Wit & Attitude Quote by Harry Hopkins

Hopkins sounds less like a diplomat here than an exhausted foreman defending his crew against hecklers. The repetition - "damn good... excellent" - is not accidental; its job is to crowd out doubt with sheer insistence. He is shoring up legitimacy in real time, as if the projects themselves might wobble under the weight of sneers. Then he pivots to a canny metaphor: ridicule of "people who speak a foreign language". It's a savvy move because it reframes policy critique as cultural insecurity. The problem isn't the work; it's the audience's smallness.

The subtext is pure New Deal trench warfare. Hopkins, FDR's hard-driving relief administrator turned wartime fixer, spent years facing accusations that federal programs were wasteful, alien, even un-American. Calling the critics "dumb people" isn't elegant, but it is strategic. He collapses opposition into a moral category - ignorance - rather than granting it technical standing. If you don't understand the language, you don't get to grade the poem.

"You know" and "up there" suggest an off-the-cuff defense, likely aimed at people at a distance from the work: legislators, editorialists, comfortable taxpayers. Hopkins isn't presenting data; he's policing the frame. The outburst "God damn it!" is the tell. It signals stakes beyond a budget line: a belief that mockery is a weapon used to keep ambitious public action illegible. In a moment when government was trying to invent new vocabulary for survival, Hopkins is insisting the translation effort is worth defending - and that contempt is the laziest form of critique.