I Am Now a Proud Member of the One Percent
No, no, not that one percent. I was never cut from that cloth.
The one percent I refer to are those of us who were born in 1935. Statistics tell me only a single percent of us old timers remain alive today. Tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, that number will steadily decline until, poof, we will be gone, and our memories erased from the memory-bank, save for history books.
Few read history anymore, as we have become the now generation, and all we know is now.
Not that now is a bad thing, but it once held the truth of having been experienced.
I heard Hitler speak, listened to Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, watched in real time as the death camps at Birkenau and Auschwitz were liberated. I live in Europe now, and feel no need to pay my respects to the present-day death camps turned into historic monuments. I saw them with corpses stacked, and heard liberating officers warn soldiers not to feed them chocolates from their rations—they were too weak, and the shock might kill them.
Which is not the entire story of being a one-percenter.
Those of us who remain alive, have borne witness to a particularly strong scented arc of history that informs our lives today, and we dare not allow that fragrance to drift away into the dry and largely ignored texts of history.
Churchill is far more poignant having witnessed the thunder of his oration, most often heard in poetic stanzas. Hitler pounded the lectern as well, but his half-screams carried constant complaint and the early lightning of a gathering storm. Prime Minister Chamberlain, returning from a meeting with Hitler, promised ‘peace in our time,’ but it rang hollow from his lips. Churchill reminded him, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
It is different to have been there instead of reading it.
And even that is but a small portion of the arc.
Witnessing the first (and only) use of an atomic device against an enemy at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; an American industry that out-produced the sinkings by Nazi U-Boats in the North Atlantic; Rosie the Riveter, who lent the strength of her arm to that wartime production; Henry J. Kaiser’s revolutionary shipbuilding that cut the construction time for Liberty ships from months to an average of 45 days; my father’s work at Douglas Aircraft and mom saving bacon-fat for munitions. Dwight Eisenhower, a mere major, and aide to General McArthur, became America’s first 5-star general, and marshalled the European forces that defeated Hitler.
‘Marshalling’ reminds me of General George Marshall, an American army officer and statesman, who rose through the ranks to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. Author of the Marshall Plan, that rebuilt the destruction visited on Europe and Asia, the first time in history that a victor has done so. Marshall studied the World War One armistice that was so punitive against Germany that it led to World War Two, and he vowed to not let that happen again.
It’s in the history books, but being there multiplied the power.
The Cold War and Iron Curtain framed periods of tensions and relief, with the Soviet Sputnik, and our answering Moon Landing. The Army–McCarthy hearings, televised and held by the United States Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations, charging communists in government, then Hollywood. Lives and careers were ruined on a mass scale, mostly for naught.
I was in my parent’s kitchen, having a rare lunch with them, when the news broke that John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, followed quickly by the news that he had died. I had never wept over a political death, but we all wept then. Hardly had the nation recovered when Bobby Kennedy died, then Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., assassinations that never seemed to end during a decade of grief.
The seventies opened with Nixon’s trip to China.
Yeah, Nixon and Henry Kissinger made an all-but-secret trip to China and, long story short, his visit was the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, with his arrival ending 23 years of no official diplomatic ties between the two countries. Nixon dubbed his visit “the week that changed the world,” and indeed it did. But the Watergate scandal caught him by the ankles and he coined another first by being the only president to resign the office.
It’s amazing how scandal and disgrace can close the books on an otherwise extremely positive and useful presidency, but it does. During his terms, Nixon ended American fighting in Vietnam, improved relations with the Soviet Union, and arranged the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty and Salt 1 NuclearTreaty with the Soviet Union. He enforced court desegregation orders and implemented the first Affirmative Action Plan in the United States, also presiding over the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Nixon’s week that changed the world brings us to a more modern memory, but hold on…
The ‘China thing’ kicked off an entire series of incidents that destroyed our industrial base, brought the Middle Class to its knees and created the Billionaire Class, our ‘thousand time’ multiplier of financial inequity in the land of the free and the brave. Stay with me…
America has always been a land of wealth, or the opportunity to create wealth. Our industrial strength, as the only industrial power left standing after WWII, along with trade unions protecting worker rights, brought millionaires to America’s upper middle class.
Yet, millions weren’t enough for those who hungered for ‘having it all.’
China, particularly the China after Nixon/Kissinger, offered startingly low wages and an easily trainable work force, both of which were supported by a fairly benign communist dictatorship, eager to become a world power. A potential deal with the devil was on offer and American industrialists eagerly shook that hand. Nike went to Asia, and the $100 sports shoes that cost thirty bucks in America, cost $2 in China. Extrapolate that to hundred thousand dollar John Deere or Caterpillar tractor, and you’re headed down the road to $billions.
A billion is a thousand million, thus you understand my ‘thousand time’ multiplier of financial inequity.
With money to burn, they burned down Congress with political contributions. Every congressional vote was for sale, Democrat or Republican, and the billionaires bought widely and heavily, as you or I might at a Big Box Store. Our newly minted Billionaire Class Chop Shopped the American Dream like a car stolen in the night.
But that claim slides more easily across the tongue by having had a lived experience.
Yet only 1% of us actually lived it.
And I gift it to you.
Before I’m gone.
So, pay attention.