One of the most enduring legacies of the Great Depression is the image of homeless families, huddled together in small shanty-town communities. Dubbed Hoovervilles, named for the seemingly apathetic President Hoover, these towns were a blight on the image of Capitalism, showing the collapse of a system that less than a decade earlier boasted of unparalleled material success. As World War II and the commercialized consumerization of the Boomer generation prevailed, the image of the Hooverville was relegated to something of the past, something that could never happen again, a past failure that has now been corrected. It could not happen in this day and age, right? Wrong!
The receding of the suburbs is turning major cities inside out. The unfortunate and the desperate are flocking to new gatherings. The 1930s townships made of scrap wood and metal have been replaced with 21st Century plastics and plywood. New communities of hundreds huddle around 6 porta-poties and very little running water. The recent rise of these tent cities, signifies the end of our outdated American Dream. They’re continually springing up all over the country in church parking lots, vacant areas and around homeless shelters, rendering virtually all of our previous notions of our great success outdated.
As the Christian Science Monitor reports, these tent-cities are springing up all over from Seattle, WA to Atlanta GA. Homeless populations are spiking all across the country as foreclosures force people from their homes with nowhere to go. Many choose to live in these tent cities because they are a safer alternative to living on the streets.
More disturbing is the fact that these tent cities are not accurately reporting how many homeless people there are. Many are moving back with families, many are staying in cheap motels, and still more, as a report from ToTheCenter.com reminds us, are living in their cars, staying in parking lots across the country, moving elsewhere by day.
So why is this not being covered? I’m not 100% sure. I have seen some coverage, yet it’s few and far between. I suppose the major media may be afraid of causing a panic, or perhaps this story is just too break for the entertainment news. I’ve seen very little news on how bad things have become, plenty of filler. They are not talking about the near catastrophic decline in some housing markets such as Orange County, CA, which has seen so many foreclosures they’ve had to hire people to drain the pools (this is to prevent mosquito infestations). Instead, the local news organizations have opted to talk about the usual homicides and celebrity crimes, which cannot hold. Maybe they think they are offering some kind of twisted escape from the depressing reality, or maybe they to are so sheltered, with their 6 digit paychecks, that they have no real concept of reality either. No matter what, it is a sad reality of on the state of our decaying media and an even worse indicator on the path that lies ahead.
With each passing day, it is becoming more and more apparent that this economic crisis is going to be a lot worse than expected. Still, as I saw on a recent addition of the PBS series Nightly Business Report, an economic “expert†had the gall to suggest that things will pick up in 6 months and all will be well. While I wish he were right, my gut tells me he’s wrong. These sheltered, elite, rich folk have no concept of what is going on outside their expensive bubble. All they see is the movement of Capital from the upper echelons of their Ivy League educated society. They know not of the real “Joe the Plumbers” or any plumber of any kind. They do not see the bounced checks, the smaller dinners, the increased use of Cambell’s Soup cans. They may notice the increase in Cambell’s sales, they just don’t see the working mother scrape every last drop out of that damn Cream of Mushroom tin.
Much like a General in World War I, the wealthy elite “officers” do not understand us GIs on the ground. For us, it will be a long hard war guided by many of these useless officers. At least we have a battlefield commissioned soldier at the helm. Barrack Obama is one of us, let us hope he does not forget that!
It is my honest belief that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. The meltdown in the U.S. is hitting every major retailer, even Walmart is feeling the pain (although they’re cheap grocery operation seems to be keeping them from the red, it still damages their consumer electronics and home good sales), even Target posted a 10% decline from last year. This spells trouble for China and Asia, as demand will fall. It spells trouble for Europe as tourism will fall. It spells trouble for Canada, Mexico and Latin America causing decreased imports. These foreign nations will drag the U.S. down even further, limiting foreign investment, limiting cheap imports, damaging exports.
We are on the edge of the abyss it would seem, staring hopelessly into one of the great challenges of our time. The age of Me, Me, Me is coming to an end. We all must stick together now and depend on the We, We, We, for divided we fall, united we stand tall.
Keep your heads up my friends, we will weather this storm. It is the American way!