"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I remember the first time I read The Grapes of Wrath. It was assigned reading in a high school history class as part of a unit about the Great Depression. The teacher made it clear that the line between reality and fiction was paper thin in Steinbeck's masterful story. The chaos in the lives of the Joad family as they fought to survive knotted my stomach. It was a far cry from the few sanitized paragraphs in our text book about the period. It is one thing to be told that people were desperate and being able to feel that desperation.
Reading Steinbeck's tale is the perfect way to pass the time as we wait to see how much more sacrifice will be wrung from the most vulnerable by our political "leaders" to keep the government running. The ingredients are all there. Economic chaos. Shenanigans in the financial markets. Exploitation of workers. Attacks on organized labor. Suffering on a scale not seen since the 1930's. Even a record-breaking drought in the southwest. The only difference is that instead of creating a safety net, our leaders are desperate to shred it.
Coverage of the budget debacle in the American media has skillfully avoided the growing human toll of the Great Recession. Fortunately, some of our friends across the pond have dared to revisit Steinbeck's saga. Paul Mason chronicled the Joad family's trip from Oklahoma City to Bakersfield, California in a short documentary that aired last night on the BBC.
Here are a few snippets from the BBC article that Mason wrote to discuss the documentary.
Mason's first stop is El Reno, Oklahoma where he interviews a cattle rancher that is struggling to feed his herd after the drought killed grasses and feed grains.
With the south-west in the grip of its worst drought for 60 years, old-timers here are beginning to talk about the Dust Bowl years, years Steinbeck chronicled in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book of migration, poverty and social injustice.
The interview with rancher Brett Porter was interesting. He is lucky enough to have farm insurance, but it only covers 65% of the estimated value of his crops and livestock. His herd, including breeding stock, will have to be sold to raise money. Although Tea Party rhetoric is big around the state, Porter says the modest government subsidy he receives will help him survive as long as the drought eases quickly.
Mason's next stop is Albuquerque where he visits an area populated by homeless families. Many of these homeless lost their jobs and homes in the Great Recession. There are no jobs to replace the ones they lost and the unemployment checks are their last economic lifeline.
There is wrath aplenty here - though you seldom hear such thoughts expressed on the US media. "They're wasting money on wars," says Larry. Maurice tells me the same thing. A guy crawls over his large family and almost whispers to me, "I'm Native American. My tribe runs a casino so where does the money go? Why don't they use it to help their own people?"
Phoenix is the next stop for Mason and he visits thug Sheriff Arpaio's famous tent city jail. He interviews activists on both sides of the immigration debate. One immigrant caught up in the sweeps indicates the North American Free Trade Agreement has not produced much in the way of economic benefit on either side of the border.
"People still come, because of the conditions across the border," he tells me. The North American Free Trade Agreement, he believes, has bankrupted small business in Latin America, and the same rural poverty you find the whole world over simply drives people to move north.
Mason also ventures into the land of the tricornered tinfoil hats. There he finds wrath aplenty.
But attitudes are polarised. At the West Valley Tea Party Patriots meeting I attend, campaigners for migrants are accused of being "communists". I ask about the imminent debt ceiling crisis and they hand me a dossier claiming to prove President Barack Obama is really Kenyan.
Bakersfield is the last stop. There the Joad family encountered the hostility of locals to migrants looking for a new start away from the Dust Bowl and destitution. Mason contrasts the present day 'haves' and 'have-nots.' The 'haves' are vampires from defense contractors, oil companies, agribusiness corporations, and for-profit healthcare providers. The 'have-nots' are the small farmers, migrant farm workers, and army of newly unemployed.
The bar at the hotel is full of oilmen and military guys. The economy of Kern County, where the Joads ended up, is dominated by the Air Force, naval weaponry, big oil and private healthcare.
But there is still 15% unemployment here. The town grew by 25% in the past decade but now the property bust is here, 156 homes in every thousand are repossessed.
I am thankful for having a history teacher way back when that exposed me to The Grapes of Wrath. My only quibble is that he left me with the impression that our political leaders had learned important lessons from this difficult time in our history. I was taught that policies and programs were put in place to prevent the abuses and injustices of the Depression era. That was true enough perhaps when I was in high school forty years ago, but our political system has since been overrun by those who do not care if there are millions and millions of people every bit as desperate as the fictional Joad family on our mean streets.
Perhaps our political leaders should read the cautionary reminder found in The Grapes of Wrath:
And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
It is not clear what lessons our political leaders learned from history as they put corporate interests above the welfare of the nation. There is too much talk of austerity for the many and too little talk of sacrifice by the privileged few. The economic engines of manufacturing and technology that brought us out of the Depression now grow weaker by the day. We are unprepared for daunting challenges posed by climate change, overpopulation, and resource depletion. The grapes of wrath are growing heavy and the harvest will be bitter indeed.