Chapter 2: The Years Before the Collapse

This is the 2nd chapter of my novel. It lays some historical background, of the period preceding the Great Collapse. This chapter has less dialogue and focus on characters than the others.

The Years Before the Collapse

Now before I talk about the Collapse itself, I want to lay some background, and talk about the events that happened in the years preceding the Collapse. You know, the who, what, where, why and how of the event. You see, though society was quite a bit different before the economy collapsed in such horrific fashion, things were not that great back then either, at least for a sizable amount of the population of the former United States. To be sure, the U.S. was still better off than most nations in the world, but there was much room for improvement.

The biggest marking of society in the years before everything went to Hell was the increasing inequality between the social classes. You see, various decisions made by business leaders and political leaders had dramatically shifted more and more wealth to those who were already well off, giving this small portion of our population (the one percent, as many liked to refer to them as) ever more wealth and power. Conversely, most regular folks found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet with each passing year. Many millions had to work longer and longer hours, take on extra jobs, put off their retirements, and take on ever more debt, just to stay afloat. Many families needed two or three incomes, where one was once sufficient for most households. As the years went by, prices for most things, especially vital things such as housing, health care and higher education increased rapidly, while wages and salaries, well, did not. By the 2010’s, a whole sixty percent of American households were living paycheck to paycheck, where one unexpected major expense, such as a hospital bill or a car breaking down, can lead to financial ruin. Many working-class families lived with a sense of unease, as they were always on the precipice of poverty, or even homelessness. In the years before the Collapse, there were seemingly two distinct Americas, with a privileged few amassing huge fortunes that sometimes ran into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, allowing them to live extravagant lifestyles and give the absolute best for their families on one hand, while the hallowed American Dream died for many millions of others. By the decade preceding the Great Collapse, we had reached the point where the new generation of Americans would actually be worse off than their parents’ generation for the first time in the nation’s history. How did this slide start, you ask? Well, it was pretty simple. With every year, starting in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the wealthy and business groups launched a plan to gain more political power, as they balked at the social progress made over the previous few decades. Laws were passed giving protections to workers and the poor. Once people who were friendlier to business interests gained more power, more laws were passed and more policies were changed, most of these clearly favored the rich, as well as big business. The economic progress that had lifted many out of poverty and created a large middle class was stopped in its tracks, and some of the help and protections given before were reversed. The middle and working classes saw their wages stay stagnant or even drop, and saw their benefits, which they had worked for for many years in some cases, slashed. Moreover, jobs in most fields have less and less job security because, if employers saw that their work can be done cheaper elsewhere, their job would disappear entirely. As for the poor, they usually stayed poor, with fewer and fewer job prospects, as social mobility (the ability to move up in life, to move from poor to middle class, or even rich) decreased sharply. The continued increase in prices for important things, despite the stagnation or decrease of worker’s pay, made it to where these things were becoming increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans. To top it off, the social programs that the government instituted over the previous several decades to help them stay afloat increasingly were subject to cuts by leaders who were beholden to the rich, who wanted to pay as little in taxes as possible. Those same politicians and their supporters took to deriding the less fortunate as lazy, as moochers for needing help to survive because they lost their job, or their job didn’t pay enough to stay afloat. This argument was used in order to justify cutting social programs.

Perhaps the biggest change in business that caused the middle class to slowly vanish was the decline of industry, a major source of employment in the United States for many years. Big cities and small rural towns alike suffered when their factory or plant, the main source of their employment, packed up and left, either to another part of the country, or to another country. One big rule change that occurred was the introduction of new trade deals, which were pushed heavily by business groups to make it easier for different nations to trade with each other. Free trade, as the proponents of these deals called it, allowed corporations to have their products made in nations where the workers were paid far less than what American workers made. Before long, most of our goods, and increasingly our services as well, were made in places as China, India, Mexico, and numerous other third-world nations, where employees toiled in terrible conditions, working long hours, for little to no pay. It was slavery, pretty much. Year after year, working class and middle class people all over the United States saw their jobs leave, right before their very eyes, and many Americans were completely okay with this. The number of jobs, starting off with manufacturing but spreading to other industries, that were “outsourced” to some other country numbered well into the millions. Sure, people lost their jobs and either took a new job with less pay or joined the ranks of the poor, but now many consumer goods, such as clothing items and electronics, were cheaper than ever. People were generally not too concerned with the loss of jobs and the ruthless exploitation of the workers in the faraway lands where goods were now produced, as long as they can get a t-shirt for seven dollars at the local Walmart.

On top of the increasing wealth and income gap in society, America also became more divided politically as well. The major driver of the gap between the rich and poor was that the aforementioned changes were pushed heavily by the Republican Party, one of the two major political parties in the United States. The conservative economic beliefs of many in the business community took hold in the Republican Party, and when combined with millions of religious conservatives who felt they needed to turn America “back towards God”, they formed a sizable voting bloc that helped the Republicans win elections, and start to implement the agenda of the elites, the business groups and wealthy who ran the party. Once Republicans elected Ronald Reagan, a former movie actor turned governor of California, as president in 1980, the turn towards right-wing economics began in earnest, much to the joy of the corporate world. Reagan electrified the conservative grassroots with his anti-government rhetoric, telling vivid, and also thoroughly false, tales of people living the high life off the government, without working. These conservative tales, which were often racially tinged, caused many working-class and middle class individuals to feel a sense of resentment, to feel that they were being ripped off by these “welfare moochers” who were living off of their tax dollars, a stereotype of poor people that persisted for decades, and created a stigma to obtaining benefits that instilled a sense of shame in many who were unfortunate enough to get them, and caused those who were better off to sneer at and look down upon those below them on the income ladder.

On the campaign trail, Reagan also made the famous remark that “government is not the solution, government is the problem”. The popularity of this conservative anti-government rhetoric, along with a slumping economy, helped Ronald Reagan win a sweeping victory in the 1980 election over his incumbent Democratic opponent Jimmy Carter. Once in office, Reagan dramatically slashed the tax rates paid by wealthy individuals. His administration also began to loosen government regulations that were meant to prevent businesses from taking advantage of their employees, as well as loosening rules that kept banks and other financial institutions from engaging in risky behaviors with their depositor’s money, behaviors that had caused great harm to the economy in the past. On top of all this, an attack on social programs, which were derided by conservatives as the “welfare state” or “big government”, began as various anti-poverty programs were cut. All of this was made possible by a concerted effort by the conservatives to convince many voters that, instead of being there to help people, the government was actually the enemy. This in itself was a profound shift in attitudes, as people had generally seen the government as trustworthy and there to help in the past. Voters became convinced by the large and quickly-growing right-wing media apparatus (which was well-funded by the elites, as well as a plethora of conservative organizations) that their fellow citizens who had received any help from the government were just lazy moochers who were somehow stealing from them, and were undeserving of help. There was a concerted effort to demonize and even dehumanize the poor, which intensified as the country turned more to the right. Due to all of the changes in the laws, as well as a new focus in the business community on making as much profit as possible, at all costs, most Americans started falling behind. Wages were stagnant, and benefits became less generous, even though corporate profits and stock prices skyrocketed during this time. To grow their own profits further, companies would engage in more job cutting, and more outsourcing, anything to reduce their costs as much as possible. There was also a rush towards consolidation in many economic sectors, as businesses merged constantly, meaning the largest companies became more dominant than they had in many years, with some firms even gaining near-monopoly status in their fields. During this time, the wealthiest individuals did incredibly well, as they began amassing much larger fortunes than ever before. There was more wealth than ever, the rich were just keeping it for themselves. As a result, the lower income groups did not do as well. The middle class saw their incomes stay the same, and the poor actually saw their incomes drop dramatically.

As time went on, this trend grew stronger and stronger, to the point where the Democratic Party, the other major political party in the United States, joined in as well, but not as much as the Republicans. Every succeeding administration and Congress (the main lawmaking body of the U.S.), regardless of party affiliation, put in new changes of the rules that just kept regular folks down more. The Democratic Party was, for decades, seen by many as the party that looked out for the little guy. They fought for the labor protections and the social programs that helped the poor and middle class, and stood up and fought with the corporate world, which wanted nothing to do with paying better wages to their workers, or paying more in taxes. The actions of the Democrats from the 1930’s to the 1970’s had lessened the disparity in income between the classes, helped workers organize and demand better treatment from their employers, increased wages for everyone, and created a huge middle class. The result was a widely-shared prosperity which lasted for years, an economy where fewer people were left behind. However, to compete in elections after the shift towards the political right in American society, the Democrats felt the need to go along and move somewhat to the right as well, at least when it came to economic issues. Sure, they threw the masses a bone here and there in the form of an increase in the minimum wage a worker could be paid (which used to go up regularly, but now only was raised about once or twice a decade, due to Republican opposition), or some new law to protect women or the natural environment, but they too largely went along with the corporate agenda. Presidents from both parties passed the aforementioned trade agreements, and loosened restrictions on businesses, which enriched a few at the expense of many others. Furthermore, the Democrats started to receive funding for elections from many of the same corporate sources that the Republicans had been getting money from for many years.

Emboldened by these electoral and legislative victories, and now in favor with the people of the United States, the Republican Party became increasingly ideologically extreme as the years passed. The powers that be, and those who funded their election campaigns, felt that they can mold the country more and more in their image. The right wing also created the aforementioned massive media apparatus, encompassing thousands of radio stations nationwide, which hosted bombastic hosts who spent all day espousing their right-wing ideals, spinning the news stories of the day in their favor, demonizing the poor, and spewing hatred at anyone who dared to disagree with them. This apparatus also extended to newspapers, magazines, and starting in 1996, a 24-hour television news channel named the Fox News Channel. As time went on, and support for them grew, conservatives went more after government programs and regulations, complaining that these programs were too costly (however, the massive giveaways to corporations and funding for wars were somehow not too costly for them), and that they actually were a reduction of freedom. As a larger segment of the population became anti-government, they bought into this sentiment. The rich had successfully turned the middle class against the poor, which in turn got millions of people to vote in more pro-business, small-government conservatives. By 1995, the majority of the U.S. Congress now fit that ideology. Many middle-class and working class individuals were now consistently voting against their own best interests, convinced that if they were given more of this so-called freedom, they too can join the ranks of the wealthy. Too bad it didn’t actually work that way, as the policies implemented just funneled more and more wealth to the rich, the story of Robin Hood in reverse, if you will. The Republicans managed to convince the American public that they were the party that best managed the economy, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. After all, many studies showed that Democrats performed better than Republicans on various economic measures, such as economic growth, the unemployment rate, even stock market returns.

One additional characteristic of the few decades before everything just collapsed completely was that economic recessions, where the economy shrinks in size for a period of at least several months, became more frequent, as well as more severe. You see, the growing excess of the business community, and a drive to maximize short-term profits, caused segments of the economy to grow unsustainably for several years before crashing down hard, and sometimes even taking other sectors down with it. Even though most of the American public did not share in the growth brought on by these bubbles (as they were called), they sure shared in the pain caused by the crash. The crashes led to the occurrence of  recessions every few years, with each crash leading to millions losing their jobs. Sure, the jobs would come back with time, once the economy resumed growing, but the jobs would mostly pay less, with fewer benefits and less job security, than before. For their part, the industries that caused the problems often got helped out by a government that had become more responsive to big business than to regular people. The now damaged industry would get something called a bailout, where the government gave them money to keep them afloat. Despite anger among the public regarding these measures, many still felt the pro-business policies were the best course of action. The argument of the elites was that, if these reckless firms were not saved, it would inflict even further damage to the economy at large. That said, the companies, whose leaders were often friends with those in power, would get large infusions of cash, while families who were struggling to make ends meet got left in the lurch.

Over time, the greed of corporate America, complemented with even more business-friendly rules passed in subsequent years, contributed to more boom-and-bust cycles in the economy, with the busts getting progressively bigger and bigger. Big business grew bigger than ever, and most everyone else got less and less, and went further into debt. The biggest shock of all was a particularly painful recession that began in late 2007, the effects of which continued to be felt for years afterwards. This particular recession, which came to be known as the Great Recession, was the worst economic downturn in the U.S., and the world, in nearly 80 years, when the Great Depression hit, and was the greatest economic downturn ever seen (before the Great Collapse, that is). The Great Recession was triggered mainly by a bubble in the housing market, which was created by unethical, and oftentimes downright illegal business practices on the part of our banks and mortgage lenders. The lenders were handing out loans like candy, often to people who had no chance of paying the money back, all in the name of making a quick buck for themselves, the long-term health of the economy be damned. The banks also steered folks towards loans that had low interest rates at first, but then the interest rate would skyrocket to the point that the borrower could not pay it back, leading to the bank taking the house, and holder of the mortgage absorbing the loss on the mortgage. Once this unsustainable chain of events inevitably went sour, the banks, as well as the big investors on Wall Street (a street in New York City that served as the financial capital of the U.S.), started crumbling one by one, threatening to take the rest of the economy down with them. Once again, the government came to the rescue, to the banks that is. Republican president George W. Bush, who did little during his time in office to help regular folks, pushed through a package, worth a staggering seven-hundred billion dollars (the currency of the U.S.), to keep the banking system from collapsing. Arguing that a banking collapse would have greatly damaged the whole economy (which was certainly possible), members of both parties generally supported this bailout of the banks, and after a bit of arm-twisting, the package was passed, over the boisterous objections of many of the American people.

The recovery from this recession, in which seven million jobs and trillions of dollars of people’s wealth vanished, was slow and excruciatingly painful for most. The rich, however, recovered within a couple of years, and emerged from the recession wealthier than ever. As a result, the gap between the rich and poor became even larger than before, the largest it had been in nearly a century in fact. The jobs returned slowly, and the jobs that did appear were lower-paying and offered less job security than the ones that were lost. Also, the housing market didn’t even start to recover until 2012. By 2012, the percentage of the country’s economic output that had gone to worker wages was the lowest in the country’s history. Yes, regular folks were getting an ever-shrinking piece of the economic pie. From 2009, the official end of the recession, to 2016, over 80 percent (some estimates had the figure at over 90 percent) of the economic gains of the recovery went to the wealthiest one percent of the population. In many parts of the country, the other 99 percent of Americans saw their incomes actually decline. Overall, the share of the income and wealth going to the top one percent had reached levels not seen since the late 1920’s, immediately preceding the Great Depression. The inequitable distribution of wealth was seen as a major cause of the Depression, and there was worry that the huge gap between rich and poor would eventually cause similar problems if unchecked.

As I was growing up during this time, I saw firsthand the struggles of my family, my friends, and my neighbors. I came of age during the Great Recession, I was in high school when the economy went down. Like many others, I was quite worried of what exactly the future had in store for me and my family. Like millions of other families, this was a turbulent time for the Collins household. My father, Will Sr., lost his job at a cabinet company in February of 2009. I was in 10th grade at the time, it was a bit over a year after the start of the recession and about five months after the financial crisis came to a head. He had quite a difficult time finding work for over two years afterwards, as there simply weren’t jobs. In the worst part of the recession, there were a staggering five unemployed people for every job opening in the U.S. (and that just counted people who were actively seeking work, as millions just gave up looking entirely). We survived on his unemployment benefits that he got from the state of California, and later on once those ran out, welfare payments and food stamps. These were all very helpful government programs, which helped many people in their time of need. Anti-poverty programs such as these came in especially handy when the economy was weak, and there were more people who were at risk of falling into poverty. These programs, among others were the very same programs that the Republican Party worked tirelessly to reduce (or even eliminate). There was certainly more need than usual in the wake of the recession. People from all walks of life, from factory workers to construction workers to teachers to office workers and everything in between, lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. People who had worked hard for years saw their hopes and everything they worked for go up in smoke. Many had to cut back on luxuries, and also necessities, until they got back on their feet. My family was definitely no exception to this stark new reality, as we ate less, didn’t get to take any trips or doing anything else special, and fell behind on the rent for our house. Like many households, it was a tough time for us.

Now about my family. Of course you know about me, and that I had two younger sisters, Leann and Briana. Leann was born in 1997 and Briana was born in 2003. My mother was a kind, loving woman named Sue, who always tried to protect me from anything bad. I was always rather close to my mother, much closer to her than to my father. She became a stay at home mom a couple of years after having Briana, but before that she had worked as a clerk at a video rental store. My mom just understood me like nobody else did, as I was a painfully shy and awkward kid who had great difficulty making friends. I was the pudgy kid with glasses who was always called “nerd” and “geek” and “fatso” by the other kids in school. The hard time I got from other kids (and some adults) took a psychological tool on me, which just made me withdraw even more. As for my dad, he was a stern father. I did butt heads with my father somewhat when I was a teen, but I knew, at the end of the day, that he loved me and wanted what was best for me. He was an incredibly hard-working man who would do whatever he can to provide for the family, and not working really took a toll on him during this time, as it did for countless other people who were suddenly unable to put food on the table, to keep a roof over the heads of their families.

When I was a kid, the Collins family bounced around southern California, moving rather frequently, before finally settling in Ontario in 2003, not long before I started middle school. We had settled in nicely in our apartment, and it was nice to live in one place for more than a couple of years. I was even starting to make some friends for once, like Jimmy Sanchez and Andrew Martinez, a couple of kids who lived down the street. We would hang out and play sports or video games until I got called to come inside by one of my parents. Sports were my big thing as a teen, I could play for hours, and then when I came home I would grab some sports magazine and just sit and read sports statistics whenever I wasn’t doing homework or chores or helping my mom out with my sisters.

Like I said before, the recession hit my family pretty hard. My dad had lost his job, and that, of course, led to some major financial struggles over the next couple of years. Then in the spring of 2011, just weeks before I graduated from high school, my dad decided that he could do something that he had always wanted to do over the years, but never gotten the chance. He was going to be a truck driver, transporting goods for companies around the country. With the help of the welfare agency, he came into contact with a truck driving school, where he passed with flying colors. He started driving with Covenant Transport, one of the major trucking companies, in May of 2011. He was thrilled to be employed once again, to be able to provide for my mom, myself and the girls. Within a couple of years, my family, despite our financial ups and downs over the years, was actually doing better than ever. My dad even did well enough at the trucking company he worked for that he and his co-driver were given a set route, as opposed to driving anywhere he was asked. He would go back and forth to Denver, Colorado, and then be home for two days every week, instead of being gone for several weeks at a time, like he was while zigzagging here, there and everywhere. My family did enjoy seeing him every week, and on top of that, he made more money per week as well. Despite our improved situation, we did have a setback in 2012, when the landlord of our house in Ontario got foreclosed on and we had to move. Once the bank that had taken over the home and told us and our neighbors that we had to move, we scrambled to find a new house. We would find a place in Montclair, a neighboring city a couple miles to the west of where we had been living. Other than the move to a less familiar area, things were looking up for the Collins family. I didn’t like that I had to move away from Jimmy and Andrew, but we kept in contact, and they were still just a 15-minute bicycle ride away from me. Anytime I wanted to, I rode my bike, or rode the bus over to Ontario, or later on once I was working, went over after work to hang out with the guys. Despite not living there anymore, I probably spent more time in Ontario than I did in my new hometown.

As for myself, I was a pretty good student. I got good, but not great grades at Chaffey High School, where I would graduate in May of 2011. I had perhaps a B average, but my parents, as well as my teachers, thought I should have done better. I could be a valedictorian and go to an elite college if I applied myself fully, they would say to me. Anyways, my grades were still good enough to get me into Cal Poly Pomona University, a high-quality state-run college in nearby Pomona. To attend, I used grants from both the state and federal government. I was offered student loans, which I would have to pay back, but the grants (which did not have to be paid back) were sufficient to cover all my tuition and book expenses. Even in college, I was still kind of a quiet person. I was less shy and awkward than before, but I still didn’t talk much with my classmates, except when I had to work in groups with them, and I didn’t really join any groups or clubs on campus. I just wanted to go to class, do my work, and go home. I didn’t really come into my own socially until towards the end of my time in college. On top of my classes, I did get a job once I turned eighteen. I managed to get a job at the very same video store my mother worked at years earlier, a small mom-and-pop store called Video Star, located in Ontario, just a couple blocks from my house in Ontario. The boss, a sixtyish gentleman of Indian descent named Raj, remembered me from when I was a kid, and hired me when there was a job opening, which occurred in May 2012, two months after moving to Montclair. The job didn’t pay much, just minimum wage, but it was something to help me get through school. It gave me money to help my family out financially, such as helping out with groceries or with the electric or gas bill. The job also gave me some spending money to buy clothes and for transportation to get to and from school (I took the city bus up until I finally got a driver’s license at the age of twenty). I used my abilities with numbers to my advantage at work, remembering the numbers for many of the various titles the store carried, and memorizing customers’ store account numbers. Numbers were always a love of mine, for some reason. I learned to calculate numbers in my head at a young age. This would amaze my friends, family, classmates and teachers, who often referred to me as “the human calculator”, which I always got a kick out of. Also, when it was time to decide what classes I wanted to take in college, I thought of that ability, and chose to become an accountant. I was going to be a number-cruncher, looking at and analyzing reports and company financial statements in a cubicle in some office building somewhere. Perhaps I would like to become a Certified Public Accountant someday, running my own firm where I did the accounting for various individual and corporate clients.

As I reached adulthood, and started attending college, I had developed another interest other than sports and numbers. I was starting to care about politics and the world around me. I had developed my political beliefs, which can be certainly be described as left-wing, before adulthood, but I had started to really get into it now that I saw how politics

affected everything around me. This was an odd interest for someone my age to have, but that didn’t stop me. On top of sports news, I would scope out the top political stories of the day as well, poring over articles on news or political Internet sites, sometimes for hours on end. I learned about things I didn’t know, or even think about, beforehand. The new things I learned about how the wealthy and big business gaining more power, or how the poor were being increasingly left behind, reinforced the beliefs I already had. Furthermore, I started to really see the dangers posed by the increasingly extremist right-wing movement. Personally, I felt that the conservatives that I would come across were generally good people, who loved their country just like I do, they just had a different mindset on what America was supposed to be. Despite that, I felt the Republican Party itself had an insidious agenda, and would stop at nothing to take over all the levers of power, and implement the wishes of the corporate elites. I was deeply concerned and fearful of what would happen if that ever took place. What kind of harm would come to happen to myself and those I cared about? What would it do to society as a whole?

Like I had said before, as the years had passed, the Republicans had become more extreme, and this process accelerated in the decade or so before the Great Collapse. A big catalyst of this was, in my mind, the result of the presidential election of 2008. Looking to change the path of the nation in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008 and the Great Recession, which was now wreaking havoc on the economy, the American people elected a man named Barack Obama, a young, energetic U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois. The big deal with this election was that Obama was our nation’s first African-American president. Being that African-Americans were a marginalized and oppressed group in American society for centuries, this was a momentous occasion in American history. On top of Obama’s election, the Democratic Party made big gains in Congress as well, and seemed poised to make big, positive changes to the nation. After all, Obama did campaign as the candidate of change, who provided hope for a better future. Despite being, for the most part, a typical candidate from the Democratic Party, the Republicans worked extra hard to paint President Obama as some out of touch, un-American extremist. During the election, and during the entirety of his presidency, they tried to paint him as a socialist (one who wants a more powerful government in order to cure social ills), who was trying to take away people’s freedom, even though he did nothing of the sort. He was, disappointingly to many progressives like myself who felt he would change the course of our history, a pro-corporate president just like his predecessors. He was a bit more progressive than the few presidents before him, and he did do some good. For example, he did put in place some measures to stop the freefall of the economy, which had accelerated in the months before he took office. He did some good in other areas, and he was far better than the previous guy (hell, a houseplant would have been an improvement over the previous guy), but some felt he could have done more to help regular folks. After all, hope and change were main themes of his campaign. Many people thought he would take the United States of America in a more progressive direction after decades of more conservative leaders, and in that regard, he turned out to be disappointing to some.

That said, President Obama was also the target of some very ugly rhetoric from the opposing party. His race was a big factor in this, as the far-right movement hurled ugly, and often outright racist, insults at him, and some of the more extreme members of the right-wing constantly made claims that he was not actually from the United States (for the record, he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii). Now, this isn’t to say that all conservatives or Republicans were racists, but there were definitely racist elements on their side. The right wing also made sure to oppose the entirety of his agenda at all costs, no matter how much damage they did in the process, or even whether they previously supported the ideas that he proposed. For example, a reform bill for the health care system, which President Obama passed in 2010, was highly similar to a Republican health care proposal from fifteen years earlier. Some of the pieces of the bill which the Republicans criticized the most were actually from conservative groups. Anything Obama was for, they were now against, no matter what, and they had their wealthy backers to give them the funding to voice their opposition, as television ads from conservatives flooded the airwaves attacking various Obama proposals, from some new environmental policies to a proposed overhaul of our immigration system to the biggest of all, the health care reform bill.

The far-right movement also got a shot in the arm starting in 2009, when the economy was at its lowest. They were energized by a group calling themselves the Tea Party. The Tea Party, which stood for “Taxed Enough Already” (and conveniently ignoring that taxes were actually at their lowest rates in decades), took the anger of far-right citizens at a government that they perceived to not represent them, and used it to energize the conservative movement. This group espoused the far-right economic views that the Republican Party was increasingly adopting. Various Tea Party groups that popped up all over the nation relentlessly attacked what they called “big government”, believing that the government needed to spend far less and be significantly smaller, essentially echoing what the Republicans had been saying more and more over the previous thirty years. Many members of these groups, which felt the need to add words like “patriot”, “liberty”, or “freedom” to their names (presumably to make themselves sound more American), wanted to reduce or eliminate many government programs, especially anti-poverty programs. This was despite the fact that a good portion of these people were elderly, and used government programs such as Social Security (a program which provided money to seniors who have retired, money that they and their employers put into the system via payroll taxes), and Medicare (a health insurance program for elderly Americans). Conveniently, many of these Tea Partiers wanted to protect the programs that they themselves benefited from, while ending the programs that helped others. It was selfishness at its worst. On top of all this, the movement was also a welcome home for the racist and sexist elements of the right wing. Surely many, but of course not all, members made racist appeals, once again attacking President Obama and using all manner of racist slurs and imagery at their rallies and in their Internet postings.

One other thing the Tea Party loved to claim that it was a grassroots movement. They boasted that they were a populist movement, full of regular folks who just wanted to change the system to make the government more sound, and more protective of their freedom. However, this was not a reality. The various Tea Party organizations sprouted from groups who received their funding from very wealthy individuals. Millionaires and billionaires were bankrolling these groups to advance their own selfish interests, to lower their taxes and allow their fortunes to grow even bigger. Many very wealthy people wanted to shrink the government drastically, so as to reduce the amount of taxes that they had to pay. Billionaires felt no need for there to be things as Social Security, Medicare, welfare assistance such as food stamps (money given to low-income people which can only be used to purchase food), cash assistance, housing assistance, among many other programs. After all, they personally had no need for any of that stuff. These same super-wealthy people also wished to wipe out any sort of regulation of their businesses, so they could pay their workers whatever they wanted and pollute the environment as much as they wanted. The most prominent of these super-wealthy individuals were the billionaire industrialists Richard and Chuck Reed. The Reed brothers, who had amassed fortunes in the tens of billions of dollars each from running a vast industrial empire they inherited from their father, had an agenda to completely wipe out the nation’s social safety net. They argued that the government had no business providing any sort of help to the less fortunate, or in regulating businesses in any way (which also meant doing away with environmental laws, workplace safety laws, and minimum wage laws). The Reeds gleefully gave vast amounts of money to Tea Party groups, seeing that these groups can draw people to their cause, and further advance their agenda.

The Republican Party, which had been reeling after their recent defeats in the polls in both 2006 and 2008, successfully channeled the anger of the Tea Party members to come roaring back, and also to become more extremist than ever. During the 2010 election cycle, the Republicans used this riled-up, angry base to their advantage. I remember watching the news, and seeing the scenes of the rallies, with mostly middle-aged and elderly white folks yelling and vowing to “take their country back”. Some of these rallies were marked by violent, racist and sexist rhetoric, which made them look intolerant, as surely some of them were. I also remember that they would attend meetings called townhalls where various members of Congress talked to their constituents, with the sole purpose of disrupting the meeting and shouting down the lawmaker, for the unforgivable sin of disagreeing with them. There was no interest on their part for a civil debate, and anybody who did not agree with their agenda was a traitor to America in their eyes. I will admit that the partisan bickering had been growing worse on all sides in recent years, but the Tea Partiers took it to a whole new level entirely. Most importantly, these angry and energized voters got out and organized, and using the money from their superrich benefactors (who, because of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, could donate as much money as they wanted to political causes), caused a massive Republican wave at the polls. Not only that, the Republican Party recruited many Tea Party members to run for political office, filling not only Congress, but also many state legislatures and governor’s offices, with far-right ideologues. Using the right-wing energy, as well as growing dissatisfaction with the Democrats and President Obama, mainly over the still very weak economy, the Republicans made their biggest gains in many years. The Republican Party regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress, and made big gains in the Senate, which was the upper house. They also made huge gains in state legislatures all over the country, and won several state governorships. In just a couple of years, all of the political momentum in the United States shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans.

Now with more power, and having a much more far-right wing composition than before, the Republicans set out to implement their agenda starting in 2011. They ran in the 2010 elections on a platform of creating jobs during the weak economy, but all they wanted to do was to try to shrink the government as much as possible, and to fulfill some of the wishes of the deeply religious voters who helped vote them in regarding social issues as abortion and opposing gay rights. They began to try to dramatically slash various programs in the social safety net, but that line of attack was limited by the establishment members of the Republican Party. The party establishment still controlled the leadership positions in the party, and remained somewhat more politically moderate than the far-right rabble rousers who made up a far larger portion of their ranks than before. To be sure, the leadership wanted to cut the programs too, but they realized that doing so to the extent the new Tea Party members of Congress wanted to would be politically poisonous, and would cause a huge backlash among the voters, causing them to lose their newfound gains and give control back to the Democrats. After all, the establishment cared more about power than ideology. Nonetheless, there were some spending cuts made starting in 2011, with some more, somewhat steeper cuts to come in later years. Also, the Republicans drew a line on new spending, opposing any new proposals, whether it was a jobs program the Democrats pushed (with unemployment still high), or housing aid (while foreclosures were still piling up) or even aid to individuals or city or state governments that were hit by natural disasters, such as when the east coast was hit by a huge storm in the fall of 2012, or when various midwestern towns were torn apart by tornadoes on several occasions. Yet, for all the attacks on the safety net, as well as the vitriol directed to it and those who use it, it was actually still pretty popular among the general population. You see, many people like knowing that they, or their friends, family members or neighbors can get help from the government when they need it the most, and even though the programs weren’t perfect, they did keep millions of people out of poverty, about thirty million according to an academic study. So surely it was important to most to maintain a safety net to help those in their time of need.

Even though polls show that the various government anti-poverty programs were rather popular with the people, that didn’t stop the rhetoric against them from intensifying to levels not seen before. Various right-wing lawmakers (many of them recently elected who won using Tea Party support), as well as many right-wing radio and television commentators came at the safety net harder than ever. Despite the fact that the vast majority of those who used the programs came from working families, were elderly or were disabled (statistics backed this up), that didn’t stop the right wing from deriding those individuals as “lazy” and “undeserving of help”. A few commentators even compared receiving government assistance to slavery, claiming that the recipient was now dependent on the government, and now couldn’t make it on their own now, another claim that was complete rubbish. As the years passed, and the far-right gained more power, these attacks became increasingly common. With larger numbers of conservatives in Congress, and with their voices amplified by the right-wing media apparatus, the conservative narrative became ever more pervasive. I noticed it from going on the internet, and from conversations from various members of my family who had succumbed to the rhetoric. I had plenty of cousins and aunts and uncles who fell for these right-wing claims, as I would hear them during family gatherings or see them on the Internet. I sure tried my hardest to debunk the claims, but sometimes, all the facts and logic simply weren’t enough. No matter how hard I would try sometimes, the right-wing media machine was too strong, and held people under its sway. It sure hurt that my own family members would shun me simply over having different views as them (like a couple of them did), but it didn’t cause me to change my views at all.

With the Republican Party drifting further and further to the right, as well as a growing split in the party itself, the United States government began to grow more dysfunctional. See, these newly empowered far-right ideologues had no interest in any sort of compromise, as they sought ideological purity, at all costs. Since their narrative rests on the concept that government doesn’t work, causing dysfunction actually helped their cause. If they underfunded a program, and its effectiveness dropped, they could then go “see, the government is broken!”, and many wouldn’t even notice that it was broken because conservatives broke it. Compromise with the Democrats was seen as treason to these folks, and any Republican, even if they were a conservative, became a target of Tea Party groups if they reached across the aisle to get anything done. As a result, performing simple tasks which were done easily before in a bipartisan fashion, such as funding the government or raising the debt ceiling (allowing the government to borrow more money than a certain limit), had now become like pulling teeth. The far-right wing of the Republican Party felt the need to extract demands from everyone else before allowing these vital functions to be done. Tea Party groups also targeted Republicans that were deemed as not conservative enough. They had success kicking out several long-serving Republican members of Congress and replacing them with people who agreed more with them. As a result of this more conservative slant, there were various standoffs between these hardline extremists and the Obama administration, as well as with the leadership of their own party. Though the standoffs were about various issues, the biggest was about the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration, which was the health care reform bill. Though the health care law was far from perfect, and was a corporate giveaway in some ways, the law did help millions of Americans obtain health insurance who previously had no health coverage at all (for full disclosure, I was one of those people, I could now stay on my parent’s insurance longer, once they got insurance again). Nonetheless, conservatives saw this bill, as well as almost everything else President Obama did, as an affront to individual liberty, as if America was somehow becoming some kind of totalitarian state because poor people were getting health coverage. A constant state of fear, mixed with the greed of the wealthy and the business world, drove this new, highly corrosive brand of politics. These politicians, with their extreme voter base, right-wing think tanks, and a vast array of right-wing radio stations and Fox News Channel on their side, stood firm in their mission to remake the United States in their image. Even though their actions did cause the United States to have its credit downgraded in 2011, and even caused the federal government to partially shut down in the fall of 2013, the right wingers in Congress were undeterred. They had no problems taking hostages in an attempt to achieve their ends. The credit downgrade came from conservatives wanting more cuts in government spending than even the leaders of the Republican Party wanted. The shutdown came from conservatives demanding the repeal of the health care reform law, which they had unsuccessfully tried to repeal dozens of times over the course of several years. On top of those stunts, the right wing also stopped any further attempts at positive reform by the Obama administration, including various bills meant to try to spur job growth, as well as raise the minimum wage, which meant that many low-wage workers fell further behind, as prices rose, but their pay did not.  

Also distressingly, but receiving less attention, was the fact that similar trends were also taking place in other wealthy nations as well. The years before the Great Collapse did see a turn towards the political right in previously left-leaning areas around the world, as conservative parties took power due to voter dissatisfaction with the economic downturn. These conservatives used similar strategies as the Republicans of the United States, through convincing everyday people that the government was out to get them, that left-wing policies were to blame for the worldwide economic downturn. Also, just like the conservatives here, they used appeals to racism to draw people to their side, as many of the right-wing parties of Europe were even more virulently anti-immigrant than the Republicans here in the United States. They always found some scapegoat on which to blame various problems that society was facing. Observers seemed shocked that such racist rhetoric worked so well, especially in European nations that were perceived as more tolerant of different races and religions. The results when right-wing parties gained power bore a resemblance of what happened here years before. Nations paring back on the help that their governments gave their less fortunate, and other policies that harmed various groups.

Another prominent feature of life in the early 21st century, a trend that had been accelerating for some time, was the fact that most regular folks largely seemed apathetic towards the world around them. Much of the general public had little to no knowledge about things like politics and current events. Few people paid attention to politics unless it was a presidential election, and even then, they didn’t pay attention all that much, and close to half of those who were eligible to vote actually bothered to do so. It was awfully frustrating to see that most people didn’t seem to care, since this was important stuff, stuff that affected all of our lives. The lack of knowledge that most people had was pretty obvious, as most of my conversations at work, at school or with my friends seemed to revolve around things like that day’s weather, or what the local sports teams did, or something that happened on a popular TV show. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my friends and family, but they didn’t seem to care about history or politics like I did, and that would limit the range of conversation topics I had with them. The only people I knew who I could talk about that kind of stuff with was my sister Leann, or perhaps a few of my college classmates or a customer or two at my work. When I did get the chance to talk politics and political issues, I greatly enjoyed the conversation and came away invigorated after the intelligent conversation. It felt good to come across someone who knew and cared what was going on in the world. Unfortunately, politics and world events were considered by many to be a “boring” subject, while others found it impolite or improper to discuss such things in public.

Another distressing aspect of this time period was that there was this strong celebrity culture in society. It seemed that more people followed the exploits of television, movie, music and sports stars than the important issues of the day. People were completely okay with getting screwed over, day in and day out, by the elites of society, as long as they had their reality tv shows to watch, their celebrity news to check out, and their favorite sports teams to follow. Movies, TV and sports had become multi-billion dollar industries during this time, and had tv channels and radio stations dedicated to covering them. Now don’t get me wrong, it was ok to pay some attention to these things. I myself was quite the sports nut back then, as I’ve stated before. Heck, I could tell who won the World Series or the Super Bowl (two of America’s premier sporting events, the championships for baseball and football, respectively) most years, but I still cared about what was truly important in the world. Though I knew who won the big game, I also knew about a major bill that was being debated in Congress, or what the unemployment rate was at that moment, or what a particular political candidate’s stance was on Social Security. I guess I can understand why this apathy among my fellow citizens existed. Many people were disillusioned at the state of affairs of our world. They saw that things were rigged against them, and they just didn’t want to think of it, to the point that they didn’t care anymore. I will admit that there were times that I almost envied those who were ignorant of the world around them. This trend was especially prevalent with young adults, those who were close in age to me. Like I said, I was quite the outlier among those in my age group. Knowledge of current affairs was very low with them, to the point that my friends and classmates thought I was strange for following that kind of stuff, or wanting to discuss it. If I brought it up, they would just politely agree with me, followed by awkward silence. For that reason, I rarely brought up those types of things when hanging out with Jimmy or Andrew, or any of my coworkers, I might mention something if the topic came up, and try to make my case, but other than that, I wouldn’t say anything about it. I just wish that more folks had been aware of the important issues of the day. If that had been the case, then maybe, just maybe, the course of our history would have been different. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing about the horrific things that followed.

Then finally, and probably the biggest issue with the years before the Great Collapse, was that our society was seemingly becoming divided and fragmented. There was no sense of togetherness, of community. Most individuals were simply looking out for themselves, and perhaps a few people closest to them. Most had a individualistic viewpoint, what happened to others was of little to no relevance. Many people weren’t even sure who their neighbors or others in their community were, much less helped them out in times of need. I myself was guilty of this, I must say, as were most of the others in my family. Furthermore, people had become divided in many other ways. By social class, or race, or religion, or even by their political views, people were parsed into their own categories, with less and less interaction with those from outside of their little bubbles. Technology such as the Internet only accelerated this trend, as people could choose who they interacted with online. Even out in public, most people, especially younger people, often had their heads in a device such as a cell phone or a tablet (I was bad at this too), and didn’t bother to talk to or even acknowledge those around them. This division robbed us of a sense of community, and made many people feel like, no, we weren’t in this together.

As for me, despite all the commotion in the world around me, I pressed through college, and I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting in June of 2015. I did it, I made it through all those business and accounting classes, and graduated with a solid B+ average. It was time for me to move on, away from college, and away from the video store. Immediately upon my graduation, I hit the job market in search of a job in the accounting field, to make use of that nice new degree and improve my station in life. After a few months of fruitless searching, and several interviews for various accounting positions, I did manage to land a job working in the accounting department of a medium-sized manufacturing firm named Milton Plastics that was based in Brea, in Orange County about fifteen miles from where I lived. I started my job at Milton Plastics in October of 2015, leaving Video Star shortly thereafter after close to four years working there. Located in a nondescript light brown building surrounded by other nondescript business buildings, this company made various plastic products for consumer use, selling them in stores such as Walmart and Target. Though the company was headquartered here in southern California, the actual products we sold were made, of course, at factories located in China. My job revolved around handling the accounts payable, recording and keeping track of the company’s purchases, and making sure the company paid its bills to vendors on time, so as to not affect our credit or hurt our reputation. It was a pretty typical entry level job in the accounting field, a good way to start out my career.

This wasn’t going to be my permanent job, at least I hoped it wouldn’t be. I was just gaining experience and biding my time until I can take (and hopefully pass) the difficult CPA exam. Once I passed that, I would give another try applying to the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) firms, where I had no luck when I was first applying for entry-level positions right after graduation. One thing that always bothered me about the job market was that most jobs, even entry-level jobs, required work experience before one can be considered for the job. My big question always was “how can I get experience if no one would hire me?” I was told that I should get what was called an internship working somewhere in order to get hired by a company. I thought of going that route even though I despised the concept of internships, which were pretty much legalized slavery, as most interns were not paid at all. It allowed firms to not pay a portion of their workforce. Luckily, I ended up not needing that, as Milton Plastics ended up hiring me. Despite having a degree in Accounting, my starting pay at Milton Plastics was a mere twelve dollars an hour. Even though this was only two dollars more than I was getting at the video store (the minimum wage in California was ten dollars an hour), and a few dollars an hour less than most comparable accounts payable jobs, there were opportunities for rapid advancement and promotions in this company that simply didn’t exist at the video store. Within a couple of years, I could be making up to eighteen dollars an hour, or so my new boss, a stern-looking, slender, fiftyish man named Ken Milton, told me upon my hiring. But for now, the starting pay, combined with the amount of gas I needed to get to and from work, meant that I had to stay at home and live with my parents, at least for a few months until I can save up to find my own place. Due to economic conditions being what they are during this time, it was increasingly difficult for people to get ahead in life, especially in my age group, folks who are just starting out in life and trying to build lives for themselves. I was no exception to that reality of the times. Many of my fellow recent college graduates would continue to live at home, simply because starting out in life was much harder that it was for our parent’s or grandparent’s generations. The job market was tougher for us, one couldn’t just graduate from high school and get a factory job or other decent entry-level job, as many of them were downsized or moved away to some faraway land. One now had to obtain a college degree to have any hope of a decent job with opportunities for advancement in pay, and college costs in the few decades before the Collapse had soared to the point where many students had to take on massive amounts of debt in order to complete their studies. This debt would prove to be an impediment for many, as debt payments ate up an increasingly large portion of college grads’ paychecks, money that could have gone to buy a house, or start a business, or start a family, or save for retirement. My generation was facing many challenges when entering adulthood as the economic ladder became tougher to climb. The economic prospects for the vast majority of Americans during this time seemed to be getting worse by the year. But even so, they couldn’t have imagined how much worse they would soon get.

Author's Note

This is not a final draft. I would like to know what it needs, if anything.