By David Brooks on December 30, 2024
Oakland California, Dec. 30, 2025. photo: Bill Hackwell
“Hot soup over a campfire under the bridge / The line for the shelter goes all the way around / Welcome to the new world order / Families sleeping in their cars in the Southwest / No home, no jobs, no peace, no rest” (excerpt from Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad ).
Official year-end figures: 770,000 – a record number of homeless in the richest country in the world and in history and an 18 percent increase since last year. More than 47 million face hunger, including one in five children. More than 100,000 die from drug overdoses every 12 months. More than 16,500 gunshot deaths were recorded this year including 498 mass shootings. The U.S. has sent bombs, missiles and other war items to Israel for more than 22 billion, and to Ukraine for 61.4 billion, among other countries, and since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Pentagon has spent more than 14 trillion. (https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/).
As the year comes to a close, fear remains the most essential factor in the most powerful nation in the world and in history. Everything seems to be a threat in this country, both enemies within the United States and around the globe. Inside, there is a civilian population that is armed with more than 400 million rifles and pistols – more guns than people in the country – and almost everyone says it is for their safety. Who is threatening them? In the foreign sphere, everything is qualified as a matter of national security, and there is no country that spends more on the military than this one, but apparently it is never enough to proclaim the country safe.
Popular disenchantment and fear were expressed in this year’s elections in which the neo-fascist nightmare triumphed. Well, it won, but only with one third of the electorate – that is, two thirds did not vote, and 40 percent of the electorate, those who have the right to vote, did not participate. There is no mandate here, despite what the right wing claims.
In other words, it was not an overwhelming majority that opted for the right and defeated the liberal and progressive forces, but rather a colossal failure of those forces to stop that neo-fascist threat. Where was the broad front, the national coalition, the massive mobilization of these forces against the existential threat that they identified as a common enemy?
Sure, there were huge efforts to boost voter registration and voter participation, but there was never a credible proposal offered for the millions of disenchanted, frightened and angry with a system that not only does not work for them, but that they feel is a big scam by the political leadership of the country.
And the consequences of that failure will now be suffered not only by the most vulnerable within the United States, but around the world. A mediocre but very skillful figure managed to present himself as the hero of the disenchanted and fearful of this country, the avenger of those who feel forgotten, the defender of the screwed workers (despite being a billionaire who has always ripped off workers). His triumph promises one of the most mediocre but dangerous eras in American history.
In the face of this, resistance in the U.S. and by those affected around the world to what is coming in Washington will largely determine what the New Year will look like. “Where there’s a fight for the hungry to eat, I’ll be there. Where there’s a cop beating a guy, I’ll be there…… ”, says Tom Joad’s character to his mother before he dies in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, phrases that were first interpreted in a song by Woody Guthrie (whose guitar was inscribed: This machine kills fascists) and then another version by Springsteen: “Wherever there’s a fight against blood and hate in the air, look for me ma’, I’ll be there / Wherever anyone’s fighting for a place to stand / Or for a decent job or a helping hand / Wherever anyone’s fighting to be free / Go into their eyes, ma’, and you’ll see me.”
The country is on hold for Tom Joad, again. Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello. The Ghost of Tom Joad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-c6GphpAeY
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English