This is a good article as the starting point of a discussion about the invisible unemployed, about the way we all suddenly worry about government deficits when we did not worry about them during the eight long years of the Bush Reich, about the way jobs are supposed to be so very important in politics but in actual fact matter not at all, about the takeover of state governments by the forces of Sauron (killing off the unions, the funding base of the Democratic Party, for instance) and about the oddly phlegmatic Democrats on all levels of government.
As I said, in a long-winded way, the article is but a starting point. It ends with this, for example:
Mr. Lichtenstein, the historian, notes that it took awhile for the poor to mobilize in the Great Depression. Many initially saw President Roosevelt as an ally and only later became disillusioned. As Langston Hughes wrote in a 1934 poem, “The Ballad of Roosevelt”:
The pot was empty,
The cupboard was bare.
I said, Papa,
What’s the matter here?
I’m waitin’ on Roosevelt, son,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt,
Waitin’ on Roosevelt, son.
For the moment, jobless Americans are waiting on President Obama. If unemployment stays as high as many expect, and millions exhaust their benefits, they may just find their voice in 2012.
Here's the problem with that: What would their voice be, given the two-party system? I guess they could always vote back the people whose policies caused this depression, which would be the Republicans, for more of the same.