WHAT WAS 2020? PT 6
So we are back to JOHN FORD, THE GRAPES OF WRATH.
And this all leads us back to John Ford’s heroic cataclysmic masterpiece and that monologue by TOM JOAD, played by an incandescent Henry Fonda, to me, the role and performance of a lifetime:
I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build, I’ll be there, too.
I ain’t never gonna be scared no more. I was, though. For a while it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn’t have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared…. Rich fellas come up and they die, and their kids ain’t no good and they die out, but we keep a-coming. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out, they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, cos we’re the people.
I think also on the lines of the film BEYOND TOMORROW
“Joseph when I had jewels and land and palaces I was often weary and discontent. When everything was taken away except my life I learned to be really happy is to serve others. So don’t be sorry for me for what was lost.”
America is in disarray, discord, disorder. There is pandemonium, tumult and turmoil.
I have always said once America gets on its knees, when it stops buying garbage to fill the hole inside, WHEN IT STOPS BEING THE NUMBER ONE CONSUMER IN THE WORLD, when it STOPS BUYING SHIT, and maybe STARTS MAKING good “shit” like eyeglasses, like clothing that will last for years, like ALL THE STUFF IT MADE IN THE 1920S, 30S, 40S.!!! Good quality “stuff” that you only need to buy once every 10 years. That is right, I said it. BUY QUALITY NOT QUANTITY!! How is it, that I can have a mens 3-piece suit from the 1930s, that looks better and has lasted all these years than any MADE IN CHINA garment? We were self sufficient and COVID has taught us that we NEED TO DO THAT!! NO MORE GLOBALIZATION!! America needs to fix itself… slowly, gently. THEN WE CAN START! When American WORKERS can unite black and white and understand clearly what MARTIN LUTHER KING understood:
We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.
In other words, King believed that the government was obligated to provide both work and income for those inevitably left behind by capitalism’s economic engine. Looking back from today’s vantage point, one can even imagine that King might have supported attaching a work requirement to such a program, so long as everyone could be guaranteed a job. Martin Luther King
More than ever.
More than ever.
When the majority of jobs seem to be VIRTUAL / DIGITAL / INTERNET / APP JOBS….
What to do for the rest? We need to consider this.
There are millions of workers that no longer fit into the job market.
We can make electric cars and start making a battery in a NICOLA TESLA way, how about that to think about? Fuck Elon Musk! He has destroyed an area outside Berlin to make his BATTERY COMPANY. Really? And how sustainable are these batteries? I don’t believe him. Anyone who is focussing on MARS instead of paying his damn tax in America, his BILLIONAIRE TAX, then I don’t want to hear about this lunatic. We can make clothing, we can make lamps, we can make furniture, we can make eyeglasses.. WE CAN MAKE IT ALL. Good quality and buy once and don’t buy again for 10 years, how about that. FUCK PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE! So why not? There is a powerful workforce to MAKE THINGS. Ask Germany!! IT STILL MAKES THINGS!! Not everything is off-shored and outsourced!!
Because everything comes back to this.
This article started because I saw the suffering.
Suffering can cease, when EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN has a chance to make a 15-25 an hr LIVING WAGE, when they have the right to FREE SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE as their human right, has the opportunity of the human right to FREE EDUCATION and they have the right to decent REGULATED housing, where they do not have to move every few months, where they can establish a home, that is rented at a price that will not change. A REGULATED RENT like RENT STABILIZATION or better RENT CONTROLLED.
All of these are NOT LUXURIES.
They are the right of any human being on this planet.
I feel I myself am a product of all I speak.
I’m 50 something, and I have been a nomad all my life.
A gentrification refugee. Going from one city to another.
When the rent gets too high, I have to leave.
I am not a 20 something millenial that has been trained to LIVE IN THE DIGITAL WORLD. I still live in my 1970s world.
I was a typist.
No one types anymore.
All voice-activated.
So every few months I have to figure out where to live, how to live, and what job I can find. I am a writer. I should have figured out HOW TO MAKE A DECENT LIVING by now no? But I am still on this journey, trying to find A WAY.
I am alone. I have no family.
I don’t have ONE MILLION FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK.
I DON’T HAVE FACEBOOK.
I stand alone.
And I have fallen through the cracks.
I can only think of people like me who have kids, and have to move and have to figure out how to pay for the kids, and school, and food etc.
It is overwhelming to me.
I do not know one person who does not want to work to make their living.
But I know many people who work 3 jobs and still have nothing.
No one wants to die like this.
And no one wants to live like this.
I implore JEFF BEZOS, WARREN BUFFETT, and the hundreds of BILLIONAIRES IN AMERICA!! PAY YOUR TAXES….. AND ALLOW THESE SUBSIDIES TO HELP FILL IN THE GAPS…. THAT IS HOW GERMANY DOES IT, THAT IS HOW FRANCE AND DENMARK, NORWAY, AND SWEDEN DO IT!!
And watch THE GRAPES OF WRATH maybe?
It should hit your billionaire weak spot?
I guess they don’t have a weak spot?
Or do they?
This is what I am hoping COVID does.
AWAKEN THE ROT INSIDE THESE MONEY MAKING ONE CELLED AMOEBA TYPE PARASITES.
I’M HOPING THEY AWAKEN TO THEIR TRUE CAPACITY.
Humanity.
Compassion.
Sharing.
Serving.
And true leadership that means, HELPING THE SOCIETY, by creating jobs, paying tax and spreading the wealth to the millions!!
That is NOT COMMUNISM NOR SOCIALISM.
Social democracy, like SWEDON, FINLAND AND DENMARK AND GERMANY.
It can be in AMERICA.
