History: The State of the World Now
For many it is difficult to imagine a worse time than which they are experiencing now. Prices have risen everywhere, from fuel to groceries to rent, and jobs are becoming scarce or have worsening conditions. Technology is cutting them back on one side, pushing workers out of jobs, and the creative activities which brighten their lives, are being taken over with one faked monstrosity after another, lacking in anything like a human touch while, on the other side, a government elected to govern and help has proven itself only capable of making the situation worse, of creating the many problems ordinary people are forced to face. It is almost as if history is repeating itself. The situation, from the ground, not from the higher floors occupied by management, has been well described:
Anyone who paints an optimistic picture of the near future must be either a great fantasist or a fraud. For unless a miracle occurs, we face terribly difficult months ahead. Wherever we look, there is hardship and almost insurmountable problems: the already frustrated workers are thrown into further turmoil by the new price increases; raw materials are difficult to import due to the poor exchange rate; there is no coal, leading to production stoppages everywhere; our finances are in the most dismal state imaginable; and the situation worsens daily.
„Validus,“ Die Wirtschaftssorgen der Welt (1920), in Die Weltbühne XVI / 3
The description above was published not a few months ago, not at the beginning of the political moves which have created so many hardships, but in 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War in a Germany oppressed by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Present day United States of America cannot claim such a historical reason, cannot blame others for the state of their affairs: it is an entirely internal matter. There are, though, others who are equally guilty, by association if nothing else, and here we also have our reference from history:
It is rightly assumed that the press of the Central Powers bears some responsibility for the outbreak of the World War. For almost without exception, the German, Austrian, and Hungarian press supported, celebrated, or at least – in the case of the Social Democratic newspapers – supported the provocative, war-inciting policies of the Austro-Hungarian government against Serbia and Russia during the critical days of July 1914, either through unexpectedly lenient assessments or even encouraged by silence.
Heinrich Kanner (1864 – 1930), Warum die Presse in Weltkrieg versagte (1921), in Die Weltbühne XVII / 43
It is no different today to the situation one hundred years ago: we are reliving a period of history everyone swore should never happen again. A war is raging, and being lost; civilians are suffering despite being thousands of miles away; jobs and livelihoods are being threatened; the Fat Cats are sitting in their ivory towers, their gold decorated offices, feeling no pain, seeing no pain. If we continue this way the horrific stories depicted by American novelists such as John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath could visit us once more. In our highly technological world, no one is prepared for such a historical setback. If a modern country is incapable of handling immigrants from outside its own borders who are also desperate to work, it will never be able to handle the plight of its own citizens, its internal migrants.
