1) Agreed. Sam Clemens' analysis is my personal favorite. I was trying to make a point about most people having blinders on until it's too late. (See the following.)
2) My point had little to do with Chamberlain himself, but with the eagerness of the majority of his countrymen to accept his assessment of the situation. Instead of doing something uncomfortable then, it turned out they had to do something MUCH MORE uncomfortable just two or three years later. Our "leaders" are telling us the same thing now r.e. the coming oil shortage that Chamberlain told the Brits about Hitler: "It's nothing to worry about." Thanks to "campaign conributions" (bribes) from GM and Standard Oil, the greedy idiots in Washington will even give you a tax credit when you buy a Hummer!!
3) In 1941 we had most of the infrastructure already in place; much of it had been dormant during the depression, but the iron mines, steel mills and railroad lines still existed. My grandfather was foreman of the rolling mill at Youngstown Sheet & Tube, working 12-hour days during the war after working only part-time in the mid thirties. Have you been to Youngstown lately? There's nothing left!
It's much more difficult to ramp up when the ramps no longer exist. Also, our power grid is at, or near, capacity. (At least that's what Enron told my home state the summer before last.) Where are we going to get the steel for new transmission towers and the copper for the cables, much less the new power plants themselves?? Thanks to our wonderful leaders - of both parties - over the past 20 years, everything is now under the control of the multiNAZIonal banking establishment aka the WTO, and most of our industrial capacity has moved to Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and elsewhere.
In any case, we should be starting to tighten our belts now, and at least trying to ramp up over a five or ten year period. Instead, we are burying our heads in the sand and pretending everything will magically take care of itself. When the crisis gets to the point of being obvious, we will probably not have what it takes to ramp up in just three years like we did in 1941-43. Even the great UP is having a tough time handling the traffic that already exists. There won't be enough excess capacity to take all the (suddenly fuel-less) tractor-trailers off the roads.
- Russo no mas Loco