copperbadge:

You know, there’s a lot I knew intellectually about the 1930s that I have a whole different take on now I’m reading up on it out of school. I knew about the Fireside Chats and I knew that they were an incredibly effective communication tool for Roosevelt – they were basically mass-marketing his presidency – but I didn’t think about how fucking bananas the first national ones were. 

Like, we’re in the depths of the Depression, the ecology of the MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY is falling apart, and in March 1933 there’s a run on like…every bank everywhere, and Roosevelt shuts down All The Banks for over a week. (He calls this a Banking Holiday which is just….such a stroke of genius and at the same time such a hilarious misnomer, I can’t even.)

And then he goes on the radio in mid-March. And you don’t know what the shit is going on, all you know is the President’s supposed to be on the radio, maybe you don’t even know that, you’re just hanging out listening to the radio and BAM. THE PRESIDENT. What the fuck. Is he going to close the entire country? Is this the end of life as we know it?

But no. What he does is, essentially, deliver a TEDtalk on the economy.

He talks for less than 15 minutes, explaining in simple words without any rhetoric what happened to the banks, what his plan is, and what you can expect as banks begin to reopen. He talks about how baseless fear over the incompetence of a small minority of bankers drove the problem, and how it’s your job not to give in to mass hysteria but to be smart and leave your money in the bank. He sounds confident and friendly and at the end of it you’re like, okay. I get it now. 

What a mother fucking roller coaster.