Hi Joe,
I've been reading your web site for a few months now and I have to say you have the most interesting and insightful analyses on the American condition I've ever read. While reading your last essay, Contemplations from the Cheap Beer Zone, I stumbled upon a sentence that rang very true to the conditions here in Puerto Rico where I live: "So long as they were drawing a paycheck, they never asked questions."
I don't know how well read you are on the current events of America's colonies (we sure as hell are one), but Puerto Rico is suffering some economic problems. Last May the central government shut down the majority of public services, with the exception of hospitals and the police, because it ran out of money. I go to school in New York so I didn't get to come back in time to see all the manifestations or anything, but from what I was being told by my friends and family, it was big. Everyone seemed furious that such a thing could happen. Around a hundred thousand people work directly for the government, and many more indirectly, so this was projected to have a heavy impact in the economy.
The conflict lasted two weeks. When I was done with classes I came back to Puerto Rico to not even find a semblance of what I had pictured in my mind. The government had reopened and all government employees were given retroactive pay for the two weeks they DID NOT work, on top of the welfare money they received for being "out of a job". The thing that pisses me off is not that they received that money, cause they sure as hell deserve it for all the aggravation they suffered, but that everyone just shut the hell up and let everything go on business as usual. The shit hit the fan and in the end no lasting reform has taken place. People got money and shut the hell up. Now they'll go out and buy the big screen high definition TV they wanted.
I would really like to believe that bad conditions will jolt people into action, but then I read your descriptions about how poor people live in the South and I think "how bad does it have to get?" I mean, it should get bad enough to arouse people into action, but not so much as to beat them into submission.
I feel like a good opportunity for change was lost. Maybe I'm just too naive. I don't know.
Sincerely
Alex
Cataño, Puerto Rico
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Dear Alex:
To put it simply, I think the shit has to hit the fan a lot harder than that.
As to: "how bad does it have to get?" It should get bad enough to arouse people into action, but not so much as to beat them into submission." People are already in submission, and nobody had to beat them. They are drugged into a submissive stupor by commodity engorgement and propaganda. Seems to me things will have to get a lot worse before anything happens. It takes REAL pain to break the stupor. The kind that is causing some parts of Latin America and some parts of Asia to rise up against globalism.
There is a genuine revolution coming, but it's only embryonic now and I suspect it will take a long time to hatch. One little crack in the egg at a time ...
Solidarity,
Joe
