I Can but I Won't

I'm as guilty as anyone of romanticizing the Greatest Generation.

But—just as millions of today's Americans are jerks about mask-wearing—many of the Greatest Generation were jerks, too.

Jerks about rationing.

Three months before Pearl Harbor, FDR signed an executive order intended to curb households' consumption of commodities. He knew they'd soon be in short supply. 

Commodities like cars, tires, gas, oil, coal, wood, towels, linens, clothes, shoes, meat, fish, catsup, mustard, butter, milk, cheese, coffee, sugar, jelly, shortening, canned fruits, canned vegetables, chocolate bars, candy bars, and bubble gum.

Americans were asked by their government to accept sacrifice—all for the good of the coming war effort. But millions never did. Millions hated rationing—as they did FDR—and cheated.

They cheated by stealing and counterfeiting ration coupons; buying coupons from relatives, neighbors, and the Mafia; hoarding goods; and buying them from bootleggers, black-marketers, and crooked merchants.

The Americans who complied with rationing, for the most part, ignored those who didn't, although one government official said the latter were "secretly in sympathy with Hitler or Hirohito."

Plus ça change.