Descension

 

As the markets open this morning, I am fretting what that means for my husband and I, who were told in our 20s and 30s that we should be saving our 401Ks for a rainy day. We both are from poor/mid working-class families and both went to college (he served in the Army before I met him). We worked our way “up” to middle class with 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 guinea pigs, and one rabbit.  If you came to our neighborhood you would see a typical suburban setting of homes built in the early 2000s, and to my chagrin, all beige, except a few that went bold with dark grey, slate blue, and red.  This is our second home and we bought it on short sale in 2014.

Our first home was in an older part of Joliet, an American Four-Square, all brick built in 1928. We bought that home in 2003 then in 2008, we saw our first home plummet in value over the next four years. Well, we were lucky in that we didn’t lose everything, we both had our jobs even though our 401ks took a hit. But where we really felt it was in our home values (like the rest of the country), but we managed to keep our home.  When we sold the home in 2017, we took the hit at a loss, not including the money and sweat we put into the home.  I guess the good news is that we bought our current home at a “low” and now have made up for what we lost in 2008 - 2017.  Until now…

For the second or third times in our lives, we will lose a great deal of money in our 401Ks, and it’s a lie that WE will get it back, but I do know who will…the “bankers,” as my grandfather would like to say.  I do know that it won’t be us. It never is the everyday people, regardless of class and the other demographic markers that we are part of…none of it will matter when we are all reliving the black and white pictures that we know from the 1930s depression, except for it will be us in digital pics. So much for working “up” to the middle class. 

Not to complain, who am I kidding, I am complaining.  With the current market situation, and the lies told to my generation since the Reagan Administration, we will not have Social Security nor our 401ks.  So much for “saving” and the lies.

If the market continues to slide and ultimately lead to job losses, this will lead to all the housing values to deteriorate, descending into oblivion. Good news is that housing will be affordable, the bad news is no one will have the jobs to pay for them. And much like now, houses will remain empty while people are living on the street.

My inner idealist has finally seen through the scam that is capitalism. When the orange motherfucker said the system is rigged, well, that was one and only truth that he has ever told.  No matter how much you work, you educate yourself and your children, how much you save, and all the other lies, you will lose unless you are one of the few lucky ones that have managed to win as Warren Buffet states, “the lottery of the womb”.  And to be honest, I thought my sons might have a chance to be one of those winners eventually, but the wealthy do not like the poor, working-class or even the middle-class (though many who make upper six figures think they do, you all are fooling yourselves).  They do not like humanity, as humanity gets in the way of wealth.  

What’s sad is that this seems to have been the case in most human history.  Stupid people follow the rich and powerful because they were told the lie that maybe that they too, can achieve these things or more pathetically, those of us that fight for sociopaths in the name of “honor” or a “heaven”.   Now, I understand why that orange motherfucker referred to US Veterans as “suckers”.  Everyday people are suckers for the monsters in power for promises that are never part of reality.

Even in the early days of the Revolutionary War, the founders (human being-owning, land-owning, most wealthy, white cis men) convinced poor white men and even some black men (Crispus Attucks was one of the first men to die in the Revolutionary War) to fight in the name of “freedom and liberty”, though you rarely hear of poor and working-class people that died for this freedom and liberty, and for most black men this meant little or nothing to them.  

And the Civil War? Well the poor white men seem to be the biggest suckers in that fight. Fighting to have white wealthy landowners keep human being in bondage.  And for you fucking idiots that want to argue that the Civil War was fought over “states rights”, ask youself, what “rights” are you all specifically referring to?  Fucking exactly.  Note to the Southerners with hanging on to their “heritage”, you all lost, get the fuck over it.  The wealthy landowners used your poor ancestors and fucking lost.  But you all never gave up hanging on to that “whiteness” or “maleness” because unfortunately that all you, your ancestors and descendants will ever have, right?  So you all are NOTHING like the “rest of us”?  It seems you all, the poor and white-working class, are the ones that need to let go of “identity politics” not us.  We know where we stand with the wealthy, and none of us are fooling ourselves.

So, honestly, the choice is really theirs. Because I must admit none of us can make real change without hetero, white, cis men on our side, the fascists know that they can’t keep the oppressive systems without you all, it makes sense that the “rest of us” can’t destroy them without you.  And when I speak of oppressive systems, I am also talking about the class system that keeps ALL OF US down.  Even if we destroy the other -isms, classism will still be here, and the oppressors will just find something new to keep their power.  All these systems of oppression must go, somehow. But I am sort of going on a tangent with this…

 

The point is that we are going to lose a lot if not everything without changing anything.  I am not sure who will survive this time into this descension of madness that you all voted for.  All I know is that the rich get richer as the rest of us get poorer. And again, I ask, “Which side are you on?”