Well, boys, the news on every front is pretty grim these days. My $50,000 Hummer is covered by a tarpaulin because it tends to gulp great gobs of gasoline. When I took my 350 horsepower SUV to the dealer to trade it in on a smaller car, he laughed at me and told me to please get off his lot so that I would not encourage other SUV owners to come see him.
On the airline front, we find that prices have more than anything else tripled recently. The number of planes has been greatly reduced and we find that towns such as Rockford, Illinois, Hot Springs, Arkansas and other small towns are now to be “unserved” by the airline industry. We also notice that Tulsa and Kansas City, among many others, are going to have their airline options reduced on the order of 10 to 15%. To top all this off, the airlines now wish to charge you $15 to $25 for the purpose of checking your baggage, which they may well lose.
There are economists in Washington who assure us that we are only entering a recession. But my belief is that we are now wallowing in a full-fledged depression. During the last Depression in the 1930s, there were many occasions when I personally sold gasoline at the rate of five gallons for one dollar. High test, which was called ethyl in those days, went for about 10 cents more. Not only was gasoline cheaper in those days, but we did not have a war going on that drained $12 billion out of the American economy every single month.
I usually accompany my wife on her trips to the grocery store, where I calculate that the cost of our food, which is not exotic, is now running about 35 to 50% more than it was a year ago. I can’t tell you much about clothing these days because I tend to not buy any. On top of all this, we find that a good many of our banks are going broke. The large investment banker, Bear Sterns, went belly up recently and now job seekers from similar banks are doing their best to find new jobs in the financial industry.
Then there are the home owners who find that the declining value of their homes is such that they owe more than the homes will ever be worth. The choice is to face foreclosure or simply to walk away. That is not much of a choice at all. Millions of Americans are now in great financial and mental pain. But the administration seems unconcerned with it all. We were told some time ago by the Vice President of this great country that deficits don’t matter. He was as wrong on that score as he was when he said that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators.
The President equally seems unconcerned about what is taking place because he flies around the world using precious gallons of gasoline to lecture the Africans on the merits of abstinence, which was followed recently by a speech to Arab dictators in Egypt on the virtues of democracy. I suppose that he did not realize that the guffaws he was earning had to do with the silliness of his proposals. When Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or King Abdullah of Jordan embraces democracy, I hope to be alive to witness that event. But I suspect that it is some 250 to 500 years off in the future.
Perhaps some of the grimmest news comes from our efforts pursued under the aegis of homeland security, to deport every foreign national in sight. We are not only restricting visas for people to come to this country to learn and to contribute but the forces of law have been turned against people who are simply trying to make enough money to survive. We know of a ten-year-old child, an American citizen, who is the son of legal immigrants who do not yet have their citizenship. He is petrified by the thought that his parents will be deported to their native country if they violate a stop sign or commit some such other minor offense. The irony is that our bureaucratic procedures make applicants for citizenship wait on the order of ten years before it may possibly be granted.
During that time we have had such things as the Patriot Act, which decrees that people without citizenship may not be granted a driver’s license. The family that we are helping and who are the parents of the child in question here has suffered grievously from the Patriot Act. The father was a truck driver who lost his license in the great state of New Jersey and thus his job. If a man has to survive for ten years without a driver’s license, it begs the question of how he is going to look for work. Immigration is the life blood of this country because it brings other cultures here where they may be enjoyed. But the immigration bureau is slow to process applications on the ground that such newly-crowned citizens may vote against the current administration.
So you see, the news is bad on all fronts. During the great American Depression of the 1930s, we were at peace with the world. Gasoline was cheap and we were not peeing away our resources to support an unpopular invasion of another country. So at this point I must ask, “Is this a great country or not?”
To a man who has lost his job and to those who are being forced from their homes because of foreclosure and to the immigrants who must live in daily fear of being deported, may I suggest that the old spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” should apply. Fortunately I have never lost a job during my 47 years of employment, but I know how hopeless that feeling must be. Perhaps the spiritual sums it up with the quote about being a motherless child. Spirituals are borne in the depth of despair because they had their origin in the cruel practice of slavery.
My recollection is that the first slaves were brought to the Virginia colony in about the year 1619, which means that Americans have been involved in the issues of slavery and black-white relationships for 389 years. Slavery is the most dehumanizing experience that a person can undergo. The slave has no rights and is often subjected to beatings by his owner. It seems odd at this late date to refer to one man owning another man, but that is how it was during the period of slavery in this country.
Out of that experience came the development of songs that reflected the abject conditions of being a slave. There are hundreds of songs that qualify as spirituals. Until the early 1960s, those songs were known as “Negro spirituals.” When the term “Negro” fell into disuse, it was replaced by “people of color” and then there were activists who referred to the Negro race as “blacks.” Today the popular term is Afro-American. But an old-timer such as myself finds it unwieldy to use the term Afro-American spirituals.
If Paul Robeson, the great baritone, were alive today, he might laugh his head off at the grammatical construction that defines many of the songs that Robeson sang. For whatever it is worth, Paul Robeson was a native of the great and glorious state of New Jersey who, because he championed equal rights, was labeled a full-fledged communist. The McCarthyites who called Robeson a communist intended to drive him from the American stage. He found homes in Europe where the views were less xenophobic than those that existed in this country in the 1950s.
I realize that this essay is probably a gloomy one but the facts on the ground tend to support that gloom. But in writing this essay, I also had an opportunity to tell you of my life-long love of spirituals. The second line, after the motherless child reference, is to “a long way from home, a long way from home.” The singer of spirituals will make sure that “a long way from home” is elongated and emphasized.
Well, that is the grim news about the economy. But we must be heartened by the announcement by the president of the General Motors Corporation who now says that they will try to produce smaller cars with greater engine economy. Rick Wagoner is the President of General Motors and those of us who are not economists must wonder where Rick has been for the last two years. But in the long run, and I mean the long run, the news in this gloomy essay may force American manufacturers to develop cars on the European models, which deliver much better gasoline results than come from my yellow Hummer and the 350 horsepower SUV that I cannot trade or give away. If Rick Wagoner and the rest of his cohorts finally wake up to the idea that what we need are engines that produce much better results, we may then end our dependence on Arab oil.
When we end our dependence upon Arab oil, Mr. Bush will find the kings and dictators in those countries to be more amenable to his ideas of democracy. He may be so inspired that he will make a return trip to lecture the Africans on the virtues of abstinence. I understand the greatness of democracy and I have a faint understanding of abstinence, but I must tell you that I am completely baffled by the Vice President’s view that “deficits don’t matter.” He may have something there, but I doubt it. In the meantime I would hope that he and his boss and other cohorts in Washington would bend their efforts toward restoring prosperity to the American economy, rather than to the military-industrial complex. However, I am not going to hold my breath until that happens.
If you are interested, one of the succeeding verses to the title of this essay is “Sometimes I Feel that I’m Almost Gone.” That line is repeated and ends in the thought that I am a long way from home. I fear that before this depression is finished, a good many Americans will feel like motherless children and have a feeling of being almost gone. Those are cruel sentiments, but as a survivor of the Depression of the 1930s, it is always helpful to know the facts rather than the spin that comes out of the American government.
PS: My references to the SUV and the Hummer are allegoric ones. Even the Bible uses allegories, so I guess that I am in sacred company on that score.
E. E. CARR
June 8, 2008
Essay 320
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Kevin’s commentary: Damn it Pop, the Bible does not use allegories because the whole thing is literally true, even the contradictory bits. One thinks you’d have figured this out by now.
On the immigration front, I’ll admit I know very little, but the process certainly seems excessive. My company is trying to hire a few programmers right now — both of whom happen to be Mexican — and we’re having to bend over backwards to find a way to get these talented workers to come help an American company. Nobody’s making easy.
More on this particular song here.