we are see the It Used to Be Called Bitterness
"The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man-he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's us until we're dead. To California or any place-every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day-the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it."(1) -John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Not long ago, then-Senator Barack Obama, when he was campaigning for the presidency, said, "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them-like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they've gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigration sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Unlike John Steinbeck, who observed the brutal and forced relocation of millions of tenant farmers during the Dust Bowl, President Obama has forgotten the causes of bitterness. And unlike Steinbeck, who understood human nature and how hard-working, independent, and fully human people can be dehumanized and stripped of their self-worth and dignity by unjust economic and political institutions, Obama appears to be incapable of comprehending what triggers episodic bouts of bitter retaliation. But Steinbeck knew how corrupt governmental policies can cause mental anguish and moral dilemmas, and how fraudulent institutions can cause material scarcity and the poverty of the soul.
When talking to Arabs and Muslim in the Middle East, neither will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton use the word "bitterness." Once in power, and as a member of the Owner Class, it is soothing to forget a husband's bitter betrayal. It is easy to dismiss a mean-spirited Republican Congress that belittled health care reforms and demeaned a person's character. Instead, those who resist U.S. occupation forces are extremists. Those who fight back against murderous drone attacks and repressive regimes-backed and supported by American military power and corporate elites-are always terrorists. Both Obama and Clinton talk about reforms and encourage people to believe in a better future.
But what are words and promises without concrete actions and results? Do repeated political injustices, ongoing economic injuries, and never ending pre-emptive wars, only fill a future with bitterness and hostility?
Rulers and Owners always forget this, just like they forget the Tenant People, who have to repeatedly sift through their belongings and possessions deciding on what to keep and to sell. The plow is of no more use, as is other junk, like household goods and other trivial material possessions. The Rulers and Owners, though, are buying more than junk. They are purchasing bitterness, a plow to plow their children under, buying the arms and spirits that might have saved them. The Owners and powerful political leaders of the world, with their wars and military machines and with their corporate takeovers and foreclosures, are buying bitterness.(2)
One can't start again. There's a premium that goes with these piles of junk, with stripping the human spirit of liberty and dignity. These packets of bitterness will continue to grow and flower someday. The Tenant People and working classes could have saved the Rulers and Owners. But they have cut down the Tenant People and the poor with their wars and with their continued neglect and their destructive values. Someday, there will be none to save them. The past has spoiled the present. It will more than likely ruin the future. When shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, there is still the rifle. When the forefathers came-they had pepper and salt and a rifle. Nothing else.(3)
What is left behind must be burned. Leave it-or burn it up. What caused this injustice must somehow be confronted. Otherwise, how can you live with yourself? How will you know it's you without your past? No. Leave it. Burn it. Some sit among the doomed things, turning them over and looking past them and back, perhaps a photo, a letter, a picture of an angel, or a book like Pilgrim's Progress. Others look at their junk and economic injuries which are burned into their memories. How'll it be not to know what land's outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and knows-and knows the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, one can't. The land, house is you. That dreadful pain and bitterness is you.(4)
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