Dreiser Moment

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser is the story of a love affair that turns foul. It inspired the film, A Place In The Sun.

We're arriving at a Dreiser moment today in America. Between the military, the economy, the White House and the media, we're concocting an epic, 2nd rate tragedy, and I don't even want to wait for the ending to find out what happens.

I spent an hour talking to Kim Jones about how we want to move to Europe because we're so disappointed in the future prospects for life in this country. It's not even the surge in Iraq or the military and intelligence spying, either, as much as the economic forecast as portrayed in Faux's, The Global Class War or Uchitelle's, The Disposable American.

It's as if my worst fears about American leadership economically selling out the people, the country and the future are coming true.

Wow. When I think of the willow tree outside Audubon's back door, overlooking the long grassy slope down to the Schuylkill, and the perfect sunlight and air of the moments I spent there, and that Audubon must have spent there! Or I think of the quiet, unassuming grave of Winfield Hancock, or the statue of Tedeuscum, and I know that this country, this people--all people--are being cheated by our leaders and the corporate media we rely on to keep us honestly informed.

Tonight I watched the local Fox 5 news with Loretta. There was a story about high school girls beating another girl up. They showed the footage several times of 2 or 3 girls pulling a younger girl's hair, punching her and kicking her. Then there was the story of a contractor taking payoffs, of a caterer stiffing her help for their paychecks. There was also a story about the capture of a cop-killer, twenty-three year old "career criminal." It was one petty story of nonvirtuous behavior after another.

It was a Dreiser moment. It was the last page of The Great Gatsby made real. It was all the innocence and virtue of America--of humanity--turned rotten by greed, lust, and violence.