Resistance Meets Convergence – and Sorkin’s “1929”

Posted on | October 20, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

This past weekend, over 7 million Americans joyfully and publicly flexed their democratic muscles in a dramatic push back on authoritarianism summed up in two words, “NO KINGS.”

Resistance is slowly meeting convergence, as frustration is fueling activism to countermand ICE offenses, federal worker decapitations, soldiers invading our own cities, richy-rich getting even richer, and ACA premiums doubling overnight as MAGA loyalists suddenly discover they are the ones paying for tariffs. And that was before a gapping hole was torn this week in our nation’s White House.

Synergy is at work here, a virtuous wave of self-reinforcing anxiety set to explode at some uncertain (but certain) future date. And events like this weekend’s mass demonstrations are more than resistance. They are gathering points for ideas, and energy plumes fueling confidence, and (no longer) silent screams that “You are not alone. We are with you. We can do this.”

People are looking backwards and forwards for strategies to take back our democracy. Take for example the much heralded release of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s latest book “1929.” Reviewers are in agreement that the characters Sorkin reveals make for a story as gripping and movie-treatment ready as his former success “Too Big To Fail.” Where they disagree is whether he went far enough to draw analogies between that century old disaster and current times.

In his own words, Sorkin seems to want to go there, labeling his own effort “a fable of private greed courting public disaster” so that “each wave seduces us into thinking that we’ve learned from history, and, this time, we can’t be fooled. Then it happens again.” And in his epilogue: “Ultimately, the story of 1929 is not about rates or regulation….It is about something far more enduring: human nature.”

Back in 1929, financial calamity carried with it political fallout. And you can tell, experts and every day citizens have a case of the nerves. They increasingly know that something’s not right, and something’s coming around the bend.

In reviewing Sorkin’s book, Zachary D. Carter, author of “The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes,” gave this summary in the Harvard Business Review: “There is no law of nature that irresistibly converts greed into progress over time. The terms of market fairness and exchange are inherently political rules, and it matters a great deal whether the capital development of the country is dependent on rank market manipulation and frenzied hyper-leveraged gambling. There are surely important lessons for our current moment in Sorkin’s book; it is not clear he knows what they are.”

Sorkin explains himself a bit to the Guardian columnist Martin Pengully, saying: “One of the lessons of writing Too Big to Fail was, we talk about business and the economy oftentimes in big numbers and structures and systems, but it really is ultimately about people and the decisions they make. So I thought: ‘Maybe there’s an opening to write a book like that.’”

I was thinking of that opening – the one filled with real people with real stories and real lives when I encountered the lady above at the “No Kings” rally in Hartford, CT this week. As you can see, she was carrying a sign that read “MY DAD FOUGHT FACISM IN WW II AND WAS A POW. NOW I MARCH TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY.”

We compared notes, and as it turns out, my father and her’s had crossed each other’s paths back then. Both arrived in Tunisia in the early Spring of 1944. From there, they were shipped to Southern Italy, and participated in the invasion of Southern France in August, 1944, (after D-Day). But then their paths diverged. Her Dad was captured and survived 9 months in a Nazi POW camp, and my Dad treated and triaged casualties at the front lines in France and Germany as a MASH doctor. Her presence reminded me, and I’m sure many others in the crowd, that we too have a role to play, to ensure that their past sacrifices were not in vain.

Thinking about Sorkin’s messaging later that day, it occurred to me that maybe the real message of “1929” was what followed shortly after, with the election of FDR and the New Deal.

His signature legislation, the Social Security Act massively funded state and local public health services. From maternal and child welfare services to tuberculosis and venereal disease control, health and wellness were a priority. At the same time, the federal health focus emphasized new hospitals, improved water and sewer systems, and stood up the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act which required for the first time that drugs be demonstrated to be both safe and effective before they were brought to market.

Were there bumps along the road? Of course. For example, the Supreme Court under Justice Charles Evans Hughes was dominated by aging conservative Justices who were intent on over turning The Social Security Act. FDR responded by moving to rebalance the Court by expanding its numbers. As Cornell legal experts explain, “After his landslide reelection to a second term as president, FDR proposed to expand the Supreme Court by adding one new justice for every sitting justice over the age of seventy. This scheme was defeated in Congress, but in his next three terms as president FDR appointed all the members of the Supreme Court, and these new justices were much more aligned with his economic reforms.”

Many of the signs this weekend focused on the Administrations attempts to slash Medicaid and hobble the Affordable Care Act. Others reinforced women’s control over there own health care choices, with more that a few red and white “hooded Handmaidens in attendance. That is why it is fascinating to recall where FDR placed a great deal of emphasis in addressing a nationwide Depression – public and population health .

My new found friend’s father returned, changed but alive from that POW camp. He left behind a vanquished enemy and millions of desperate civilians. In the re-build of Germany under the Marshall Plan, we elected to start with a health plan – in part because we recognized (as FDR had during his 1st Term) that all other social determinants – justice, housing, nutrition, education, clean air and water, transportation, safety and security – would be enhanced in the process.

We understood that this 1948 infusion of what would today amount to $128 billion would engender trust, improve health and productivity, and process fear and worry which might otherwise undermine the establishment of a civil society and stable democracy. In a Rand Corporation post-mortem on nation building some decades later, scholars remarked that, “Nation-building efforts cannot be successful unless adequate attention is paid to the health of the population.”

We as American citizens essentially face a challenge of similar magnitude today. In rejecting Trump, we are battling what Sorkin describes “a fable of private greed courting public disaster.” But what is becoming clear is that the most likely outcome will be an invigorated democracy with reengineered and refined health services at its very core.