The Bible commands ‘increase and multiply,’ but Roosevelt says to destroy and devastate. Therefore, I call him anti-God. …“ Coughlin was 1st and last an anti-Communist because they “promote the cause of atheism in America.”