If it weren't for the protections afforded average Americans by the efforts of unions and in particular the New Deal our country today would look worse than it did in the depths of the Great Depression in 1935, the year my mother was born.
I've been pondering the difference between my parents' lives and mine. I don't like what I see.
My father was born in this clapboard sided log cabin a few weeks after the big crash of 1929. That’s grandma Anna, grandpa Purl, and I think aunt Rosie. I believe this shot was taken in 1936 or 1937.
He and my mother had met before his little side trip to Europe in the late 1940s for the occupation of Germany and they were married when he returned. They moved to the Chicago area and he again took up his railroad career. The men were all gone in those years, so he’d started working as a gandy dancer, or a section gang worker, when he was fifteen.
We moved away from Chicago in the spring of 1971 and into the farmhouse where my mother still lives today. He moved from the Elgin, Joilet & Eastern to the Rock Island, which was later bought by the Chicago Northwestern. His benefits and seniority followed along with him, but coming back to rural Iowa took him out of a shop foreman job and put him on the road.
His right big toe was broken when a piece of rail fell on it and weeks off turned into months. Arthritis in other areas took hold with reduced activity and he was fully disabled at fifty. His pension kicked in and my mom went to work as a nurse aide. We had less, but we had enough thanks to the farm where my mother still lives today.
I have a rather different path. My father quit school in the 9th grade, while I finished a hundred college credits at a very good engineering school before I wandered away to do my own thing. I put a couple of network equipment vendor certifications on top of that foundation and when I was well and working steadily my hourly rates looked like those of an attorney.
But then I got sick. Like my father I had started working when I was in my early teens, although it was just farm work rather than the organized labor path available to him. Like my father, the harm I suffered from becoming seriously dehydrated in the Sandias didn’t seem like a big deal, but the days off turned into months.
And I lost everything.
I had liquidated my 401k when I got divorced. I had nothing but my final paycheck when I became ill. My symptoms from the Lyme disease that had been lurking got me labeled a “suspicious malingerer” rather than getting me a usable diagnosis.
No farm for me, just mom’s house, then friends, then sometimes a camp by the side of the road when there was nowhere else to go. It’s just pure luck that I wandered to New England where doctors check for Lyme. Had I turned west to see an old friend in Colorado I’d likely be dead now.
We’re the richest nation in the world, but it is they who are rich. The wealthiest 5% of this country have more than the rest of us put together. And they didn’t work for it, they stole it.
Yeah, I’m gonna go there. Our whole national policy dialogue comes from a chorus of right wing think tanks who can hardly be distinguished since every single one’s first name is “American”. They’re all certain that if taxes were just a little lower they suddenly start creating jobs, like we had back during the Eisenhower years when the tax rate on top earners was 91%.
We all live here amongst the wreckage of our empire, gutted by a generation of fantasies fueled by Ayn Rand’s hatred of the working class and a decade of Bush’s unfunded adventures. I can’t see a doctor without paying out of pocket, I fantasize about being able to afford dental work, and hedge fund managers make as much in an hour as I’ll make in my entire life.
They get rewarded for … gambling, not investing. If they were investing we’d have jobs for all but 5% of us who happen to be in transition, we’ve have infrastructure, and schools, and we’d be taking on the next great peril our nation faces - climate change.
But we’re just a banana republic now, where a handful benefit when things go right, and all the rest of us are made to pay when they make a mistake. I’m tired of it, all of it, but most of all I’m tired of a Congress who won’t call things as they are and start doing something about it.
I think we've got a solid group in the Progressive Caucus. Many of the other Democrats in the House are trying to do right by their constituents and our country. We have a few Senators who are doing more than holding down a cushy chair, but that chamber has not nearly the fire needed to deal with the problems our nation faces today.
But the rest of them? No matter which party they claim if they're bought and sold by corporate interests call them what they are - Banana Republicans.