Chris Hedges: America is a Tinderbox

[jtuck004]

71. OK, sure. But first, "they" is us.

Now, just for a moment, think back to life on the plantations for black folk. The one's in the field, that was hard. But what about the ones in the house? They had three square meals, slept in a bed, rarely were whipped, sometimes they even got to do the whipping.

Should those who lived in the house have left, even though they had the most to lose?

Harriet Tubman used to go try to free the slaves, and often as not had the most trouble with the people Malcom X called the "house negro". One of her quotes was "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves".

Now, move forward a hundred fifty years or so. Single parent, working at McDonalds, life controlled by corporations, trying to make it on $15,000 a year or less, most likely has shit for job security, and little hope of anything else happening. Or maybe it's a guy that works at Walmart, on that same $15,000. If he has a kid he may well get food stamps. And if there are two adults and a couple of kids, even a job teaching for the state might qualify, especially if one of the parents is unemployed, which is all too common these days. Even if he tries to take some college classes over half of all the people now graduating from college are not being hired, and a hell of a lot more are never finishing, yet they now have a large debt that will follow them to their grave.

Jobs? Our last jobs report was considered a good one, yet 70,000 of the 195,000 jobs that were created pay slightly less than $15,000 a month. And they forgot to highlight that 326,000 full-time jobs were lost, later in the same report, and that part-time employment is increasingly replacing full-time work. Health care? Neither one of those people have any that will cover much more than a broken arm, and given that they can't hardly make it on the salary they have now, what is coming is highly unlikely to make it substantially better. Even if it does, doesn't do much good if they can't eat every day. Take a look at the food stamp roles - they started increasing in 2008, and now sit at about 47 million people. If things are improving, why are they not going down. (Note: Aramark, the private prison company, posts that they spend $1.75 per meal, 3x a day. That is MORE than we give people on foods stamps).

So what is their future? What have they got to lose? How is it better than the plantation? Many don't even have the comforts of the above-mentioned "house negro".

If it were 1880, it would be easier to see, and you don't even have to look at Southern plantations, there are plenty elsewhere. Back then they had rail cars outfitted with guns, sheriffs and police would ride with them as they rode through mining camps in the East, shot and killed men, women, and children in labor camps, or in the West they locked them up in open-air cages and violated their wives in front of them when they brought food. Today one might have a place to live for which they pay rent to a landlord who bought it after the banks screwed us in 2006-2008, and perhaps some food stamps, and maybe they only get shot at by bald-headed guys who carry guns around to "protect" the neighborhood. So it looks a little better, but is it?

This is what they are afraid of losing?

But you have got a point. If just one person does it, or just a few do it, they will pay full freight. But if 100 million people say "screw this" and refuse to live on the corporate plantation we have placed them on for at least the next 30 or 40 years (show me some real evidence that there is anything else other than hopes and dreams - I mean a real plan, not this phony crap of creating $8 an hour jobs on which one is expected to support a home, family, college for the kids, health care, retirement, and government employees on. (just ask Detroit how that works).

And that's what Cali was saying. They aren't getting together. Frankly, they attend the Black Friday sale at Walmart in greater numbers and with greater passion than they show up at the ballot box.

And until that changes, none of this other stuff will.