So I haven't been feeling all that well lately and fell asleep on the couch with the TV on...

[WCGreen]

I suppose a lot of men my age probably do the same during the Football season.

I woke up and the movie Sounder was on.

Now I had heard a lot about that movie over the years, about the abject poverty that these poor southern black folk had to live in...

But seeing it was a jolt.

I was struck by how primitive they lived in a supposedly modern world.

But I also thought that that probably wasn't all that far off for most of our ancestors, probably a hundred or so years ago, just that the African Americans were left behind as usual.

Now I got to thinking about how far we have come in the last 100-150 years or so, but then I also got to thinking if we elect a couple of more republican administrations, that is where, I firmly believe, most of us who now populate the middle class will be.

We will be beholden to the white pasty faced fat ass holes like Karl Rove who lie, cheat and steel and do what ever it takes to get to the top.

We will be the equivalent of the old time Share Croppers.

Last night, I watched the end of the Movie The Emperor's Club and how the popular kid cheated in the intellectual competition and how he cheated again, 25 years ago, in order to get his friends to accept him as he prepared to run for the Senate.

And even when the former student was confronted by his righteous former teacher, he laughed at the outmoded way he thought.

The competition in the past and in the present was framed by the, till now, most corrupted and powerful society in the west, the Roman Empire.

All I could think about was how awful our future looks right now and how family's, like those depicted in Sounder, always seem to find away to survive, even under the most abject conditions you can imagine.

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. You forgot to mention the fat cats on top laughing, laughing, laughing...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. And after the laughter fades, it's time to watch...

..."They Live," the most prophetic and accurate picture of 2011 I've seen.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. I have never seen that, looked it up.

Very interesting premise.

[madrchsod]

6. an excellent movie....

the lead actor was a professional wrestler. you will not be disappointed.

[Peter1x9]

10. You should really see it.

It's so similar to what's going on in our society that it's scary. The movie was made in 1988 but it's even more relevant to today.

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Will add it to my Netflix queue.

Might as well see it while Netflix is still providing dvds.

[Peter1x9]

9. One of my most favorite movies.

Everything in that movie is the same as our society (even way more so now than when the movie was made in 1988). The only real differences are: replace the aliens with the plutocrats of our world, and replace the signal broadcaster/subliminal messages with antidepressants/relentless propaganda.

And of course, the dirty part of my mind really liked that ending where the naked girl sees the alien on the TV set, then looks down to find that she's on top of another one. :P

[Amerigo Vespucci]

22. The signal broadcaster = "Fox News"

Same thing, 24 hours a day.

[truedelphi]

16. "They Live" totally rocks!

A very clever and thought provoking movie, even during the time period when it came out.

[RKP5637]

20. Thanks for posting "They Live." I'll watch it, looks interesting. n/t

[TBF]

2. Many are there right now. nt

[hootinholler]

11. And more everyday...

That being said there are many in Appalachia who still haven't quite made it.

-Hoot

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. I suspect we don't really know just how resilient we are...

And we won't know until or unless our backs are against the wall...

I hope the middle class will come to its senses, and votes these idiot tea baggers out.

If they do that, then we'll have another chance to fix things so that our society can prosper as a whole...

And not just the wealthiest.

[RKP5637]

21. The middle and lower classes need to wake up and vote these bastards out

of office, do what it takes and reclaim this country. There are not 2nd and 3rd chances to do this. The technology today is too powerful, people can be kept suppressed indefinitely, easily.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Anniston Alabama 1963.

I saw first hand almost the exact setting, in many places.
I saw houses..well, shacks, where I could look down thru the cracks in the floorboards and see the dogs lying under the house. Half the shacks were crooked every which way.
I saw lots of kids barefoot, in Oct.

Down the hill from the house we were renting was a ramshackle country store selling individual cigarettes to poor black men, for 5 cents each.

I was warned by the white store owner not to be "visiting so much" with my neighbor, who was an old black lady who had worked for 30 years as a maid, in New York, and had come back to the neighborhood to live out her days in her deceased mother's home. She was a lovely woman, I liked her.

I was 18 and newly married and in the South for the first time, everything was mind boggling.
White young people "not from around here" were looked at with suspicion.

Fast forward to 1986, in rural North Fla.
Same houses, same small towns, same poverty, very little had changed.
Except the overt racism was now covert.

You get far enough away from the big city lights down here, into the tiny towns and out into the country, you will see come places that have not changed that much from the 30's. Except most people have a car or pickup in the yard.
LOTS of old single wide mobile homes sitting in the middle of acres of land, now, not as many crooked shacks that are still occupied ( but many many of them still standing)

[WCGreen]

8. Well, that is were we will all be headed if the economic model isn't

changed...

[Dan]

13. sad smile,...

I remember when the young white kids would come to our small town to work/live/talk with us, and speak of civil rights, the right to vote,...etc. They actually lived in our part of town for awhile - to the amazement of all. And then, one day, they were gone... This was during the same period... we have grown alot, and yet, stayed the same in some ways.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. Of all the things I experienced in 1964 my first time in Alabama..

( I said 1963, we moved there Dec of '63, for a year)

one was pulling into a fast food joint on a chilly night and I saw a black man eating his food sitting in the passenger seat of a pickup, door open.
We went inside, ordered, I went outside to the bathroom, and saw my first
"white" and "colored" water fountains outside by the bathroom door.
I honestly do not remember if there were separate bathrooms, I was too stunned by the water fountains.
The image of him eating outside in the cold and the water fountains seared into my brain.

The 2nd most vivid image was watching a tornado cross over on a ridge across a valley as I stood on the other ridge by the house, under an ominous green sky, the air so heavy I could barely breathe.
The tornado hit Ft. Rucker where my then husband was stationed.

At that time in my life, the South was strange foreign land.

[truedelphi]

17. I worked for a California family that had

moved to the deep south in the late eighties, due to a job "promotion."

They simply could not handle the racism, covert, overt, or what not.

The stories they told were frightening.

Cities in the Deep South have changed, but the towns and villages off the beaten track haven't.

[csziggy]

12. In South Georgia and North Florida, there are still people living that way

Many blacks, but some whites, too.

Down the road from us is a plantation - not a remnant of one of the old slave owning plantations, but one of the hunting plantations owned by wealthy people from up North. But when they bought the land, they man no effort to improve the living situation of the people who lived on and worked the land. The houses were still the old slave cabins or tenant farmer shanties. Many had no plumbing, no electricity, no insulation, no source of heat.

It is only in the last ten or fifteen years that the plantation near us has stopped maintaining their old cabins. Until then, they were considered a benefit for the people who either still share cropped or worked on the plantation. No commute, no rent, no utilities. Apparently the plantation owners decided that keeping those old cabins was more trouble than it was worth. Or maybe the generation born after the civil rights movement found better opportunities and left the plantations for good. As the cabins become structurally unsound, the plantation is tearing them down.

It's good to see the old slave cabins go, but they should have been torn down a hundred and forty five years ago.

[EC]

14. Many of the repub Senators and Representatives

already have complained that "our poor" are so well off that they even have refrigerators and TV's like they thought that was too much.

[defendandprotect]

15. Terrific movie -- love the actors, as well -- the little boy ...scholar --

but, our Founders didn't have a MIC to confront --

and they didn't have Global Warming breathing down their necks --

Things are quite different this time around --

If we want to prevail -- it's going to have to be a very sane revolution --

beginning with getting the nuclear reactors shut down--

and control over all the nuclear weapons --