ONCE CALIFORNIA BELONGED to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a
horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was  their hunger for land
that they took the land—stole Sutter's land, Guerrero's land, took the grants and broke
them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they
guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned
the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was
ownership.
The Mexicans were weak and fled. They  could not resist, because they wanted
nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land.
Then, with time, the squatters were no  longer squatters, but owners; and their
children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them,
the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good
sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots. They had these things
so completely that they did not know about them any more. They had no more the
stomach-tearing lust for a rich acre and a shining blade to plow it, for seed and a
windmill beating its wings in the air. They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy
birds' first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the
first light to go out to the dear acres. These things were lost, and crops were reckoned
in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and
sold before they were planted. Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer
little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned
with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer
farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before
they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to
good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how  loving a man might be with earth and
growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as
time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there
were fewer of them.
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did
not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese,
Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on  rice and beans, the business men said.
They don't need much. They wouldn't know what to do with good wages. Why, look
how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny—deport them.
And all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And there were
pitifully few farmers on the land any more. And the imported serfs were beaten and
frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were
killed or driven from the country. And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer.
And the crops changed. Fruit trees took the place of grain fields, and vegetables to
feed the world spread out on the bottoms:  lettuce, cauliflower, artichokes, potatoes—
stoop crops. A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, pitchfork; but he must crawl like
a bug between the rows of lettuce, he must bend his back and pull his long bag
between the cotton rows, he must go on his knees like a penitent across a cauliflower
patch.
And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on
paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they
owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it. And some of the farms
grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more, so large that it
took batteries of bookkeepers to keep track of  interest and gain and loss; chemists to
test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the stooping men were moving along
the rows as swiftly as the material of their bodies could stand. Then such a farmer
really became a storekeeper, and kept a store. He paid the men, and sold them food,
and took the money back. And after a while he did not pay the men at all, and saved
bookkeeping. These farms gave food on credit. A man might work and feed himself
and when the work was done, might find that he owed money to the company. And the
owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the
farms they owned.
And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out.
Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry;  twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a
hundred thousand and two hundred thousand.  They streamed over the mountains,
hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to
pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We
got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.
We ain't foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch,
English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an' they was lots of our folks in
the Civil War—both sides. Americans.
They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and
they found only hatred. Okies—the owners hated them because the owners knew they
were soft and the Okies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps
the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft
man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them. And in the
towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no
shorter path to a storekeeper's contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite.
The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from
them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man
must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives
him less for his work; and then no one can get more.
And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty
thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the
land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new
waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous.
And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success,
amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new barbarians wanted only
two things—land and food; and to them the two were one. And whereas the wants of
the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the
roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the
good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally in the hand, grass to smell, oaten
stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat. A man might look at a
fallow field and know, and see in his mind  that his own bending back and his own
straining arms would bring the cabbages into the light, and the golden eating corn, the
turnips and carrots.
And a homeless hungry man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his thin
children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but
not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a
crime against the thin children. And such a man drove along the roads and knew
temptation at every field, and knew the lust to take these fields and make them grow
strength for his children and a little comfort for his wife. The temptation was before
him always. The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flowing
were a goad to him.
And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden
oranges in the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man
might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.
He drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we
sleep the night?
Well, there's Hooverville on the edge of the river. There's a whole raft of Okies
there.
He drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a
Hooverville on the edge of every town.
The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched
enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a
citizen of Hooverville—always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own
tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and
brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came
the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the
countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work.
In the evening the men gathered and talked together. Squatting on their hams they
talked of the land they had seen.
There's thirty thousan' acres, out west of here. Layin' there. Jesus, what I could do
with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I'd have ever'thing to eat.
Notice one thing? They ain't no vegetables nor chickens nor pigs at the farms. They
raise one thing—cotton, say, or peaches, or lettuce. 'Nother place'll be all chickens.
They buy the stuff they could raise in the dooryard.
Jesus, what I could do with a couple pigs!
Well, it ain't yourn, an' it ain't gonna be yourn.
What we gonna do? The kids can't grow up this way.
In the camps the word would come whispering, There's work at Shafter. And the
cars would be loaded in the night, the highways crowded—a gold rush for work. At
Shafter the people would pile up, five times too many to do the work. A gold rush for
work. They stole away in the night, frantic for work. And along the roads lay the
temptations, the fields that could bear food.
That's owned. That ain't our'n.
Well, maybe we could get a little piece of her. Maybe—a little piece. Right down
there—a patch. Jimson weed now. Christ, I could git enough potatoes off'n that little
patch to feed my whole family!
It ain't our'n. It got to have Jimson weeds.
Now and then a man tried; crept on the land and cleared a piece, trying like a thief
to steal a little richness from the earth. Secret gardens hidden in the weeds. A package
of carrot seeds and a few turnips. Planted potato skins, crept out in the evening secretly
to hoe in the stolen earth.
Leave the weeds around the edge—then nobody can see what we're a-doin'. Leave
some weeds, big tall ones, in the middle.
Secret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can.
And then one day a deputy sheriff: Well, what you think you're doin'?
I ain't doin' no harm.
I had my eye on you. This ain't your land. You're trespassing.
The land ain't plowed, an' I ain't hurtin' it none.
You goddamned squatters. Pretty soon you'd  think you owned it. You'd be sore as
hell. Think you owned it. Get off now.
And the little green carrot tops were kicked off and the turnip greens trampled. And
then the Jimson weed moved back in. But the cop was right. A crop raised—why, that
makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots  eaten—a man might fight for land he's
taken food from. Get him off quick! He'll think he owns it. He might even die fighting
for the little plot among the Jimson weeds.
Did ya see his face when we kicked them turnips out? Why, he'd kill a fella soon's
he'd look at him. We got to keep these here people down or they'll take the country.
They'll take the country.
Outlanders, foreigners.
Sure, they talk the same language, but  they ain't the same.  Look how they live.
Think any of us folks'd live like that? Hell, no!
In the evening, squatting and talking. And an excited man: Whyn't twenty of us take
a piece of lan'? We got guns. Take it an' say, "Put us off if you can." Whyn't we do
that?
They'd jus' shoot us like rats.
Well, which'd you ruther be, dead or here? Under groun' or in a house all made of
gunny sacks? Which'd you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with
what they call malnutrition? Know what we et all week? Biled nettles an' fried dough!
Know where we got the flour for the dough? Swep' the floor of a boxcar.
Talking in the camps, and the deputies, fat-assed men with guns slung on fat hips,
swaggering through the camps: Give 'em somepin to think about. Got to keep 'em in
line or Christ only knows what they'll do! Why, Jesus, they're as dangerous as niggers
in the South! If they ever get together there ain't nothin' that'll stop 'em.
Quote: In Lawrenceville a deputy sheriff  evicted a squatter, and the squatter
resisted, making it necessary for the officer to use force. The eleven-year-old son of the
squatter shot and killed the deputy with a .22 rifle.
Rattlesnakes! Don't take chances with 'em, an' if they argue, shoot first. If a kid'll
kill a cop, what'll the men do? Thing is, get tougher'n they are. Treat 'em rough. Scare
'em.
What if they won't scare? What if they stand up and take it and shoot back? These
men were armed when they were children. A gun is an extension of themselves. What
if they won't scare? What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the
Lombards did in Italy, as the Germans did on Gaul and the Turks did on Byzantium?
They were land-hungry, ill-armed hordes too, and the legions could not stop them.
Slaughter and terror did not stop them. How can you frighten a man whose hunger is
not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You
can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.
In Hooverville the men talking: Grampa took his lan' from the Injuns.
Now, this ain't right. We're a-talkin' here. This here you're talkin' about is stealin'. I
ain't no thief.
No? You stole a bottle of milk from a porch night before last. An' you stole some
copper wire and sold it for a piece of meat.
Yeah, but the kids was hungry.
It's stealin', though.
Know how the Fairfiel' ranch was got? I'll tell ya. It was all gov'ment lan', an' could
be took up. Ol' Fairfiel', he went into San Francisco to the bars, an' he got him three
hunderd stew bums. Them bums took up the lan'. Fairfiel' kep' 'em in food an' whisky,
an' then when they'd proved the lan', ol' Fairfiel' took it from 'em. He used to say the
lan' cost him a pint of rotgut an acre. Would you say that was stealin'?
Well, it wasn't right, but he never went to jail for it.
No, he never went to jail for it. An' the fella that put a boat in a wagon an' made his
report like it was all under water 'cause he went in a boat—he  never went to jail
neither. An' the fellas that bribed congressmen and the legislatures never went to jail
neither.
All over the State, jabbering in the Hoovervilles.
And then the raids—the swoop of armed deputies on the squatters' camps. Get out.
Department of Health orders. This camp is a menace to health.
Where we gonna go?
That's none of our business. We got orders to get you out of here. In half an hour we
set fire to the camp.
They's typhoid down the line. You want ta spread it all over?
We got orders to get you out of here. Now get! In half an hour we burn the camp.
In half an hour the smoke of paper houses, of weed-thatched huts, rising to the sky,
and the people in their cars over the highways, looking for another Hooverville.
And in Kansas and Arkansas, in Oklahoma and Texas and New Mexico, the tractors
moved in and pushed the tenants out.
Three hundred thousand in California and more coming. And in California the roads
full of frantic people running like ants to pull, to push, to lift, to work. For every
manload to lift, five pairs of arms extended to lift it; for every  stomachful of food
available, five mouths open.
And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners
with access to history, with eyes to read  history and to know the great fact: when
property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact:
when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they
need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works
only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners  ignored the three cries of
history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and
every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for
arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring
of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans
for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the
causes of revolt went on.
The tractors which throw men out of work,  the belt lines which carry loads, the
machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered
on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land
beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to
discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a
principal—three hundred thousand—if they ever move under a leader—the end. Three
hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will
be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won't stop them. And the great
owners, who had become through their holdings both more and less than men, ran to
their destruction, and used every means that in the long run would destroy them. Every
little means, every violence, every raid  on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering
through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day.
The men squatted on their hams, sharp-faced men, lean from hunger and hard from
resisting it, sullen eyes and hard jaws. And the rich land was around them.
D'ja hear about the kid in the fourth tent down?
No, I jus' come in.
Well, that kid's been a-cryin' in his sleep an' a-rollin' in his sleep. Them folks
thought he got worms. So they give him a blaster, an' he died. It was what they call
black-tongue the kid had. Comes from not gettin' good things to eat.
Poor little fella.
Yeah, but them folks can't bury him. Got to go to the county stone orchard.
Well, hell.
And hands went into pockets and little coins came out. In front of the tent a little
heap of silver grew. And the family found it there.
Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind
people won't all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat.
And the association of owners knew that some day the praying would stop.
And there's the end.

Pa spoke generally to the circle. "It's dirt hard for folks to tear up an' go. Folks like
us that had our place. We ain't shif'less. Till we got tractored off, we was people with a
farm."
A young thin man, with eyebrows sunburned yellow, turned his head slowly.
"Croppin'?" he asked.
"Sure we was sharecroppin'. Use' ta own the place."
The young man faced forward again. "Same as us," he said.
"Lucky for us it ain't gonna las' long," said Pa. "We'll get out west an' we'll get work
an' we'll get a piece a growin' land with water."
Near the edge of the porch a ragged man stood. His black coat dripped torn
streamers. The knees were gone from his dungarees. His face was black with dust, and
lined where sweat had washed through. He swung his head toward Pa. "You folks must
have a nice little pot a money."
"No, we ain't got no money," Pa said. "But they's plenty of us to work, an' we're all
good men. Get good wages out there an' we'll put 'em together. We'll make out."
The ragged man stared while Pa spoke, and then he laughed, and his laughter turned
to a high whinnying giggle. The circle of faces turned to him. The giggling got out of
control and turned into coughing. His eyes  were red and watering when he finally
controlled the spasms. "You goin' out there—oh, Christ!" The giggling started again.
"You goin' out an' get—good wages—oh, Christ!" He stopped and said slyly, "Pickin'
oranges maybe? Gonna pick peaches?"
Pa's tone was dignified. "We gonna take what they got. They got lots a stuff to work
in." The ragged man giggled under his breath.
Tom turned irritably. "What's so goddamn funny about that?"
The ragged man shut his mouth and looked sullenly at the porch boards. "You folks
all goin' to California, I bet."
"I tol' you that," said Pa. "You didn' guess nothin'."
The ragged man said slowly, "Me—I'm comin' back. I been there."
The faces turned quickly toward him. The men were rigid. The hiss of the lantern
dropped to a sigh and the proprietor lowered the front chair legs to the porch, stood up,
and pumped the lantern until the hiss was sharp and high again. He went back to his
chair, but he did not tilt back again. The ragged man turned toward the faces. "I'm goin'
back to starve. I ruther starve all over at oncet."
Pa said, "What the hell you talkin' about? I got a han'bill says they got good wages,
an' little while ago I seen a thing in the paper says they need folks to pick fruit."
The ragged man turned to Pa. "You got any place to go, back home?"

"No," said Pa. "We're out. They put a tractor past the house."
"You wouldn' go back then?"
"'Course not."
"Then I ain't gonna fret you," said the ragged man.
"'Course you ain't gonna fret me. I got a han'bill says they need men. Don't make no
sense if they don't need men. Costs money for them bills. They wouldn' put 'em out if
they didn' need men."
"I don' wanna fret you."
Pa said angrily, "You done some jackassin'. You ain't gonna shut up now. My
han'bill says they need men. You laugh an' say they don't. Now, which one's a liar?"
The ragged man looked down into Pa's angry eyes. He looked sorry. "Han'bill's
right," he said. "They need men."
"Then why the hell you stirrin' us up laughin'?"
"'Cause you don't know what kind a men they need."
"What you talkin' about?"
The ragged man reached a decision. "Look", he said. "How many men they say they
want on your han'bill?"
"Eight hunderd, an' that's in one little place."
"Orange color han'bill?"
"Why—yes."
"Give the name a the fella—says so and so, labor contractor?"
Pa reached in his pocket and brought out the folded handbill. "That's right. How'd
you know?"
"Look," said the man. "It don't make no sense. This fella wants eight hunderd men.
So he prints up five thousand of them things an' maybe twenty thousan' people sees
'em. An' maybe two-three thousan' folks gets movin' account a this here han'bill. Folks
that's crazy with worry."
"But it don't make no sense!" Pa cried.
"Not till you see the fella that put out this here bill. You'll see him, or somebody
that's workin' for him. You'll be a-campin' by a ditch, you an' fifty other famblies. An'
he'll look in your tent an' see if you got anything lef' to eat. An' if you got nothin', he
says, 'Wanna job?' An' you'll say, 'I sure do, mister. I'll sure thank you for a chance to
do some work.' An' he'll say, 'I can use you.' An' you'll say, 'When do I start?' An' he'll
tell you where to go, an' what time, an' then he'll go on. Maybe he needs two hunderd
men, so he talks to five hunderd, an' they tell other folks, an' when you get to the place,
they's a thousan' men. This here fella says, 'I'm payin' twenty cents an hour.' An' maybe
half a the men walk off. But they's still five hunderd that's so goddamn hungry they'll
work for nothin' but biscuits. Well, this here fella's got a contract to pick them peaches
or—chop that cotton. You see now? The more fellas he can get, an' the hungrier, less
he's gonna pay. An' he'll get a fella with kids if he can, 'cause—hell, I says I wasn't
gonna fret ya." The circle of faces looked coldly at him. The eyes tested his words. The
ragged man grew self-conscious. "I says I wasn't gonna fret ya, an' here I'm a-doin' it.
You gonna go on. You ain't goin' back." The silence hung on the porch. And the light
hissed, and a halo of moths swung around  and around the lantern. The ragged man
went on nervously, "Lemme tell ya what to  do when ya meet that fella says he got
work. Lemme tell ya. Ast him what he's gonna pay. Ast him to write down what he's
gonna pay. Ast him that. I tell you men you're gonna get fooled if you don't."
The proprietor leaned forward in his chair, the better to see the ragged dirty man. He
scratched among the gray hairs on his chest. He said coldly, "You sure you ain't one of
these here troublemakers? You sure you ain't a labor faker?"
And the ragged man cried, "I swear to God I ain't!"
"They's plenty of 'em," the proprietor said. "Goin' aroun' stirrin' up trouble. Gettin'
folks mad. Chiselin' in. They's plenty of  'em. Time's gonna come when we string 'em
all up, all them troublemakers. We gonna  run 'em outa the country. Man wants to
work, O.K. If he don't—the hell with him. We ain't gonna let him stir up trouble."
The ragged man drew himself up. "I tried to tell you folks," he said. "Somepin it
took me a year to find out. Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But I
can't tell you. I should of knew that. Nobody couldn't tell me, neither. I can't tell ya
about them little fellas layin' in the tent with their bellies puffed out an' jus' skin on
their bones, an' shiverin' an' whinin' like  pups, an' me runnin' aroun' tryin' to get
work—not for money, not for wages!" he shouted. "Jesus Christ, jus' for a cup a flour
an' a spoon a lard. An' then the coroner come. 'Them children died a heart failure,' he
said. Put it on his paper. Shiverin', they  was, an' their bellies  stuck out like a pig
bladder."
The circle was quiet, and mouths were open a little. The men breathed shallowly,
and watched.
The ragged man looked around at the circle, and then he turned and walked quickly
away into the darkness. The dark swallowed him, but his dragging footsteps could be
heard a long time after he had gone, footsteps along the road; and a car came by on the
highway, and its lights showed the ragged  man shuffling along the road, his head
hanging down and his hands in the black coat pockets.
The men were uneasy. One said, "Well—gettin' late. Got to get to sleep."
The proprietor said, "Prob'ly shif'less. They's so goddamn many shif'less fellas on
the road now." And then he was quiet. And he tipped his chair back against the wall
again and fingered his throat.

THE WESTERN STATES nervous under the beginning change. Texas and
Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family
moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the
land. The land company—that's the bank when it has land—wants tractors, not
families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong?
If this tractor were ours it would be good—not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the
long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that
tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two
things—it turns the land and turns us off  the land. There is little difference between
this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think
about this.
One man, one family driven from the  land; this rusty car creaking along the
highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am
bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in
and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children
listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two
squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the
thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split
and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—"We lost  our land." The danger is
here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we"
there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little  food" plus "I have none." If
from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the
movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are
ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single
pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The  night draws down. The baby has a cold.
Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket—take it for the baby.
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we."
If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might
preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that
Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results,  not causes, you might survive. But that
you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you
off forever from the "we."
The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to
concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million
more, restive to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness.
And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.

i think he's right that the focus on identity was an error, but the reason he's right is that the messenger was terrible. everybody knows that hillary clinton is a racist, chistian homophobe. the evidence is paramount. you can't just take this lady with this long history of racist and homophobic polices and statements and then expect that she'll sway votes through uttering pleasantries. in the end, the votes did not appear. that is, the blacks and the gays - and even the women, too - saw through the charade.

the solution is to stop running racists, and to be more inclusive.

the tweaks are minor:

1) instead of not talking about blacks and gays and women, the next candidate should single out whites, too. and, in many of the same ways. you'll note if you're paying attention that barack obama usually did that, probably because he didn't approach his focus groups with the explicit attempt of pandering to coloured minorities.

2) don't run a fucking racist in the first place.

http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/12/16/13924742/mark-lilla-identity-politics-liberalism-trump-clinton-race-2016-election

" Research has long suggested that over the course of a campaign, partisans come home to their party’s candidate."

sure. and, i don't dispute that there was a solidifying of conservative support for trump in the final weeks. but, this doesn't provide the margin. if trump caught up exactly to romney by taking votes back from clinton, and he statistically basically did in the end, then he'd lose by the same amount that romney did, right?

i know that they talk about shifting to third parties, but those margins don't add up, either.

the question you need to answer is about turnout. clinton lost because there was low turnout amongst her supporters. this is despite early media reports that there was record high turnout in early voting. so, why were clinton supporters unable or unwilling to vote for her?

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-really-did-switch-to-trump-at-the-last-minute/

you have to check the fine print with these guys. but, this is a little bit of what i was hoping for, in that it has an eye towards transition. we've got a few steps in that direction.

and while i think the pipelines south are a certainty, i also think that kinder morgan is subject to a real fight, and may be delayed long enough that it becomes obsolete.

again: none of the parties were going to stop what is happening right now. but, the liberals broadcast a stronger dedication to transition in the medium term. this was truly the best we can get, right now. it's encouraging, and i hope it remains a focus.

what's in the fine print, though? my intuition is that the area is being preserved for possible substantial urbanization. the sea is going to open up substantially, and when it does this will be a beautiful place to live.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-obama-arctic-1.3905933

and, to an answer an obvious question that seems to somehow be disqualifying, if there was a cia plot to install trump then obama would have had to have at least been privy to it. see, just because a department signs off on something doesn't mean it directed it, right. i'd bet a large amount of the president's actual job is signing stuff that magically appears on his desk. i'd guess that the seriousness of the president is determined less by how much time is spent determining policy and more by how much time is spent analyzing it, and in a very serious case even amending it. i don't think we've had a president that serious since clinton, though.

but, would obama have to have signed off on it at some point? sure.

i actually picked up a little bit of apprehension from obama near the end of the campaign. i think that a careful historical reconstruction could probably pinpoint the date to a relatively small window - that information can probably be constructed, if desired.

i know it seems disqualifying, but it isn't. i've outlined national security concerns attached to a clinton presidency, and how a contingency plan could have been operated. and, if a contingency plan were to be operated, it might be pre-authorized to exclude details from the president until a late date in operation. like, i'm not suggesting that you should think of the cia behaving as a rogue actor, i'm suggesting that they were acting within their congressional authority to stop threats to the united states. i want you to think about that and let it sink in.

i actually think that bill knew before obama did, and sided with the secret service.

so, i don't want to hear "it can't be cia, because then obama would have known.". obama would have had to eventually known, but not until the end, and may have decided in the end to sign on to it - sure. don't discount that. at all.