Thread by @gindaanis

It matters that the Little House books were written and published during the depression.

Wilder had been keeping diaries for decades. She and her daughter had been writing columns, short stories. Her daughter, Rose Lane, had a talent for embellishment to the point of fraud

But during the depression they both needed money very badly. Lane was likely bipolar with periods of extreme depression after manic episodes in which she spent recklessly. She achieved some literary success, but the financial gain was unreliable because she was unreliable

Wilder was feeling nostalgic, as we all do, and so was America. Between the depression and the dustbowl people were starving. Wilder had experienced this before. In some part because the US has never supported family farms, and in large part because Pa was just bad at farming

The Ingalls and Wilder families moved a lot. They made bad decisions. They experienced awful tragedies. Grasshoppers decimated crops. Hail fell at just the wrong time. The house burned down.

Farmers have been begging the government to make good on its promises forever. Free land was promised, the ideal of the family farm was marketed hard to people itching to get out of cities and the crowded east coast.

But the empty land wasn't empty and the peoples who lived there knew how to live there.

The farmers who displaced them had no clue. They ripped up trees and prairie grasses, exposing the fragile topsoil to harsh winds and heat.

My son fights forest fires. And he'll be the first to tell you that forests need fire. It's a kind of rejuvenation. But he'll also tell you about the hellish moonscape left behind after a clear cut area burns.

We have grassland behind our house. He showed me how fire there helps lower growing plants.

But like a clear cut forest, fire in a clear cut prairie is devastating.

The Osage and Dakota people starved.

The farmers starved.

The government argued against sending help. Like Ivanka and other conservatives say today, they wouldn't want the help. They'd want to do it themselves.

In the depression of the 30s, while Roosevelt was spending money in his New Deal, conservatives and libertarians like Wilder and her daughter said the same thing. People are starving but somehow it's better for the govt to do nothing and let them figure it out on their own

So the LHOP books became a romantic throwback to an era when brave men like Pa and Manly worked the land and didn't ask for handouts.

Even though the homestead act itself was a fantastical handout dispossessing Indigenous peoples.

Bonneted women and plucky little girls marveled over the vast purity of the untamed west and worked to preserve family against the vagaries of weather and the ever present threat of Indians.

Btw. Guthrie's "wheat fields waving" meant dispossession and destruction of the Prairie. It's a thirsty crop that was over planted to the point that the government had to pay peope to stop before it completely devastated the land.

But he wrote songs promoting the various dam projects as well.

America, your heroes have always come at our expense. Remember that.

Little House is propaganda.

Gone with the Wind is propaganda.

To Kill a Mockingbird is propaganda.

Guthrie wrote propaganda.

Fin

Should add some citations.

Read the book Prairie Fire. Biography of Laura and her daughter.

Listen to @FarmToTaberPod esp. the episode on the family farm, follow @SarahTaber_bww for ag and history of ag

Listen to/ follow @KeriLeighMerrit for history on poor whites

We talked with Keri in this episode:

soundcloud.com/patty-wbk/keri…

Also the book Braiding Sweetgrass. Not strictly on topic but important lessons from the plant nations and the necessity of living with the environment instead of imposing your will on it

Oh. Also read Angie Debo's book And Still the Waters Run about the impact of allotment in Oklahoma. Important context in how Indian land became available to farmers.

@justicedanielh breaks it down here

soundcloud.com/patty-wbk/eliz…