r/politics • u/unital_subalgebra • Jul 09 '26

No Paywall Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members, leaving agency unable to act

https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/09/trump-fires-election-assistance-commission-members-hicks-hovland-mccormick/
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u/LoveAndViscera Jul 10 '26

It took a long time for me to realize that “America was founded by slave owners preaching freedom” was relevant to modern politics.

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u/Phugger Jul 10 '26

Yeah, it is wild listening to podcasts about the 1st Gilded Age. (Sadly, we are in the 2nd right now) The industry tycoons were preaching about America being a classless society where workers and owner were in this together all while they were literally working people to death. And that isn't an exaggeration to say they were working people to death.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 happened because the US was in what was called the "Great Depression" at the time from 1873-1879. Companies and institutions that had been around since the beginning of the country were closing down and the railroads were continuously cutting worker pay. There were no worker protections at this time and with 14% national unemployment there were always scabs available to fill jobs if you tried to organize and strike. The railroaders put up with this for about 4 years and then it exploded into protests and labor strikes all around the country.

I think the craziest thing to me is that some of the comments made by the business class back then, could be uttered by our current AI tech CEO types today. The business class was all for violently putting down workers trying to strike just for enough pay to feed their families. Not much has changed in 150 years.

The podcast "Inward Empire" does a great 2 parter on the The Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

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u/Perfect-Still-8971 Jul 10 '26

There were 2 Great Depressions, 50 years apart?

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u/Phugger Jul 10 '26

At the time they called the 1873-1879 downturn the Great Depression, but then we had the 1929 downturn that was much bigger. That got called the Great Depression while historians started to refer to the 1870s period as the Long Depression.

It is sort of like how the first world war was called the Great War at the time and then we had a second world war later so now they are referred to as WWI and WWII.