r/politics • u/mvanigan • Jul 15 '25

Paywall Trump Admin to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food Meant for Children

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-to-incinerate-500-tons-of-emergency-food-for-children/?via=twitter_page&utm_campaign=owned_social&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb
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6.5k

u/GrilledCassadilla Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth."

"There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange."

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

2.0k

u/ProfessorVolga Jul 15 '25

I wish Steinbeck wasn't literally just as relevant almost 100 years later, but here we are, I guess

736

u/mabhatter Jul 15 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past.... the sting of pain only lasts 50-80 years before new people come along and discover the same errors that caused suffering in the past.  Worse, they delight in the suffering.  

390

u/Nephroidofdoom Jul 15 '25

You know how they say Octopuses have near human intelligence but won’t evolve because they 1) don’t care for their young and 2) only live a year.

I think we just found the equivalent limit on human advancement.

87

u/HedonisticFrog California Jul 15 '25

The scary part is that we keep repeating the same terrible behaviors but with ruthless efficiency thanks to modern technology.

37

u/SinickalOne Jul 15 '25

The Great Filter is near

3

u/friskerson Illinois Jul 16 '25

I mean, it’s a ways off, but too close for comfort

3

u/zbeara Jul 16 '25

This is what I'm thinking. I probably won't live to see the day, but in terms of the universe's life, we'll barely be a blip in the timeline

1

u/friskerson Illinois Jul 16 '25

The great philosopher Yolo once said, “There is but one life to live, why not get a little weird with it?”

1

u/Kiseido Canada Jul 16 '25

Perhaps, or we are in the thick of its grasp already- there is no shortage of things that could off us within the century.

16

u/Raangz Jul 15 '25

yeah not going to have a "happy" ending this time.

5

u/ronmylastnerve Jul 15 '25

The hardest part is all those that believe all this Fake Bull SHIT!

1

u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

and that's why possibly even in our childrens timeline, the machines are going to take over and decide they can operate this planet better

123

u/Buddha-Embryo Jul 15 '25

Our days are most certainly numbered. The rapacity of the few will inevitably be the destruction of ALL. No one will be spared. Bunkers or even distant planets won’t save them.

Unless and until human beings can devise a way to keep the worst among us from taking power—in governance, technology, and industry—our species has no hope.

61

u/Long-Rooster-9641 Jul 15 '25

May people wake up and realize who outnumbers who exactly.

2000 billionaires 8,000,000,000 of us

61

u/Buddha-Embryo Jul 15 '25

Yes indeed…which is why it is imperative for the billionaire class to sow division among the masses. The arising of class consciousness is their ultimate existential fear. To be sure, it is not hard to get people fighting one another, but we need to unite on class and not let anything else disturb that solidarity. We will go a long way in addressing all other injustices just by addressing wealth inequality. Focus on class, first and foremost and unite.

3

u/vb_BISHOP Jul 16 '25

Reminds me of the book Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. Main character, Darrow says: “Power isn’t real. It’s just a spark others feed off, fuel for the illusion. If we stop kneeling, they lose it.”

“Break the chains, my brothers and sisters, and live for more.”

The moment people stop believing the lie that the rich and powerful are untouchable? That’s when things shift.

2

u/anewwday Jul 16 '25

This! A of us few will fall but in the end victory can only ours.

1

u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

Social media guarantees that the 8 billion fight each other while the 2000 watch like it's the gladiator days

1

u/Long-Rooster-9641 Jul 16 '25

That's their fantasy sure, but you don't have to try to help them by enabling their messaging.

3

u/My_Name_Is_Gil Jul 15 '25

An inverted "night of the long knives" if you will.

2

u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

Honestly. the internet and social media especially were the true weapons of mass destruction. Humanity basically peaked in the 1990's with the confluence of new technology but not so much so it just flat our ruined the world.

49

u/tdowg1 Jul 15 '25

Holy shit, that's profound.

11

u/Tiny_Prancer_88 Jul 15 '25

I will be thinking about this for a long time

8

u/foxyfoo Jul 15 '25

Tariffs happen every hundred years because all the people who lived through the previous fiasco are dead.

2

u/Nephroidofdoom Jul 15 '25

Same argument for vaccines too

2

u/Mrsensi12x Jul 15 '25

Lol @ just found ... There's a saying humans have you know, history repeats itself. We have been well aware of this limit for 100s of years probably thousands

2

u/FrizzFrenzy Jul 15 '25

But human history has proven that not to be the case , we as a species have progressed exponentially since the dawn of time .

1

u/MikefromMI Jul 15 '25

Tbf, mother octopuses guard their broods until they hatch, and the mother starves to death in the process. I think she eats the male after mating…

But yeah, I wonder what would happen if scientists tried to breed an octopus that would live long enough to apply its intelligence to problems and pass on solutions to its offspring. Might give the AI some competition for taking over after we’re gone.

1

u/Ill-Team-3491 Jul 16 '25 edited 29d ago

tie sink vanish juggle existence judicious slap literate thought tan

1

u/Reasonable_Today7248 Jul 16 '25

I did not know that about octopus, and now the information I have partaken in this thread is slightly more distressing than before.

1

u/loCAtek Jul 16 '25

Cthulhu?

100

u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

When you look back on the end of WW2, you could sort of see this behavior growing. The world had just ended multiple atrocities by allying together to fight genocidal evils. What did America do right after? Excused some of the Nazis and Japanese despite the revolting and heinous experiments done on people because they wanted the research. This isn't like the stories you hear about how some vaccines and cures came about, this was research done through inhumane, appalling torture. America was gung-ho about doing the right thing to protect America after Pearl Harbor and the world, but there were Americans who suffered from the torture of Unit 731.

They didn't excuse one war crime, but several. To keep the public from eating them alive, they kept it a secret and covered it up. The cover-ups and lies became the norm. All they had to do was trade their humanity and dignity. It's what we see now. We never learned from history, so now it's repeating itself.

Germany thankfully has and takes it seriously. They don't let the youth believe the Holocaust was fiction. American youth don't understand the gravity of the Holocaust and far too many think it a myth. Republican-led states encourage this false belief and the ignorant cult members of MAGA allowed themselves to believe it too despite knowing better. The most confusing part is the elderly cult members spreading this hateful lie. They would be the ones to know that the Holocaust actually happened. That is the legacy they chose for their loved ones.

Until we learn from our past and our present, we can't get off of this carousel that's taking all of us for a ride.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

I'm sure there weren't nearly as many as there are now.

1

u/sk4p Jul 16 '25

Yeah, not to excuse America on this, but West Germany employed plenty of “ex”-Nazis.

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10

“For a more than 20 years [a]fter World War II, nearly 100 former members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party held high-ranking positions in the West German Justice Ministry, according to a German government report.”

1

u/Ziczak Jul 16 '25

There's holocaust, er, genocide deniers right now..usa could stop the Palestinians from being slaughtered but they won't. Just fund the state sponsors of genocide by Israel.

They fire upon starving people with a tank and laugh at it.

They learned nothing from WW2.

11

u/gears50 Jul 15 '25

The most confusing part is the elderly cult members spreading this hateful lie.

What is confusing about hate and prejudice? It is the bedrock of this malignant country.

8

u/fallenrubicon Jul 15 '25

There's absolutely no hope for us. Its just a question of when the imbalance becomes too much and then everything will completely fall apart. I think the Earth will do just fine without us one day.

2

u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

It wouldn't be the first time Earth did a big reset. But I disagree about there being no hope for us. That's just doomer talk. When the majority if the planet start realizing that compassion and morality are the only ways to get help, things will improve. Not now not even in the near future, but it will when the old hateful people die off and take their old ways with them.

0

u/fallenrubicon Jul 16 '25

We will never collectively realize anything. We'll keep blaming each other while everything burns down like we do every century or so. People never learn from history. The wealthy old people responsible for taking advantage of and sustaining this division and chaos are already grooming heirs to their thrones and will go on lying to the next generation of authoritarian rubes who will obey them simply because their chair at the proverbial table is bigger. There is zero hope for the future except for climate change to accelerate and wipe the human plague off the face of the Earth.

1

u/paperjockie Jul 15 '25

Well said!

3

u/getwhirleddotcom Jul 15 '25

50-80 years

Try 4

2

u/mrpickles Jul 15 '25

I now believe in evil. 

Not just imperfect people, but evil

2

u/CallMeClaire0080 Jul 15 '25

While this isn't entirely wrong, I don't think that it's just a question of returning to the past, but rather a question of struggling to picture a future.

The 20th century featured some of humanity's darkest moments under the name of radically different ideologies that were meant to change the world: Nazism, Stalinism, and so many more. By the time the cold war was over, the western world had kind of settled on capitalism being the best we could do, the only way forward. Some authors even referred to it as "The end of history" and it made politicians change from idealists trying to change the world into more "moderate" managers turning knobs and dials on tax rates and such, wearing suits and being terrified of accusations of being "ideological" or "extreme".

Now, after decades since the Reagan and Thatcher era, people are noticing that this "one and only best way of doing things" has not been addressing the crises of our era. Runaway climate change is making weather more extreme year by year and is on track to be an existential crisis, wealth inequality is higher than it was during the French Revolution and has only been accelerating, and something like a viral pandemic brought the world to its fucking knees. I think it really started with the 2008 crash, but people (young people especially) are completely disillusioned with our modern political structure.

People want major change. People don't agree on what that means and that desire is being exploited by those who profit from our status quo, but Trump ran on change while the Democrats ran on "a return to normal" and lost despite being better on policy on every conceivable metric and morality. And yet, the old people in charge of more Liberal governments worldwide are terrified of letting "radical progressives" threaten the status quo that nobofy but those in power want anymore.

As Mark Fisher's famous quote goes "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" because entire generations have grown up on "the different ideologies won and this is the best". So people are digging into the past once again, seeing what fits and what doesn't, what is worth bringing back and what should stay buried in the annals of history. People disagree wildly on what that is because of disinformation campaigns and stuff, but i think that's a more accurate take on what we're living through. Capitalism Democracy in the form we've lived in for 40+ years is dying. What will replace it?

2

u/anarcho-slut Jul 15 '25

Oppressors do learn from the past though. They learn how to be more effective. What everyone else needs to learn is to show them no mercy.

1

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 15 '25

the past creeps up on you from thousands of tiny seemingly innocent decisions that at first glance are tiny but self serving ...

1

u/Haunting_Stick3941 Jul 15 '25

People, meaning tRUMP? Because I don't think most people agree with a lot of what he's doing, and I actually think it's starting to bite him. I suspect he's thinking that as he's a lame duck it doesn't matter but for whatever odd reason he seems to want a lot of fairly substantial props like the Nobel Peace Prize and his fugly face on Mt Rushmore and airports named after him. He hasn't QUITE gotten around to focusing on his legacy or the fact that he's already gone down in history as being the two worst administrations in our country's annals but sometime in the next year or so, it's going to start clicking and he's going to start trying to find other people to blame for the damage he's doing.

1

u/kent_eh Canada Jul 15 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past.

It's not surprising when the education system has been gutted.

1

u/Chubsmagna Jul 15 '25

You have to be able to focus, read and comprehend my man. Many people cannot, many more will not.

1

u/Raangz Jul 15 '25

maybe we learned the wrong lessons last time.

1

u/thetwist1 Jul 15 '25

People are capable of learning from the past, its just that there's literally no incentive for the rich to stop wasting food in their eyes. All they think about is profit and their own comfort, so if wasting food makes them feel righteous and earns them money then why would they stop? The only way things will change is if we actually punish people for doing things like this.

1

u/ScienceFictionGuy Jul 15 '25

Our society can't even reflect on the mistakes we made 4-8 years ago, nevermind 50-80.

1

u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 15 '25

What is there to learn though? Those who would be eating the oranges have no power to claim them. Those who would be selling the oranges have learned only how to prevent the excess undermining the value of the oranges sold.

1

u/theWindAtMyBack Jul 15 '25

Which is funny because no one in Reddit trusts the Bible because it's too old/doesn't apply to today. Interesting......🤔.

1

u/Bigbrewski73 Jul 16 '25

Because it was written by man, amended by man and we are told to accept it as the gospel. The same bible that okayed slavery, or the belittling of women…if King James can just show up and go “yeah make this version” thats what keeps a lot of people not just reddit from trusting it.

1

u/theWindAtMyBack Jul 16 '25

Every other book also written by man, amended by man. The Bible never "OK'd" slavery or belittling of women. Because it happened in the Bible doesn't mean it said "that's totally ok". Yes it says "if you are a slave, obey your master", but slaves back then equated to workforce today, not slavery as it was in 1800s America. The master would give the "slave/worker" a home, money, food, and protection, similar to our jobs. Also, Jesus defended women left and right and saved them from persecution. Later in Paul's writings he does say it's impermissable to allow women to speak, but that is NOT law, it was adherent to the times (again doesn't make it ok) and to the churches he was trying to start. At the time, women were looked down upon, but it was because they weren't allowed education. It would make sense (not from a gender equality standpoint) but who is capable of leading churches at the time. There are only commandments, but if you follow those, the other stuff should follow suit (if you truly love God and others). Jesus still believed and taught, women were equal.

So the question for me lies: is it the writing or the misunderstanding? How many people forgot to love God and other's?

1

u/RoyalT663 Jul 15 '25

This is why reading, history, literature, and story telling is so critical to our preserving shared humanity. Our labour, fashions, customs, and language may evolve, but the human condition is timeless.

People lived, made mistakes, learnt lessons, and wrote those lessons down in the hope that we could avoid the same mistakes. We are fools to ignore the collective wisdom of thousands of years.

1

u/zaminDDH Jul 16 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past....

I think the bigger problem is that people are learning from the past.

It's just that it's the rich and powerful looking at old atrocities and being like "that sounds like a great idea, let's do that again."

1

u/9_to_5_till_i_die Jul 16 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past

I'd warrant a majority of American's couldn't even tell you who John Steinbeck was.

1

u/wwaxwork Jul 16 '25

They aren't taught the past four a reason. They have been carefully diluting education for decades.

1

u/TheyCallHimJimbo Jul 16 '25

We're about due for a fucking Holodomor and I am not looking forward to it

1

u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25

Reminds me of this theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

I guess we are in the fourth turning again

1

u/gsfgf Georgia Jul 15 '25

So that suggests that we’re halfway through? Doesn’t really feel like it.

1

u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

No, i think it puts us in the last part of the crisis (4th turning) . See “Millennial Saeculum”

1

u/gsfgf Georgia Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Right. I meant halfway done with the crisis since it started roughly when Trump rode down that fucking escalator.

Edit: Actually, I see farther down that they start the crisis in 2008, which makes perfect sense. And if a Dem is elected in 2028 and reelected in 2032, 2033 would presumably be the start of things getting back to normal.

1

u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25

You’d hope so, unless this is the final crisis!

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u/NuclearThane Jul 15 '25

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

  • John Steinbeck

4

u/wiithepiiple Florida Jul 15 '25

I never bought that line. Most people are not thinking "when I make it big," but more the idea that the billionaires are making their money because they make the world better. Capitalism rewards fulfilling demands, and they are fulfilling the demands better than everyone else. They deserve the power and opulence, and even while they suffer, the poor are better off for it

It's just as wrong, but resonates more with what I've seen and heard from the right.

22

u/raptorlightning Jul 15 '25

No. Markets fulfill demand. Capitalism concentrates capital into the hands of few. Markets can exist just fine and fulfill demands when the workers own the wealth in socialism. People really need to stop equating capitalism with free markets.

-5

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jul 15 '25

You shouldn’t buy into that line because it was a lie. Steinbeck created a false account of the experience of millions of upwardly mobile working class people who moved to California, found great jobs and joined the middle class.

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u/Slumunistmanifisto Jul 15 '25

Hey now, upton Sinclair is making his comeback tour too

3

u/CantHitachiSpot Jul 15 '25

For real. Feels like were re-entering the jungle

5

u/Bag122186 Jul 15 '25

I'm pretty sure this is what Trump meant when he "coined" Make America Great Again. So far, he's accomplished exactly what he's wanted, separating further the poor from the rich and bringing back standards that allowed for the most suffering to those not privileged enough to be born with a silver spoon.

3

u/drteq Jul 15 '25

Nobody wrote a book on how to deal with Facism in 2025

3

u/Survive1014 Jul 15 '25

Atwood too.

3

u/TTerragore Jul 15 '25

we have worse wealth inequality now then we did then

3

u/kmoonster Jul 15 '25

The true classics are prophetic, they understand human nature.

Many authors can tell a good story, few can convey the human condition. Those that do, stick around.

3

u/MangroveSapling Jul 16 '25

We, a culture that genocided and ethnically cleansed its way across a continent, grow our children to commit, justify, and ignore atrocities.

When we cannot, we focus on a small portion of our monstrosity and will ourselves to believe that fixing this one part will make everything better. Upon changing this part of ourselves, we go back to our old ways and ignore any evidence showing our failure to take more than a small step towards justice, and ignoring any responses that claw back the modicum of freedom earned.

We need to make deeper changes within ourselves to make any changes to our society which could render Steinbeck irrelevant in any sense other than historical.

2

u/Jester1525 Jul 15 '25

Don't worry - with all the reduction in food standards and inspections, Upton Sinclair will be just as relevant as well!

🤢

2

u/bonitaappetita Jul 15 '25

From melting pot to dust bowl

2

u/Huwbacca Jul 15 '25

Can't recommend brave new world either then.

2

u/rugertyler Jul 15 '25

With capitalism, anything's possible 🌈

/s

2

u/Lebinblartmallshart Jul 15 '25

Same- I’ve been reading The Jungle by Sinclair, and I can’t believe how relevant it still is… darkest timeline by far. How do we continue to hope that humanity will ever advance?

2

u/Lopsided-Drummer-931 Jul 15 '25

He is when we fund the humanities and don’t push STEM for capitalism’s sake absent of any development of a shared morality. Conservatives have been attacking the foundation of holistic education for a century and here we are quoting Steinbeck to people who can’t even read.

2

u/Lopsided-Day-1442 Jul 15 '25

I think Steinbeck is on the banned books list. Maga don't read none, anyways.

2

u/scribbledown2876 United Kingdom Jul 15 '25

The number one lesson of history is that people almost never learn the lessons of history.

1

u/boxfetish Jul 15 '25

Americans are all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

1

u/donatecrypto4pets Jul 16 '25

He knew enough to get in his ride with his dog and check out the countryside. That is living.

1

u/wappenheimer Jul 16 '25

Hey Chat GPT - Why were those Steinbeck grapes so angry?!

1

u/detectivepink Jul 16 '25

I read Grapes of Wrath in high school and was encouraged to understand it, so I did. However, we are now punished for understanding it.

465

u/honkoku Jul 15 '25

"Thus, in California we find a curious attitude toward a group that makes our agriculture successful. The migrants are needed, and they are hated. Arriving in a district they find the dislike always meted out by the resident to the foreigner, the outlander. This hatred of the stranger occurs in the whole range of human history, from the most primitive village form to our own highly organized industrial farming. The migrants are hated for the following reasons, that they are ignorant and dirty people, that they are carriers of disease, that they increase the necessity for police and the tax bill for schooling in a community, and that if they are allowed to organize they can, simply by refusing to work, wipe out the seasons crops. They are never received into a community nor into the life of a community. Wanderers in fact, they are never allowed to feel at home in the communities that demand their services"

  • John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies (1936)

96

u/WitchyTwitchyItchy Jul 15 '25

It is wild to live in the town where he is from, the space he wrote about , and see how much is the same. Except now there is a multi million dollar Steinbeck Center for people to visit, with steps leading up to the doors where you see the unhoused sleeping, next to murals celebrating his writing.

84

u/borg23 Hawaii Jul 15 '25

And don't forget, these migrant workers weren't Mexicans, they were Okies

109

u/honkoku Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

He actually goes on to write:

Let us see what kind of people they are, where they come from, and the routes of their wanderings. In the past they have been of several races, encouraged to come and often imported as cheap labor; Chinese in the early period, then Filipinos, Japanese and Mexicans. These were foreigners, and as such they were ostracized and segregated and herded about.

If they attempted to organize they were deported or arrested, and having no advocates they were never able to get a hearing for their problems. But in recent years the foreign migrants have begun to organize, and at this danger signal they have been deported in great numbers, for there was a new reservoir from which a great quantity of cheap labor could be obtained.

4

u/SmokyDoghouse Jul 16 '25

What new reservoir was he referring to?

4

u/honkoku Jul 16 '25

"The drought in the middle west has driven the agricultural populations of Oklahoma, Nebraska and parts of Kansas and Texas westward. Their lands are destroyed and they can never go back to them.

Thousands of them are crossing the borders in ancient rattling automobiles, destitute and hungry and homeless, ready to accept any pay so that they may eat and feed their children. And this is a new thing in migrant labor, for the foreign workers were usually imported without their children and everything that remains of their old life with them.

They arrive in California usually having used up every resource to get here, even to the selling of the poor blankets and utensils and tools on the way to buy gasoline. They arrive bewildered and beaten and usually in a state of semi-starvation, with only one necessity to face immediately, and that is to find work at any wage in order that the family may eat.

And there is only one field in California that can receive them. Ineligible for relief, they must become migratory field workers.

Because the old kind of laborers, Mexicans and Filipinos, are being deported and repatriated very rapidly, while on the other hand the river of dust bowl refugees increases all the time, it is this new kind of migrant that we shall largely consider."

124

u/frolickingdepression Jul 15 '25

Oh I hated that book when I read it in high school, but it has always stuck with me and I find myself thinking of it so often now, over 30 years later.

146

u/theREALbombedrumbum Jul 15 '25

I think that's the reason it's been largely removed from curriculum in American schools...

91

u/Halo_cT Jul 15 '25

And The Jungle, and Silent Spring and...

33

u/Liljoker30 Jul 15 '25

The jungle is pure depression

35

u/Chemical-Elk-1299 Jul 15 '25

I also find it darkly funny that Upton Sinclair meant for the “gross meatpacking” section of the book to be the least egregious thing in it

9

u/Responsible_Pizza945 Jul 15 '25

That's the only thing I even know about The Jungle...

12

u/Chemical-Elk-1299 Jul 15 '25

It’s only supposed to be a setup for how the immigrant main character gets fucked over by literally everyone he meets in America

28

u/Moos_Mumsy Jul 15 '25

I was walking my dog the other night, listening to complete silence around me, and I realized that I was living Silent Spring. No crickets, no frogs, no night birds, nothing. Just silence. It made me sad. And glad that both my children have chosen to be childless because it would break my heart to think that I had grandchildren who had to face what is to come.

5

u/sassandahalf Jul 16 '25

It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis

3

u/violentshores Jul 15 '25

I thinks it’s just a county in California and a few other cities

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+grapes+of.wraith+banned&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#ebo=0

8

u/theREALbombedrumbum Jul 15 '25

There's a huge difference between being banned and simply not being included in the curriculum.

Grapes of Wrath used to be required reading for many a student. It is no longer included in the list of books that get assigned for reading, but that doesn't make it a banned book.

2

u/Accomplished-Fix6598 California Jul 15 '25

San Joaquin?

18

u/jrob321 Jul 15 '25

It's soooooooooo much better later on in life.

We should encourage people to read from the time they are able, but too often, when reading is a drudgery, we kill that "lifelong learner" desire in some students.

Reading should be a celebration, and at the very least - if this literature needs to be part of a curriculum - it should be taught in a much more engaging manner than the way it is often approached in high school classrooms.

6

u/ericmm76 Maryland Jul 15 '25

This. Why on earth do you try to force 7th graders to read David Copperfield or Antigone Rex when they'd be better served by reading something at bit closer to home. Even Catch 22 would be a lot better.

2

u/Sad-Measurement-2204 Jul 15 '25

What are 7th graders are you familiar with lol? I teach 7th grade, and it's an unholy slog to get them to read The Giver.

1

u/ericmm76 Maryland Jul 15 '25

Well I guess I went to a magnet program when I was in 7th grade. But it didn't make it any easier for me to read that stuff.

1

u/Sad-Measurement-2204 Jul 15 '25

Lolz, I loved David Copperfield personally, but I didn't read it in school or read Antigone or anything like it until high school.

3

u/ericmm76 Maryland Jul 15 '25

I mean that's the crux of this: books read when you're ready for them can be amazing. Books forced on you are onerous.

2

u/jrob321 Jul 15 '25

Thats the point exactly.

If you're in 7th grade and you wan't to read challenging books, that's fantastic. But just getting a 7th grader to read anything in a manner that creates a desire to read forever is what the end goal should be.

I've found most people who never re-read Catcher in the Rye later on in life will tell you - often quite vehemently - how much they HATED the book. It's not until you've experienced more of life past adolescence where you become informed about how Holden is really a hero. He's not the whiny asshole everyone portrays him to be. He's been broken by everybody who should have been protecting him, and he doesn't want to see that happen to anybody else. He wants desperately to be "the catcher in rye", to keep innocent children from going over the edge.

I might add also, the origins of the book - the things in his life from which Salinger was drawing (you write about what you know) - were never really discussed in preparation to reading the book in high school. His perspective and his history totally informs Holden's character, and unfortunately - because of the way it is "taught" by the average high school English teacher - that nuance is lost.

2

u/OnlyAdd8503 Jul 15 '25

the movie's pretty good, too

but if you don't have time for that there's always this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VypaE6kKJ8

50

u/Martag02 Jul 15 '25

Profits > people, even in times of surplus. I despise unregulated capitalism.

17

u/SerLarrold Jul 15 '25

I picked up Grapes of Wrath for the first time a couple years ago after hearing a lot of great things about it. Truly stunning prose and the story and themes are just as relevant as ever. I hate that we still are facing the same obvious issues Steinbeck was pointing out 100 years ago

13

u/RinaRoft Jul 15 '25

I read the grapes of wrath 50 years ago, and I didn’t remember this passage. Thank you for posting it here. My heart breaks now upon reading that. I must try and read it again.

43

u/Dracula_Bit_My_Balls Jul 15 '25

I just reread his novel "In Dubious Battle" and it's never felt more relevant.

10

u/bramley36 Jul 15 '25

and a lot of the reforms to improving the safety of the food system are being eliminated

17

u/SKDI_0224 Oklahoma Jul 15 '25

Got a first edition of that on my shelf.

9

u/SeanOfTheDead1313 Jul 15 '25

The Ghost of Tom Joad

11

u/BroughtBagLunchSmart Jul 15 '25

Some MBA read this post and realized they wasted 80k of their dad's money.

Just kidding, if an MBA could think critically they would not have become an MBA.

3

u/bigtrumanenergy Missouri Jul 16 '25

I read this for the first time back in January/February. Absolutely infuriating to read. Couldn't stop thinking we were going to be repeating all of this.

2

u/emaw63 Kansas Jul 15 '25

Exactly what I was thinking of lmao. I remember that exact passage from my old AP lit class a decade ago, our teacher said that chapter was his favorite bit of literature ever written. It holds up!

2

u/Silver-Release8285 Jul 15 '25

This is immediately what I thought of.

2

u/mechavolt Jul 15 '25

Steinbeck is my favorite "American novel" author. He truly understood this country, and didn't shy away from showing both its beautiful parts and its self-inflicted pain. 

2

u/Murderface__ New York Jul 15 '25

Fucking hell.

2

u/djsmurphy Jul 15 '25

...and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

2

u/Jaded_Cicada_7614 Jul 15 '25

I'm stealing this, great quote by Steinbeck.

2

u/OceanDevotion Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Ok, I know no one asked for my ramblings about John Steinbeck, BUT…

I think the greatest disservice to US high schoolers was having to read Of Mice and Men at the age of 15. I still have not re-read the book and refuse to do so; I was too young to appreciate the poetry and social commentary, and the story/imagery was quite hard to digest. Although, for some reason, East of Eden called my name when I was 21. I was at a Barnes and noble and it was faced forward, with the most beautiful artwork, and boasting the name of a worthwhile author. 9 years later, it has maintained the status of being the best book I have ever read.

Again, I don’t seek out John Steinbeck…I have never read Grapes of Wrath.

However, thank you for sharing this quote… as someone who has a degree in natural resources management, this really strikes a chord.

We have enough resources to feed and fulfill all those on the planet, however, it is the mass hoarding by the few for economic gain that has really caused the detriment of the many (Tragedy of the Commons). Not to mention, we pollute and destruct the harmony of nature each time we manipulate it for our own collective, monetary benefit.

2

u/MauryBallsteinLook Jul 16 '25

But here, it wasn't for profit, it was purely out of spite

2

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

Perhaps we've progressed as much as we can as a society. It sure as hell feels like we've hit a massive wall of impenetrable shit. 

2

u/walkingpartydog Jul 16 '25

This is the passage that turned me into a socialist when I read it for the first time in 2013.

2

u/Reasonable_Today7248 Jul 16 '25

Sadly, I think this will also be the winter of our discontent for too many.

2

u/SilentMasterOfWinds United Kingdom Jul 16 '25

This quote haunts me. It's so good. "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success." is just so powerful.

2

u/crappenheimers Colorado Jul 16 '25

Knew what book it was from the first sentence. Never can read it again

2

u/Previous_Injury_8664 Jul 16 '25

I finished this book the day after the election last November and could barely get out of bed. It was just so heartbreaking and relevant.

2

u/Gunningham Jul 16 '25

I was reading this post and thought, this sounds really familiar…. Then I saw where you got it.

2

u/JennJayBee Alabama Jul 17 '25

That was the first book my grandfather wanted to download when I got him a Kindle for Christmas one year. Showing him mine was the only time I was able to convince him that new technology was a good thing, because he didn't need his magnifying glass to read, and he could carry a whole library in his back pocket. Of course, I also showed him how to check out ebooks from the library.

2

u/Nutshack_Queen357 Jul 17 '25

Quite literally, that one paragraph is why the food-destroying monsters mentioned in the article want that book banned.

3

u/pbjamm Canada Jul 15 '25

Sometimes the fruit gets rotten

Falls down on the ground

There's a hungry mouth for every peach

As I go ramblin' around, boys

As I go ramblin' around - Woody Guthrie

3

u/GrilledCassadilla Jul 15 '25

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

-Guthrie

-1

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

This book was mostly fake ahistorical propaganda, though.

It pretended that conservative landowners were being kicked off their own land by banks — people who had largely been unaffected and had gotten rich of government subsidies instead. It pretended that they were starving to death on what would have been a 3-day roadtrip with a couple motel stays, but in the book they were experiencing harsh conditions that only a couple thousand people in a homeless encampment. Then, it paints a dismal picture of California when in reality they had higher wages and good unemployment benefits versus anything that Oklahoma offered. The migrants were mostly young upwardly mobile families and within 5 years of living in California they were firmly within the middle class, and far wealthier than Oklahomans. This book has created a myth about Oakies and contributed to the massive hatred of California that rural conservatives have to this day.

5

u/GrilledCassadilla Jul 15 '25

No it isn't. It has been slandered as communist propaganda since it came out, though.

It's actually understood that Steinbeck may have downplayed what was in Tom Collins migrant reports.

Feel free to link me that opinion piece by Charlotte Allen though.

-1

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jul 15 '25

Who? What? I never called him a communist. I said the book is objectively false and that’s something that has already been widely known in scholarly circles since the 1980’s. So why are you coming at me with this strawman response as if I was making an ad-hominem attack?

Allen who? Never heard of them. How about Keith Windschuttle?

https://newcriterion.com/article/steinbecks-myth-of-the-okies

4

u/GrilledCassadilla Jul 15 '25

There’s a bad history post on Steinbeck that pulls from Charlotte Allen.

You should look up more about Keith Windschuttle, he’s done work denying the genocide of aboriginals by Australians.

Dude is considered a conservative historian and of course he’d want to portray Steinbeck’s work as false since it’s generally considered as tacitly endorsing socialism. Anders Breivik was a fan of some of the things Windschuttle wrote.

3

u/CcryMeARiver Australia Jul 16 '25

Windshuttle has an odious reputation here. For cause.

-12

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

[deleted]

5

u/emaw63 Kansas Jul 15 '25

It's a pretty famous passage 🤷‍♀️

6

u/GrilledCassadilla Jul 15 '25

I'm a bot, beep, boop, bop.

Almost like John Steinbecks writings are incredibly relevant right now.