General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's time to examine where my loyalties lie, you judge, I'll just explain my position. [View all]SheilaT
(23,156 posts)between voters and their self-interest, is that hardly anyone remembers the Great Depression any more. I don't. I was born nearly a decade after it ended.
But right now I happen to be reading the book "Addie Pray" (which the 1973 movie "Paper Moon" is based on). It was published in 1971, but the events take place squarely in the midst of the Great Depression. The author, Joe David Brown, was born in 1915, so he understandably would have remembered those years quite vividly.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that those years were worse than almost any of us can imagine. There was a grinding poverty and sense of desperation that is almost unimaginable right now. I'm not trying to gloss over how bad things are currently for many people, but we're still a long way from the 1930's. Unfortunately, if the interests of the well-off continue to prevail, we will get there again.
I am beyond outraged that too many Democrats, from Obama on down, seem to have no clue how bad things already are for so many people. The scary thing is, it could get worse. It will get worse if certain things don't change. Things like the obscene spending for war. The lack of universal health care. The threat to Social Security. The outrageous cost of public secondary education. Then there's the removal of jobs, the abandonment of any pretense of a common good. I am hoping that the anger so many of us feel is being communicated to those at the top.