Receiving a jolt

Film I read this article this morning and then heard these quotes this afternoon during a film screening. For some reason I got a jolt:

"Give her Americanism? Teach her about America? John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Edisson, Mark Twain ... when things got tough for those boys they didn't run around looking for an 'ism'. Lincoln said 'With malice towards none and with charity to all.' Nowadays they say, 'Think the way I do or I'll bomb the daylights out of you.' "

"He says that most people nowadays are run by fear - fear of what they eat, fear of what they drink, fear of their jobs, their future, fear of their health, they're scared to save money and too scared to spend it. Y'know what how present version it? People are commercialised on fear, you know they scare you to death so that they can sell you something you don't need..."

The reason I received a jolt is because they seem to be speaking about the now, but they're from Frank Capra's film You Can't Take It With You which was released in 1938, just before World War II and during the depression. I once attended a film course where the running joke was that all films are about Vietnam. That's not entirely accurate, but it does bespeak the idea that the very best films (as with all the best art) either thematically or here through dialogue, tell us as much about our own time as that in which it was made.