I don’t know how people’s hearts aren’t filled with hatred
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
why don’t people write like this anymore fuck
They don’t have the attention spans for it.
Partially because in the 1950s the American government focused hard on separating religion and socialism. They did not want a “liberation theology” spreading in the United States. So they heavily labeled the USSR as “godless” and then slowly but surely boosted the right-wing of evangelical churches, culminating in Reagan/Bush, the rise of the “religious right,” and abortion being used as a wedge issue.
What does that have to do with quality prose?
Because the central metaphor of that passage is a religious one. It hearkens back to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
Which itself is adapted from “John Brown’s Body.” If you know anything about John Brown, he was a very religious man, and one of the main ways he got people to follow him on his anti-slavery crusade was by appealing to religion. In fact, as the Civil War went on, even the usually secular Abraham Lincoln began including more religious language into his speeches. This was partly to help calm the nation down due to the immense deaths during the Civil War. But it was also because John Brown’s rhetoric was very effective. There were a lot of people in the north who actually did not want slavery to end (like McClellan and his moderate faction), because it materially benefitted him. There was actually very little material benefit to abolition for Lincoln directly or really most abolitionists. Abolition was an ideological project, and one which could not have been accomplished in the mid-1800s without using Christianity as a justification. In fact, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother was the most famous preacher in America during the Civil War, and he constantly preached propaganda against the south and slavery which many people in the north agreed with, again, not because it materially benefitted them, but because they agreed that slavery was immoral from a religious standpoint.
One of the primary sources that Martin Luther King learned rhetoric from was the Bible. He was a reverend, and he sharpened his public speaking skills through the church. America has a long, long history of progressive rhetoric intertwining with religious themes. In fact it Steinbeck was using an appeal to religion in the passage you said you liked, even though you might not have noticed. So yeah, maybe there is a reason that the Bible is literally the best-selling, most widely read book in the history of humanity. Maybe it has some good rhetoric in it! And maybe people on the left can learn a little bit about how to capture people’s attention and empathy by learning from its prose.
This is the reality that American media obfuscates. Movies, TV, the news… they all depict the “default” American as basically doing fine financially. Everyone is “middle class” at worst. Everyone has a decently large house, a newer car (usually a SUV) for every adult, goes on vacations, eats out, and is generally free from material precariousness. And for the middle class in America, this is more or less reality.
This appearance of the “default” middle class American is so pervasive that everyone, including the working class, believes it.
The issue is, this middle class American is NOT the “default”. Most Americans have less than $1,000 saved and are ruined by just one severe economic shock like losing employment. The family depicted here is far closer to being the median American than what you see in media. It may not seem like a big deal but I honestly believe this is one of the most effective weapons in preventing class consciousness that is out there.
Yeah I suspect our media and it’s ubiquity around the world is why so many foreigners are Ameriboos despite stories like the OP posted.
Americans believe that 20%-30% of Americans are trans, Muslim, and millionaires. I am not kidding
20%-30% of Americans are trans,
These insane figures I guess are what lead people into “great replacement” type right wing conspiracy stuff… or maybe the conspiracies lead into these insane figures…
some of that is media overrepresenation, but I also think some of it is that you don’t notice when things are normal/what you’d expect. Like, it would be weird to walk into a cracker barrel and think “lotta white people here.” Might as well walk into a gas station and be shocked by the cigarettes.
Did they asked the same people? Jewish + muslim + atheist = 90%. Native + Asian + Black = 97%. New York + Texas + California = 92%
All those trans Muslim millionaires.
I noticed pretty quick how this type of shit doesn’t scan, even as a kid. Everyone I’ve ever known basically lives in apartments, is in permanent debt on a shitty car, has no savings & not a lot of if any vacation time, and usually has to scrounge money to get a pet spayed or whatever. The American media portrayal has always been so out-of-touch that it was bizarre to me.
Coincidentally my ex was a military brat and she actually DID live in the spacious house with the SUV for each adult and tons of vacation time/eating out. It was like peeking into a fantasy land, weird. Coincidentally she was insufferable
I grew up with two kids (among others) who had similar material circumstances. Each lived and raised in a full-size, four-bedroom house in excellent repair, both parents earned well above poverty level incomes. One car per parent replaced with a new one about every 5 years, and a hand-me-down given to each of the kids when they got their driving licenses.
They had privacy, peace and quiet, never wanted for food, enjoyed weekly dining out with the entire family, had regular gatherings with more distant family (who also enjoyed similar material conditions), multiple yearly vacations, virtually anything else that related to comfort and ease of mind. Both of these kids grew up into borderline sociopaths with self-admitted libertarian ideologies.
(In case anyone misinterprets, I’m not dunking on the parents or family in the OP. It’s just insane that the US exploits so much and it doesn’t even rewards its people)
yeah they easily could they just hate you. The US constitution being absolute dogshit also makes it harder for when labour is strong to codify any gains.
And it’s great that they got food, mutual aid rocks, but how long will that charity last?
How many months, weeks, or just days before that young child is back to starving because the landlord needs more rent this year?
The morally correct thing to do in this scenario is to steal food
fr. in fact it is an imperative, your kid might be fucked up for life by our psycho imperialist hellstate if you dont
Think of it as penalizing extortionists.
This is true, but I can see the reason to hesitate. If you don’t know how to steal without being caught, learning when your kid would be put in danger by you fucking up is not optimum.
nothing new. the anglo island empire plundered the world and victorian era workers still lived in absolutely miserable conditions
Thank you for not saying the B word
Euros-who-shall-not-be-named
perfidious albion.
We live in a cool system where getting caught could lead to you having your kid taken away from you.
desolation
I would like to watch that Will Stancil lib have a 30 minute conversation with the reddit poster and try to explain how the economy is good, actually. But then again, despite being a Redditor, the poster clearly has enough bullshit to deal with and doesn’t deserve a smug lib lecture.
We might start having to make excuses for the lack of terror
Unimaginable hatred was just sparked in my cold dead heart.
It’s been a while since I’ve felt that.
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that claim is just nonsense there is vast wealth in the US more than in Europe and the Americans have an outsized impact in European politics. For example the UK’s terf problem has been greatly exacerbated by funding from the US right wing.
this as evidence America is poorer than Europe is extremely dubious as there are many in Europe having these same problems
also it’s fundamentally unmarxist to see poverty in the US and think ah yes this is because of foreigners and not because of the capitalists of the US
I think the user you’re responding to is referring to an infographic which idk is accurate.
That said, almost all reliable statistics say that the top 10% of the US population hold something like 70% of all wealth in the US, so it’s not exactly inconceivable that a global redistribution would bring the bottom 90% of Americans a bit more wealth just because of how much wealth is being horded
i think “average” is doing a lot of work here but with how unequal the US is, yeah i’d believe it.
when they say “average” person they really mean “median” person. otherwise there’d be no point to making the top part of that picture
(yes anglos are notoriously bad at english)
I’m curious how this is calcualted, is it purely money? Cuz I think a lot of consideration should be given to things like infrastructure and industrial capacity.
Also, surprisingly, Scandinavians and Germans would be getting a slight upgrade, yet Canada is part of the true imperial core unlike the US. Spain is a bit of a weird outlier here too.
first paragraph: interesting data point, thanks for sharing
second paragraph: heinous, ridiculous take
Death to America
Ikr lmao such whiplash
Imma call bull on this one. America is an empire and it’s not subservient to Europe. America on its own agenda decided to destroy Europes access to cheap energy and no one has called them out on it. Don’t get me wrong I understand where your argument is coming from, but it’s just not really true. Yes the average European worker benefited more than American workers under the American empire, but I would attribute it to their proximity to the USSR rather than because America decided it liked Europeans more than Americans.
mainly the reason Europe is better for workers is that at the height of their labour political strength at the end of WW2 they codified some proper protections while the US constitution being as it is fuckwitted and written by a bunch of noted fuckwits prevents anything being done
That’s also true. We just have court cases and allow precedent to be the backbone of our entire lives without really making concrete changes so they can be altered at the whim of the ruling class.
this is a patently absurd claim
You’re right though when you say the US is not the richest country, but only if you mean the people of the US
Yeah not my best take I was pretty baked this morning
The part I will stand by is “Most Americans do not benefit from US empire in the same way Europeans do”
wait what the fuck? is this because of cost of living / purchasing power adjustments? Is wealth much more concentrated than income and weirdly internationally distributed or something? Please post if you have a link where I can read more, this implies that Americans [edit: all proletarians, not just lumpenproletarians] have way more revolutionary potential than third-worldists think
There is a ton of revolutionary potential in Amerikkka. There is an entire army of able bodied people living on the streets, totally dispossessed and disposed of by society. A lumpen proletariat revolution is possible, in the same way that China surprised the international Marxist community by waging a peasants revolution. It’s just different than what has happened before.
This was the party line for the Panthers. They believed the lumpens were the material base for revolution within the material core.
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Yeah of course there’s revolutionary potential here in the US there are 200 million miserable workers here
I’m not a third-worldist. I’m talking about the people who say that Americans workers benefit so much from slavery phones that even under socialism they’d be worse off without the slaves. This would roundly disprove that.
I’m not a third-worldist. I’m talking about the people who say that Americans workers benefit so much from slavery phones that even under socialism they’d be worse off without the slaves. This would roundly disprove that.
How is global socialism not third-worldist? You’re saying that the median American, even under completely equal global redistribution, would still be a little bit richer than before.
Doesn’t this argument support Third Worldism? And isn’t the concept of global wealth equidistribution a core tenet of Third Worldism?
You’re saying that the median American, even under completely equal global redistribution, would still be a little bit richer than before. Doesn’t this argument support Third Worldism?
No, I don’t think so. I’m talking about people who believe that the imperial core has no or limited revolutionary potential because of the benefits they reap from imperialism. They think that the necessary global socialist revolution will begin in the third world, and it’s only once imperialism is no longer an option that socialism will have mass appeal in the core. If socialism is already better than imperialism for first-world workers than you don’t need to be a third-worldist, revolutions can start anywhere. I admit I’m not super familiar with third worldism, maybe I’m caricaturing them as more pessimistic/defeatist than they are.
I’ve been frustrated recently how hard it is to talk in hypotheticals on this site. I say “interesting this would disprove X because of Y” and I get several people saying “obviously X is false because of Z”. I don’t believe X (and I’m literally presenting an argument against it!), why are you all trying to argue with me about it? I’m trying to talk about Y.
Okay, I was not clear on what third worldism actually meant. I thought it meant “global socialism including the third world” and that the NON-thirdworldist position was “bougie white imperial core socialism for citizens of westoid countries” which would basically be in the same direction as europe right now, but more goodies for European proles and less for European elites, while the third world stays poor. I’m against that.
However, if ThirdWorldism is simply the belief that the revolution will start in the third world, then:
They think that the necessary global socialist revolution will begin in the third world, and it’s only once imperialism is no longer an option that socialism will have mass appeal in the core.
All of that stuff literally already happened
That’s what the CPC is, and why communism is even vaguely on Gen Zs radar today but never beforeChinese did socialism in 1950, socialist education was superior at making high skill workers, now China eats America’s lunch, hence communism (and nuclear war) are on the American population’s radar. Some are sane and want communism, more are mayobrained and want to nuke China, but all of them have some type of reaction to the Chinese disruption. So you can’t “not be a thirdworldist” because thirdworldism is what literally happened over the last 70 years (and continuing, as China continues to invest into Africa and SEA)
I’ve been frustrated recently how hard it is to talk in hypotheticals on this site.
well part of the problem is that I can’t even see the original comment that guy posted
However, even if the avg American benefits from a worldwide equal-wealth distribution under a utopian government, some people would still benefit MORE. For the American it might mean less mental stress, while for a Bengali it would less mental stress AND being able to afford enough calories to grow past 5 feet tall. Obviously one of these parties has much more to gain, so rationally the revolution would begin to take place first in one of these areas (and it already did)
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is this like, 1850 where america was primarily an export economy to supply britain with raw cotton and clothes?
:(
We may have to start making excuses for the lack of terror.
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Fuck you fascist piece of shit
I do not agree with most of fascist core ideologies. I’m more libertarian
Maybe try to avoid telling people publicly you want to diddle kids, it’s a bad look
No, I hate children. Little screaming idiots.
Oscillating back to fascism I see
So you’re a fascist and a paedophile?
As i have said, i do not agree with many core beliefs of fascism. Power should definitely not be centralized in the hands of the government (dictator). If anything, countries are fake control-hungry scams and should be abolished. To the second point, i hate kids. I wouldn’t go close to them even if Epstein paid me :)
So you’re a fascist, a paedophile, and a liar?
No, no and yes. Everybody lies
So you’re a fascist, a paedophile, and a compulsive liar?
A lair thinks everybody lies
business and government are the same thing; organizations of people. Sounds like you prefer organizations be controlled by property rights rather than by democracy.
So, a fascist
No, as a libertarian i believe that the government power should not be centalized in the hands of a dictator.
No, you just want to be ruled by a CEO slavemaster instead.
Yes, if the market says so
You do realize CEOs literally enslave people every time they think they can get away with it, Right? So, if you don’t want to be under the heel of a dictator, removing all regulatory barriers for the super-wealthy and powerful through libertarianism isn’t probably going to end well for you.
Funny bit tho.
You know you’re an absolute joke of a person, right?
this is a good day online
Why did you say most, what ones do you agree with?
Why haven’t you run in front of traffic yet?
I ask that myself quite often, I think it’s due to a lack of motivation
because rich people control our institutions and desperate people make cheap workers.
high quality education and comprehensive reproductive care are behind paywalls. and those walls are getting higher every year.
I completely agree with the second part, however i don’t believe rich people have a priority to make cheap workers. There have always been many sources of cheap (and immoral) labour by outsourcing. When i look at the work market it seems that the “high-skill” workers are in much greater demand. If anything, rich people want to automate and reduce “low-skill” jobs to a minimum.
Nice
