The real-life descendants of those once-noble characters they championed and romanticized will soon enough be living in their own dustbowl with no more opportunity then their ancestors. Even those hapless citizens of Hooverville weren't as ruthlessly ridiculed as untouchables and lepers by their corporate bosses and indifferent government - and certainly not by a newly emerging and fragile middle class. Of course, many on Wall Street were busy jumping out of windows or soon took up space in the next shack over. Not so today when an ever-more avaricious ruling class redefines "shared sacrifice" as "I'll (deliberately) cause the problem and you'll suffer." Yet, our current group of dust-bowler victims not only sides with their oppressors, but fancies themselves just as upwardly-mobile; this at the very moment reality is sending their hopes, and children’s futures, hurtling toward oblivion. While the prairie fires burn out of control, they expect God to start passing the water buckets while simultaneously chanting the mantra of self-sufficiency.

I’m not sure how one battles this exaltation of ignorance, for it’s an oddity – maybe different from anything the World has ever witnessed. At the turn of the 20th century, Pennsylvania coalminers didn’t conspire with Pinkerton’s thugs to kill their own neighbors any more than Spartacus and his fighters begged the Romans to keep them in chains. Neither group was known for its advanced level of education, yet today, half of America suffers fantasies of mass prosperity under a Koch Brothers crown. As Tom Joad would tell us, “It sure don’t look none too prosperous.”

While the ignorant cling to the belief that they are riding on the coattails of the wealthy (despite ample and living proof to the contrary), our modern robber barons have become less vulnerable, more brazen and wealthier than ever - and almost exclusively at the expense of the rest of us. The promise of government regulation has been replaced with a free-for-all frenzy at the public trough, not by the poor, but the wealthy. The banks borrow money from us but refuse to loan it back. Today’s CEO doesn’t earn his golden parachute through innovation and good management, but from firing thousands of workers to trigger a stock spike for Wall Street “speculators” (hardly a gamble when the intended result is always the same). The buying power and influence of our new corporate masters now appears absolute, and this time, there is no Teddy Roosevelt to charge the hill and bring them back down to size.

When Ron Paul and his approving “mainstream” Republican audience recently made it loud and clear where they stand on the subject of assisting their fellow man, I was reminded of another Joad quote,

“Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man than a live one.”



In today’s Dustbowl America, it may turn out to be less a case of fratricide than mass suicide.

The Roosevelts are long-gone as is Woody’s fascist-killing machine. In the absence of any counter-balance, the American Eden has headed South, and as the song goes, “believe it or not, you won't find it so hot if you ain't got the do re mi.”

Perhaps Tom Joad offers the answer, albeit incomplete, when he suggests,

“Takes no nerve to do something, ain't nothin' else you can do.”