Richest country on earth. Destroyed many nations and killed millions for cheap treats to flow. But we still have starving families
Richest country on earth. Destroyed many nations and killed millions for cheap treats to flow. But we still have starving families
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.
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.
All those trans Muslim millionaires.
Did they asked the same people? Jewish + muslim + atheist = 90%. Native + Asian + Black = 97%. New York + Texas + California = 92%
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.
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.
If the world’s wealth were equally split, the average person in Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would become less wealthy. Everywhere else, including the United States, the average person would become more wealthy.
The United States is not a wealthy country. We are not the head of world empire like even leftists claim. The US is still a European colony, being exploited like they’ve always exploited their colonies, they just also moved the imperial headquarters here. Since WW2 the US has managed Europes empires for them, without even benefiting from it.
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
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.
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.
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.
Why are poor people making children?
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