In Charles Dicken’s classic novel Scrooge, later made into the great film A Christmas Carol, we see Ebenezer Scrooge being paid a visit at his office on Christmas Eve. The men visiting him are looking for donations to help the poor and destitute:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the [one of the gentlemen], taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Look around you folks, at what this Trump 2.0 with help by Elon Musk is doing to our nation and the working stiffs who make up 99+ % of us. This is the great upheaval for Capitalism on Steroids! Just the plan to cut Medicaid funding is enough to scurry us all to the poorhouse. How many MAGA supporters of Trump and Musk will be affected by these cuts? All those working stiff and retired working stiff seniors will one day need to enter a nursing home or assisted living, and the money is not there to aid them… while Trump’s billionaire and mega millionaire friends and supporters get more tax breaks… it would be too late by then.
When our drinking water becomes even more leaded and putrid by industrial wastes and poisons, there will no EPA to soothe us. When schools are forbidden to teach about the evils of American slavery, replaced in the curriculum by teaching about The Gulf of America… we are done for. When the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is replaced by The Center for Freedom and Liberty, better put on those N-95 masks folks. When the Trump-Musk tariffs see massive boycotts on American exports by various nations worldwide, who will finally stop this financial bleeding of working stiffs and poor?
As with Scrooge isn’t it funny how the Super Rich, who never had to worry about enough money for housing or food and medicine, love to speak down to us all? The ‘ arrogance of indigence’ becomes deafening. Watch the great Norman Jewison 1975 film Rollerball and see what can happen when Corporations control us… completely! In the 1976 Sidney Lumet classic film Network the big cheese, Jensen of the media giant, tells it straight to Howard Beale, the radical newscaster: “There is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT, AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today!”
Wouldn’t it be great if next Christmas ( or much sooner) those Ghosts of Christmas come to visit Trump and Musk as they sleep? Hope springs eternal.