Why People Are Angry # 3

I suppose this is like the 1920s, which were a hard time for working people, farmers and the lower middle class. Meridell Le Sueur told me once that the Great Depression was a middle class experience. Working people were already hard up before the crash. For them the 1930s were more of the same. One of their reactions was to swing right. The Klu Klux Klan flourished. Per Wikipedia:

A significant characteristic of the second Klan (after World War One) was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in both the North and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing from the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who tended to be Catholic and Jewish in numbers higher than earlier groups of immigrants; and black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the U.S. Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.

What is needed -- always needed -- is an analysis that points out that other working people and middle class people are not the problem. The rich are the problem, and a system that allows siphons wealth to the top of society and destroys the lives of ordinary people. But right now, looking at the Tea Party, I see people obsessed with sex and abortion, independent women, immigrants, gay marriage, Muslims... Under the surface is racism and antisemitism, which bubbles up and then is denied.

Part of the problem is -- the world is changing, society is changing. The country is turning from white to brown, and the old white certainties are going away. Two futures lie ahead of the tea partiers: one is a social future different from the way America was in their dim memories (or fantasies) of the 1950s; the other is an economic future of falling expectations and contracting hope. The combination is pretty awful.

I'm not sure how to handle the first future, except to say different is not bad. Most the issues that make the teabaggers crazy don't bother many, prehaps most Americans.

The second future is a lie and needs to be exposed. Yes, there are terrible problems: diminishing resources, environmental degradation, climate change. But the world has fantastic resources. If the US has the resources to bail out much of the world's financial system and save gigantic, crooked banks from ruin, if it has the resources to fight wars with five different countries at once, then we ought to have the resources to create a better world. As the old union song Solidarity Forever says, "We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old." It's all a question of who has the money and the power and how they is used.

But how do we get this message across?