“We need to move as soon as possible. We need a three bedroom.” Thoughts on a Surreal Depression (VDH)
Pajamas Media ^ | May 7, 2011 | Victor Davis Hanson
I grew up with stories from my grandparents of 28 people living in my present house. My grandmother, she used to brag, had a big kettle of ham bones and beans cooking nonstop each day and fed assorted relatives as they came in. And yet all I heard were stories of happiness, hard work, and collective sacrifice. Relatives would say that the “’30s” were the worst and best years of their lives, as they related sagas of real genius involving fruit canning and curing, ad hoc repairs to equipment, and cobbled together furniture and clothing —all without spending any money. History’s revolutions and upheavals — whether the Nika rioting in Constantinople, the periodic uprising of the turba in Rome, the French upheavals, or the Bolshevik Revolution — are rarely fueled by the starving and despised, but by the subsidized and frustrated, who either see their umbilical cord threatened, or their comfort and subsidies static rather than expansive — or their own condition surpassed by that of an envied kulak class. Perceived relative inequality rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution.
These are strange and dangerous times. with an increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2716730/posts
Thank you; there is much truth in your statement.
I just learned something.