“This Is as Good as It Gets”

August 26, 2019 | revcom.us

 

From a supporter of the Tour:

I just contributed $400 to the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.

I was reminded of the movie “As Good as It Gets” that starred Jack Nicholson when a friend and I were watching the video of the fund raiser for the Chicago tour. Luan was talking about how humanity in the world suffers because of U.S. imperialism and then about how that affects us here in the USA.

This is as good as our world is going to get for us without a revolution. Literally billions around the world are at the edge of starvation. Life is not going to get better for them, because to a Capital-Imperialist society, those lives are worthless. They live so close to the edge of survival that there is nothing to exploit from them. Life for them is “as good as it can get” if they can just stay alive.

Those that live an edge above them, have worth in that they can be exploited. But as has been shown in the sewing factory collapse in Bangladesh, they are an easily expendable and replaceable commodity. Our news is filled daily with these tragedies. Their worth is only how much they can be exploited by keeping them on the edge of living. Under this system, they will never get above that struggle. Life for them is “as good as it will get.”

I have been to several so-called second world countries. I have seen their lives up close and personal. Many are well educated with college degrees, and still they struggle to find worthwhile employment to use their education and skills. Yet because of the exploitation, the corruption and collaboration of their governments, they struggle, survive, but cannot get ahead. Neither, intelligence, education, nor hard work will get them to their dream. Life in general is “as good as it will get.”

Here I am, in the USA, the capital of world imperialism. I have attained an upper middle-class status after more than 50 years of hard labor. If I retire, I will quickly lose that upper status. I look around at those who were my friends and colleagues and have watched them slip down the slope from middle class. It is a shrinking and largely disappearing “class.” I see millennials, working part time jobs to make their ends meet. That wonderful “voodoo” economy of trickle-down economy, is indeed trickle down. The rich exploiters are getting richer, and the trickle down has become dribble-down. As fascism doubles down on us, this is “as good as it will get.”

I went through the struggles of the ’60s and against the war in Vietnam. I was surrounded by revolutionaries. I became one myself. But we did not have a party and we did not have leadership. Within 10 years most of those revolutionaries became what Bob Avakian calls BEB, Bourgeois Electoral Bullshit.

This sounds pessimistic, but I am not pessimistic. I watched what was happening in Los Angeles and was encouraged. I watched those young people starting in Chicago who have a clear grasp, not just of the problem, but, importantly, they have the grasp of the solution.

There is a better life possible, the future does not have to be bleak. But it will take a revolution to do it.

Thank you Luan for what you said. It made it clear. This is as good as it gets without a revolution. I am giving what I can. This is the payment on my insurance policy for my children and for all of humanity. As Woody Guthrie sang, “There’s a better world a comin’.” Keep doing what you are doing and Woody’s dream can become a reality.

I gave what I could at that time, $400. I want to ask others to do what they can. We are at the top of the food chain in this country. We all have something to give that will not cause our children to starve. By giving something now, we can see beyond “as good as it gets.”

—An Engineer in Texas