Dear Joe,
Thanks so much for your dispatches. Some days, I wonder if I should fashion myself a swell Napolean hat out of some heavy duty tin foil, the kind most folks around here use for barbecuing pork steaks. When I read your columns, I don't feel crazy for seeing what I see. I've leaned not to bring this stuff up, because of course most people don't want to hear about species depletion, peak oil, how Cheney wants to bomb Iran (and how this may incite a nuclear exchange) or the large, swirling masses of plastic crap floating on the surface of the ocean.
Some days, I think to myself, "Could it really be this bad? Naw! Couldn't be!" And then the next day I wake up and know in my heart of hearts that it's not just as bad as I think it is, but worse. So I keep my mouth shut and walk around feeling a bit desperate and depressed. Not only do your essays remind me that I am not crazy for not wanting to participate in the demonic midway of 21st century American culture, but they make me laugh.
I once knew a socialist kid back in Salt Lake who was on a "laughing fast." As in, he was going to abstain from laughing or smiling, because the world was so sad. Not that I disagreed with him on the sad part -- and I respected his restraint and his concern for the world, but my first response was, "Oh, great, just what the world needs, another bummed-out neo-hippie." (Though I am about 100 percent certain that he was doing more good for the world than I was back then.) I think your combination of acidic humor and unleavened truth is exactly what the world needs right now, and I hope that kid reads your site too, and has forgotten this fool idea that he should stop laughing on his way to saving the world.
Also have to say thank you for writing on class issues in America. It seems like no one will take that issue on. I am in Missouri, which I suppose in many ways is not all that different from Virginia in its politics. I went to a family reunion in Warrensburg, Missouri a few years ago where the main event was a steam-pan dinner at a local Howard Johnson's with a performance by a Frank James impersonator.
I'm embarassed to admit it, I didn't know quite what to do with myself. I feel like I understand them a lot better after reading some of your stories about the folks you know in Virginia. St. Louis, even though it's a city on the border of the way more progressive Illinois, is still closer politically to Warrensburg than to Chicago. The local rabble-rousers here have done an okay job of trying to work with organized labor and the black community, but in a triage situation like this, it could probably be a much stronger relationship.
I don't know if I'll ever have the money to get my ass out of the United States, so I'm trying to galvanize myself for what's coming down and do the best I can to help the people around me, who I suspect are also too broke to get the hell out of Dodge. Now that I know I'm not crazy, I'm going to put down the roll of tin foil and volunteer to work in earnest with the rabblerousers who are trying to organize people to stand up and fight. As my aunt once told me (claiming she was quoting William Blake) "It's the responsibility of all young people to dedicate their lives to kicking evil in the butt." So true. Thank you for reminding me of that.
Best,
Sarah
St. Louis, Missouri
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Sarah,
Class will be dealt with one day in America, and in fact, is starting to be discussed by people other than Internet socialists and old greybeard Jewish lefties in musty apartments in Patterson, New Jersey. Even the GOP is scouring the bushes for someone among them who can make populist noises into a microphone. And at this point, for reasons too numerous to go into here, I fear they have a better chance of coming up with such a person than the Democrats.
Meanwhile, get ready to hear a lot about "populism." Populism is the newest term being used by both parties and the media to avoid the nasty C word. A brilliant move since it’s hard to argue with the fact that we are all people (except for Muslim Americans, of course). The term carries echoes "of the people, for the people and by the people." You don’t revolt against the ghost of Abe Lincoln.
Yet, were there to be a class revolution in the U.S. next week, and the old folks looted the drug stores (I'd be right there with 'em, though probably not for the same drugs) and even if that pack of wrinkled whores at the Fed said: "Fuck it, let's spread all the geet we've looted equally among every American," we still will not have begun to touch the pustulant core of our national disease, our uniquely American supersized version of a universal one -- individual greed.
The national mindset of "I want all I can grab for myself and I want it now, even if it has to be on credit," (and of course it usually is) constitutes a much bigger crisis than class in and of itself, and is the driver of our slowly unfolding national catastrophe.
My bet is that when working poor people finally have virtually nothing left to lose, nothing else to be wrung from their labors in a bankrupt nation, all hell will break loose. And no matter how much grease the rich and the corporations that own this country slip the Mitts, Baracks, Rudys and Hillarys at fund-raisers, change will come. The hard way.
In art and labor,
Joe
