I’m from the United States of Wrath

Lately, I’ve been asking myself what it really means to be an American. What kind of promise this nation still holds.

I didn’t used to think about these questions so deeply. But now, in a world where cruelty shouts louder than compassion, I find myself searching for answers in unexpected places.

Some people look for answers in politics or the news. I find mine in books, the ones that shaped me when I was young, the ones that helped me understand injustice, resilience, and hope.

The books that taught me to look past the noise this administration thrives on, to the deeper truths their chaos is meant to hide, and the atrocities it excuses.

I thought of Island of the Blue Dolphins.
I thought of Of Mice and Men.
I thought of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I thought of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Island of the Blue Dolphins taught me about survival when the world abandons you.

Of Mice and Men showed me how the powerful crush the powerless while calling it inevitable.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings revealed how oppression tries to steal your voice, and how you fight to reclaim it.

The Diary of Anne Frank proved that even in humanity’s darkest hour, hope refuses to die.

But one title keeps coming into my thoughts these days, even though I haven’t read it in over 30 years: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Steinbeck saw America stripped bare and raw.
Banks seizing farms. Families wandering highways. Hunger as wide as the plains.

The Joads weren’t just characters on a page. They were reflections of hundreds of thousands of real families.

Victims of drought and dust storms that swallowed their land.
Victims of banks that called it “business” while shoving them off farms their families had run for generations.

It was the Great Depression.
But it was also the Great Abandonment.
And the great dehumanization.

Institutions that were supposed to protect ordinary people chose capital instead.

There are vast similarities between then and now, even if the circumstances are different.

We are beginning to live through our own Grapes of Wrath moments.

The parallels are everywhere if you know where to look.

In the 1930s, drought and dust storms drove families from their land.

Today, climate disasters do the same…wildfires in California, hurricanes in the South, floods in Texas.

But instead of compassion and protections to stop or slow climate change, we get politicians using the disaster in Texas as a pawn to redraw districts and consolidate power.

In Steinbeck’s time, families packed everything they owned into broken-down trucks.

Today, they load up U-Hauls and sleep in cars because rent has tripled while wages stayed flat.

The vehicles may have changed. The desperation hasn’t.

In the 1930s, the insult was “Okies.”
Migrants from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas were met in California with roadblocks, vigilantes, and armed deputies.

They were told they weren’t welcome.
Their camps were raided.
They were denied fair wages because their labor was seen as cheap and endless.

Today, the words have changed.
“Illegals.”
“Radical leftists.”
“Thugs.”
“Woke.”

Different labels. Same purpose.
Strip people of their dignity so cruelty feels justified.

Today and in the 1930’s the migrants wanted just one thing. A better life. Or in most instances, they just wanted to survive.

The Joads lost their home to the banks.
Today, families might still have shelter, but rents eat half their income. They can’t afford groceries. And Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will make health insurance even more unaffordable.

This time it isn’t banks seizing houses.
It’s the ultra-wealthy squeezing every drop of wealth to the top one percent.
It’s the middle class being decimated in real time.

The Joads searched for work and found armed guards and starvation wages.
Today, millions of people are having their benefits cut, while Trump’s Tariff Taxes raise the cost of survival.

The Joads were dehumanized.
Today, so are immigrants at our borders, the unhoused in our cities, and anyone who dares to live outside authoritarian lines.

Steinbeck described families living in makeshift camps on the edges of towns, called “Hoovervilles.”
They dug holes for shelter.
They boiled weeds for soup.
Sheriffs came with guns to break up their tents.
Local farmers hired them for pennies and called it generosity.

Today we have the same cruelty operating under a different name. Law, order and safety.
Police stealing all of the possessions from unhoused people in Washington D.C.
making homelessness a crime.
Corporations raking in billions while the people who make their profits can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment.

And history shows us where this road leads, even beyond living in a cruel nation.

During the Great Depression, hunger and poverty became weapons for extremists. In Europe, fascists rose by scapegoating minorities, promising stability while stripping away freedom.

Hitler pointed at Jews.
Mussolini pointed at socialists.
Franco pointed at democrats.

Always an enemy to blame.
Always cruelty disguised as strength.

We told ourselves America was different.
But history proves otherwise.

We rounded up Japanese Americans into internment camps.
We allowed McCarthy’s blacklist to silence voices through fear.
We let Jim Crow strip democracy from millions for nearly a century.
We even gunned down students protesting war at Kent State.

Every generation has faced the same question: do we let fear and cruelty define us, or do we resist?

Now, the signs of doom are flashing again.
They are everywhere, and they’re accelerating.

And I fear we have learned nothing from history or from Steinbeck’s warnings.

Because maybe we are not facing the Dust Bowl, but we are facing a greedy class of Americans fueled by Donald Trump.

The American promise was always better days for all.
But for many cities and people, danger now looms.

The Pentagon is preparing a military deployment to Chicago in the coming weeks, according to The Washington Post.
This is no longer an empty threat.
Trump seems set on sending troops into an American city that did not ask for help and does not need help.

This is how it starts: militarization disguised as “safety.”
And history is clear: once troops are normalized on city streets, it is never temporary. First it was Los Angeles, then Washington D.C., and now Chicago. He is trying to make us all think this is normal, so we forget what normal really looks like.

And Trump’s approval rating may have dropped to 40 percent, but that’s still far too high for a man who has openly embraced propaganda, intimidation, and force.

In the 1930s, Father Coughlin’s radio sermons reached millions, spreading antisemitism and praise for fascism. His popularity looked strong, too, until people resisted.

Numbers alone don’t save democracies.
People do.

So while we can find hope in Trump’s plummeting numbers, we still need to resist in every way possible.

And Steinbeck gave us the answer.

Do you remember the last scene of The Grapes of Wrath?
In the book’s final scene, Rose of Sharon turns her private grief over the death of her infant into an act of mercy, choosing life for another when the system had abandoned them both.

It is devastating.
It is defiant.
It is powerful.

Because when the system strips away humanity, the most radical act is to restore it.

That is the lesson for us.

When fascism demands cruelty, we answer with compassion.
When propaganda isolates us, we answer with solidarity.
When power sells us despair, we answer with resistance.

The grapes of wrath are ripening again.
Anger is building.
Families are hurting.
Communities are being divided on purpose.

We are told to fight one another while the powerful feast.

History tells us plainly: unchecked suffering breeds violence, or resistance.

That’s why the parallels matter.

The Dust Bowl was a catastrophic climate event. One that we should all take as a serious warning.

Yet Trump is doing the opposite. He has called wind and solar a scam, promised a federal ban on new projects, and gutted EPA rules designed to cut pollution. Nearly $18 billion in clean energy projects have been scrapped this year. Offshore wind farms are stalled. Solar programs for low- and middle-income households are on the chopping block.

Instead of a future powered by clean energy, Americans are handed higher bills and dirtier air. The average household electricity bill has already jumped more than 10 percent since Trump returned to office. Analysts warn his energy rollbacks will cost the economy $1.1 trillion by 2035.

And the consequences don’t stop at just higher costs.
Every project killed today means more carbon tomorrow.
Every EPA rule dismantled means hotter summers, stronger storms, and longer droughts.
Every reversal locks us into a future of escalating wildfires, rising seas, and neighborhoods unlivable from heat.

The cruelty of it is not only abandoning people in crisis.
It is guaranteeing more crises.
It is ensuring that future generations will inherit disasters we had the tools to prevent.

Just as Steinbeck showed us families crushed by forces beyond their control, we are watching the same cruelty play out, only now it is chosen, deliberate, and enforced by policy.

The patterns repeat: scapegoats, suppression, propaganda, militarization.
History isn’t repeating word for word, but it’s rhyming loud enough that none of us can claim we didn’t hear it.

In every era of American darkness, ordinary people have lit candles rather than cursed the dark.
The abolitionists who ran the Underground Railroad.
The suffragists who marched for the vote.
The civil rights workers who faced dogs and fire hoses.
The anti-war protesters who ended Vietnam.

Each generation finds its courage.
The question is whether we’ll find ours in time.

The choice is ours.

So tonight, I write with the hope Steinbeck left us:
That even in the darkest hours, ordinary people will choose humanity over cruelty.
Solidarity over despair.
Resistance over silence.

Because that is how you break the cycle of wrath.

I still have faith in America, and so should you.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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