monthly essay
“THE WORKING CLASS AND THE EMPLOYING CLASS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON. THERE CAN BE NO PEACE SO LONG AS HUNGER AND WANTS ARE FOUND AMONG MILLIONS OF WORKING PEOPLE, AND THE FEW, WHO MAKE UP THE EMPLOYING CLASS HAVE ALL THE GOOD THINGS OF LIFE…BETWEEN THESE TWO CLASSES A STRUGGLE MUST GO ON UNTIL THE TOILERS COME TOGETHER…AND TAKE AND HOLD THAT WHICH THEY PRODUCE BY THEIR LABOR, THROUGH AN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKING PEOPLE…” (Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW.)
Stable accessible government institutions with leaders elected in fair elections, not bought by the few but the many, not profiting from their privilege, serving the interests of “We The People” are difficult to find.
On August 5, 2026, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo speaking in Las Vegas mentioned Police Officer Austin Abdelnabi, a decorated Marine veteran, being killed in the performance of his duties. The crowd immediately upon hearing the name booed. The governor responded saying, “No, no, we’re not booing him. He’s the officer that passed away here recently.”
Ted Cruz, recently on Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News, said that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is forming an alliance between communists and “Islamists” with the intention to push Sharia law on America ushering out Western and Christian values as part of a “communist takeover”. “They hate America”, Cruz said.
Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, says there is a direct link between Christian scripture and the development of the United States, publicly urging Americans to pray for US troops in the name of Jesus Christ.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News, August 9, 2026, the “the barbarians are inside the gate” in response to the primary victory of Abul El-Sayed in Michigan. Adding, Republicans are laser-focused on “fighting communism on our own shores”. Mr. Johnson, a praying Christian, sees Mr. El-Sayed as a barbarian.
President Donald Trump referred to progressives and mainstream Democrats as “hardcore, godless Communists” stating the Democratic Party is “becoming a communist party” during a policy conference hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition. On July 4th, this same man described the Democratic Party as a “cancer” that must be cut out.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise(R-LA) tells us that a “Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic party is in full swing”.
“Obama, a Muslim, is intent on destroying Christian America”, was said in 2008 and is still said. “America is becoming less of a Christian nation. We are losing our way as a Christian nation”, they said of Obama.
Then there was that name, Barack Hussein Obama. The fact his name was an Arab name, not Muslim, did not matter. The fact that many persons with Arab names are of the Christian faith did not matter.
At a Republican convention, down south not too long ago, a Republican party leader shouted to the people in the hall, “We are not a religious country, we are a Christian country”. The crowd went crazy in cheers.
The craziness is not restricted to national figures. Here in Baltimore, we have a former state senator attempting to be known as “Big Bobby” by claiming Abdul El-Sayed is unfit for the Senate (Michigan) because “his history, record, past statements and associations is incredibly disturbing”. (Bad grammar)
Big Bobby makes bold conclusions with little in the fact category and at times just bold face misstatements of fact. Very poor journalism this is.
There is a constant reference to statements made by Hans Piker, not by El-Sayed, but because El-Sayed said he did not disagree with Piker, El-Sayed agrees. Such thinking is typical of a man not only short in statue but short in thinking. By this logic Big Bobby is in agreement with Piker because he has not publicly disagreed with him.
Big Bobby laments El-Sayed in his supposed willingness to embrace hateful people and inflammatory rhetoric using hateful and inflammatory rhetoric.
All these men can be accused of intellectual laziness but more probable these are weak men seeking to elevate themselves out of being small in mind and self-esteem to a bigness seen only in their eyes, certainly not in the eyes of We The People. The focus is on themselves where idolatry flourishes.
The result is leaders of the courts, the legislatures, and the executive branches do not have the respect of the American people. And why should they?
This poor leadership we have seen before in the years after the American Civil War in the Gilded Age.
Coal, oil, steel and railroad corporations became sovereignties within the country independent of government and the people. Steel workers, garment cutters, cigar makers, shoemakers were treated with less respect than the medieval serfs.
These corporations, large and impersonal, had one purpose, to make profits guaranteeing stockholders dividends while using strike breakers, immigrants, Pinkertons, lawyers, the press and politicians whom they owned to starve workers into submission for expressing dissatisfaction.
Government, state and federal, working for the industrial tyrants passed laws encouraging the amassment of wealth, favorable tax laws, no labor laws with a government offering no help for the worker.
The rich had their own world, own culture, own political system, own philosophy and religion. Political power gravitated to the rich. They controlled the newspapers, magazines, wrote party platforms, financed candidates, bought and sold legislators and judges. Little has changed.
The Morgans and the Rockefellers of the age treated government leaders as servants. Wealth was seen by them as a sign of divine favor as preached from the pulpit and Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest. Instruments such as the 14th Amendment, the Sherman anti-Trust Act and Instate Commerce Laws, ostensibly to help the worker, were used against the worker. Competition was eliminated.
Corporations, in becoming masters of the people, replaced slavery outlawed in the 13thAmendment with a new form of slavery.
Earlier in the 19th century great political leaders were common- Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams (the son), Webster, and Lincoln. No such leaders were seen in the years after the Civil War. From the corporate world, not the political world, new leaders emerged named Rockefeller, Gould, Morgan, Frick, Carnegie among many more focused not on the betterment of our country but on the betterment of their country, a country which they created for themselves with its own laws excluding the workers.
All the Presidents from Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson in 1912 were with one exception Republican feeding at the trough of the elite/rich. That lone exception, Glover Cleveland, wrote in his State of the Union Address, 1885-1888:
“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
Corporations, which should be the carefully constrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
At one time leaders of this country were men of statesmanship but not anymore is this true. Our leaders of today are as those of limited and caring vision in the Gilded Age. Folley sets in as they, too, are bought and sold by the elite/rich.
Our leaders do not lead, do not inspire, instead are focused on dividing the people with words of hatred, bigotry and ignorance. Of the Vulgar, they are.
And what is more vulgar than the response of the president, the secretary of defense and their Republican servants demeaning the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Abdul Sayed wins and should be lauded as evidence the American Dream is not dead. Words of glorification of all that is right about America should be shouted from the highest mountain top. Our “Better Angels” spoken of by Lincoln are flying high.
And in of this, where are the clergy? They are supposed to be the Lord’s shepherds caring for their flock but from the pulpit comes silence. No way are they consistent with the Webster’s definition of a shepherd. “A person whose job is to take care of, feed, or guard sheep.”
WE ALL WANT TO LIVE IN A COMMUNITY WHERE...
We all want to live in a community where the streets are safe, where we can go out into the neighborhood, to the park, to the store without fear. A community where we can send our children out to play knowing they will come home safely, where our children go to school without police patrolling the school hallways.
We all want to live in a community where schools educate with the best teachers, the best books, the best technology.
We all want to live in a community where our work is meaningful with money sufficient to care for family and children with no need to pay the electric bill, the water bill, the food bill with a credit card or a government handout. We all want a job where our input and we are respected.
We all want to live in a community with decent affordable housing. We all want to be able to have a faith in our lives that makes sense. That is a faith that speaks to us and our families.
To put it another way, we want economic stability and security, safe communities ensuring safety in the home, the schools and workplaces, and stable accessible government institutions that serve the interests of We The People.
Each of us respect family, freedom, kindness, integrity, democracy, seeing these foundational beliefs as the core of happiness.
These beliefs translate into a shared belief in clean air and water, quality education, protection of privacy, real and affordable health care. Consumer protection, including banning excessive prices on the necessities to live, is of these beliefs. Ensuring our leaders are elected by us in fair elections not bought by the few with assurances our leaders will not use their privilege to profit themselves.
None of the above is happening mandating a thinking that the credit card, the slippery lender, the government handout, the corruption defining our lives, are to be avoided through an economic system in which you are respected as a human being and as a worker, assuring fair and adequate wages, the very physical foundation of the spiritual in the happy life.
This thinking is to bring us together, not divide us, not to keep us weak with the strong and the few becoming stronger and fewer. A faith grounded in our neighbor mandating love for children, for spouses, for parents, for friends, is to be extended to love for our community.
A thinking that mandates this faith is not be kept in a box stored away somewhere in the closet taken out when convenient.
This faith is to be manifested in citizenship where the concern is not to be charitable but to establish rules giving us a world where charity is no longer needed.
We seek a community where The Five Pillars of Man, that is the Physical, the Intellect, the Emotional, the Spiritual and Love, are honored in belief and deed giving us the American values long cherished as foundational to personal independence and self-reliance, assuring a fair chance for all regardless of background and beliefs to succeed in an economy based on private ownership and the free market, moving about in freedom from arbitrary control denying personal choice, and meaningful and real participation as citizens in our government institutions.
Essential is grasping that this desired world is achieved through the blossoming of The Five Pillars of Man, in particular The Pillar of the Spiritual.
We all want to live in a community where the streets are safe, where we can go o
PICTURES OF PEOPLE STRUGGLING TO LIVE
project
POVERTY, AMERICA’S INDUSTRY
IT NEEDS TO BE STATED RIGHT UP FRONT, THAT THE PEOPLE WORKING IN THE SUBJECT OF THIS ESSAY, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ARE DEDICATED, HONEST AND HARD WORKING. FROM THE JUDGE IN CHARGE TO THE MAN CLEANING UP AFTER THE HOMELESS, EACH IS IMPORTANT AND TO BE RESPECTED. WITH THIS STATEMENT, LET US BEGIN.
This chapter serves as a description of a project, entitled “Poverty, America’s Industry”, based on the premise that the leading industries in the United States are not limited to the steel industry, the oil industry, the technology industry, the munition industry and the like. The poverty industry is to be included in this group. CLICK HERE TO POVERTY, AMERICA'S INDUSTRY
