—Mayn Rue Platz
This song by @geoffberner has been stuck in my head for the past few days. The lyrics were written by a man in New York, a Russian Jew in the American sweatshops in 1911. The Mandarin verse was added for Berner’s recording and allows the song to transport the listener not only to America’s sordid past but China’s sordid present. What I love about this song is how clearly it illustrates the tragic nature of poverty. It puts me on the verge of tears.
I’ve listened to this song while perusing articles on the Occupy America movement, and it made me realize something: the character you see in this song, the man hunched over the machine in the dark warehouse, far from nature and far from freedom, that man is more powerful than the rich man in his parlor. At least, that’s what many conservatives in this country believe, especially those who subscribe to the philosophies of Ayn Rand.
Hear me out, though it seems strange. Some of these people are in my family, and I know their thoughts well. They actually believe that the poor are the ones who had the power and the know-how to destroy this country’s economy and shift the wealth to the top 1%, those people that have become the topic of much debate. Such far-reaching destruction of prosperity certainly couldn’t have been those rich and powerful “job creators,” the ones who can grab the ear of a senator or the seat of a federal commission. Those comfortable people are clearly less powerful than all of those unemployed, debt-ridden Americans who have taken to the streets in protest. And conservatives annoyed that liberal intellectuals like me find them absurd!
But it’s not that I don’t have respect for them. It takes a powerful mind to be capable of such incredible self-deception and delusion.
