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I’ve had some thoughts growing (slowly) the past few days about the change in the USA since the 1960s when I was born to now. Because it’s pretty insidious. Follow along if interested.
First: racism was always there. One of my earliest memories was of an actual South Carolina chain gang of all black men cleaning the swamp behind my house when we lived there for six months. And an Indian school friend getting relentlessly bullied.
When you’re six and moving aroun state-to-state like I was, when you encounter it, you FEEL it. You know it’s wrong. But at 7, what do you do about it? I tried I got in trouble for shoving down one of Kalani’s attackers. My mom was mortified.
That’s when I realized something was wrong with my mom, too, because how could she side with the bullies? She did. Firmly. It was ... disconcerting. When we moved to California the next year, even though there was (I’m sure) significant racism, it wasn’t in my school as much.
But then to New Mexico, and yep, more racism, this time against Hispanic kids. By the time I was 8 or 9, I was pretty capable of spotting it. Still didn’t know what to do about it. But that was when the bigger problems started coming out in the 1970s.
People now don’t really remember how angry and violent the protests got in the 1970s, and how terrified all those “normal” (ahem) middle class families were. But it felt very much like today. MEANWHILE, though ... people had good-paying jobs. Jobs were plentiful. Unions strong.
I can tell you with perfect confidence that things went wrong in the 1980s, also known back them as the “Me Generation.” It was the first expression of the idea that we don’t need all those bothersome unions, people get paid enough, and also, regulations just slow us down.
Not surprisingly, racism also began to make a real comeback in the ‘80s. And people started taking less great jobs at less great pay b/c of “trickle down” economics, thanks Ronnie Rayguns. The only thing the “trickle down” economy did was become a catch basin for the 1%.
Just a small one, then. But with the explosion of the Internet and Internet IPOS, holy crap, there was so much money being thrown around for NOTHING. No proof required of concept. Just rains of money. Until the doors abruptly shut.
And boy, did the Internet site bodies hit the floor. Hundreds of them. Thousands of startups, taking with them millions and millions, and the livelihoods of all the people who’d worked in those companies .... but not the owners. They got a nice bailout.
By the 2000s, the pattern was firmly set. Companies were eroding benefits. Healthcare started to rise (why NOT make a profit from misery?). Privatized USPS. Privatized prisons. Things we’d always viewed as fundamental to the safe operation of our country no longer were OURS.
Rapacious businesses middle-manning “delivery mechanisms” became the order of the day. You don’t need an electric company! You need “choice!” ... except your choices never seem to get that much cheaper, and the service only gets worse. And you never know who to call.
In the past 10 years, it’s accelerated wildly, like some unbolted engine spinning out of control. We don’t need clean air! Clean water! Elections don’t have to be fair (never were, but now are infinitely worse). Greed, greed, greed is the only rule. Get yours. Screw the rest.
This is not a recipe for a country. It’s a recipe for a failed American experiment. We are pulling ourselves apart from the torque and strain on every aging, failing, cannibalized part.
Pay attention.
This has to change.
Pay attention.
This has to change.
