Above: "Ineconomy," a lithograph by Vera Berdich (1915-2003), created while she was in the WPA, ca. 1935-1943. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Above: "Industry," an oil painting by Arthur Durston (1889-1938), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934. Much of Durston's work focused on misery, and was once called "too depressing." Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Above: "Starving Woman," an artwork by Marjorie Eakins (1910-1974), probably created during her time in the WPA's Federal Art Project, ca. 1939. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Ackland Art Museum.
Above: "The Farmer's Kitchen," a painting by Ivan Albright (1897-1983), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1933-1934. A description for this painting notes: "Wrinkles multiply over her drooping flesh, speaking too eloquently of years full of ceaseless labor." Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Above: "Women of Flint," an oil painting by Joseph Vavak (1891-1969), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1937. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Above: A close-up of one of the women in Vavak's painting.
Above: These former Arkansas farmers, now migrants, are building a shack near a landfill in Bakersfield, California, 1935. Photo by Dorothea Lange, provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Above: The description for this 1935 photograph, taken in Arkansas, reads, "Family living in cave until it was condemned by social workers." Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
America is not a democracy. It never was, and it still isn't
Though we've come close at times, America has never been a democracy. During much of our history, blacks, women, and those without property were disenfranchised. Today, gerrymandering, strategic (i.e., underhanded) placement of voting sites, and other voting suppression efforts (almost always carried out by the political right) waters-down or cancels-out our votes. Also, the dominance of the two major political parties--facilitated largely by millionaire & billionaire funding--severely limits our voting choices. Misinformation campaigns, corporate-control of the media, manipulated research (again, facilitated by millionaire & billionaire donors), and cuts to education brainwash the public into consistently voting against its own physical, mental, and economic well-being. And so, the essential needs of the people are routinely steamrolled by the "me-me-me" preferences of the super-wealthy (see, e.g., "Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2013).
America is best described as a plutocracy with some democratic window-dressing... just enough window-dressing to keep the masses in a state of intellectual coma.
American plutocracy decimates us. It commits infanticide; it keeps us chained to bone-breaking debt; it leads us to unhappiness and tempts us with suicide; it forces us to drink lead from old water lines or offers the alternative of bottled water filled with plastic particles; it forces us to sit by helplessly--or speak out impotently--when our government unleashes an endless array of missiles, bombs, and bullets for ambiguous, suspicious, never-achieved goals. Plutocracy seeks to destroy family and community. It annihilates the common good, it cultivates the darkness in us, and then pulverizes any remaining hope.
Of course, there's a flip-side to this too: If you're fortunate enough to have a lot of money, plutocracy will serve you very well. Like Cerberus guarding & suppressing the doomed, plutocracy will ensure that you'll never have to share the "American Dream" with any of the masses locked away in Economic Hades. Plutocracy's stagnant wages, coerced debt, debt-relief restrictions, and puppet leaders ensure the outcome - and defend the caste system. As billionaire Tom Steyer said not too long ago, "There is an absolute, unspoken war between corporate interests and the American people... We're seeing a deliberate attempt to take away [working families'] future by really rich people."
A witness to plutocracy's wicked toll
"I have seen and heard a lot over the past two weeks... I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to,
I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers,
I saw sewage filled yards in states where governments don't consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility,
I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor,
I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction,
I met with people in the South of Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them bringing illness, disability and death."
--NYA Professor of Law Philip Alston, "Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights," December 15, 2017, United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner
No comments:
Post a Comment