Pap’s Glimmer of Hope is Gone
A personal political essay that reflects on my trade unionist grandfather, William E. Litzinger, and the betrayal of the political establishment thrust upon my generation and the generations to follow.
The following story is published for Rust Belt Revolution. Please support the Greater Pittsburgh area in this ground zero struggle for human survival.
At the age of seven or eight years old, I spent Sunday afternoons watching old Abbot and Costello movies with my maternal grandfather, after we returned home from morning mass. Pap worked as a union boilermaker (welder) and Sundays were his guaranteed days off. During commercial breaks, he’d teach me the finer points of blue-collar morality. “A man doesn’t go to the bars after work,” he’d say. “That’s for punks. A man comes home to his family.” I always nodded in agreement. The wisdom he delivered with a forthright, yet kind disposition made sense, even before I could tie my shoes. As I reflect on those memories and write these words, I can’t help but smile.
For all of pap’s worthy advice, his general political philosophy is what resonated the most. He often said to me, “The worst Democrat is better than the absolute best Republican. Democrats care about the working man. Republicans only care about business.”
In 1980 and 1981, that old-school sentiment about the duopoly of U.S. politics was common among the WWII generation. They understood the crushing hardship of capitalist breadlines that sent millions to early graves in the 1930s. The men and women of pap’s time came of age when the socialist movement risked life and limb for unions in the bloodiest labor wars recorded in human history. Those selfless fighters then found the fortitude to apply pressure onto FDR’s sympathetic administration to institute common sense programs, such as a minimum livable wage and Social Security. After some successes in the pursuit to uplift working Americans of all colors and creeds, the Greatest Generation then had to go off and fight a world war to defeat the most violent form of right-wing totalitarian dominance.
When the soldiers and sailors returned home, the unions ensured a sense of balance to a once out of control capitalist system. The middle class was born, which in turn gave way to the modern suburbs and exurbs. Malls, often criticized by the left, were originally built as positive byproducts of democracy. They hosted small localized businesses, which were patronized by working families who earned living wages. Yes, Pap’s generational drive for socialism made big, successful strides. For a while, the Democratic Party took the legislative lead on issues concerning health and safety, labor rights, consumer rights, and civil justice.
Flash forward 35 years to me sitting next to pap as we watched old movies on Sunday afternoons. It’s easy to understand why so many good men and women who’d sacrificed so much chose to carry perpetually lit devotional candles in their souls for a once determined political establishment.
Right around the same time as pap began imparting his political wisdom, Ronald Reagan had redefined the working class as leaches who sucked the lifeblood from benevolent corporate leaders. Socialists were driven underground by a growing capitalist-driven fascism. Workers like pap couldn’t even visit the barber shop without hearing about “privileged union thugs robbing real Americans of their freedoms.” Looking back on those years, it’s clear the public relations campaign pushed by the ruling class had successfully driven a wedge into the public’s understanding of democracy. Their goal was to usher in history’s most murderous form of capitalism: neoliberal globalization.
As history’s worst perpetrators of economic violence, corporate vampires fed upon the insecurities of proletarians within the U.S. and in Europe. In 1980, the dark undercurrent of greed began to emerge from the shadows behind the right-wing political machine. Grifters in suits persuaded enough 20- and 30-something Baby Boomers to reject the social gains of their parents’ generation. Consumerism, lifestyle, fame— these were the emotional tags that filled television screens. Those attitudes were engineered into the mind of the population while factories closed, unions were hammered, and pension funds ran dry. Drunken fools then regurgitated new buzzwords about their affinity for individual greed while dressed in sequins suits inside the bars where my mother slung drinks and traded winks for food money.
In one of the most potent forms of class warfare, corporations such as U.S. Steel used political front men to legalize the offshoring of production to less democratic nations. Some unions and allied legal scholars made futile attempts to take over manufacturing centers and run those mills as democratic cooperatives. Those actions were the natural next steps in the continuation of social democracy. However, federal courts dismantled those dreams. When the workers called out for public support to again fight the ruling class in the streets and force congressional action, their calls for solidarity went ignored.
Alone and thrown back into a depression-like state of despair, the Rust Belt centered in the Greater Pittsburgh area was left crippled and desperate to survive. My grandfather, the onetime Nazi-fighting, union family man in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood knew the capitalists had won. They’d beaten us and would soon enslave workers in low-end jobs we now refer to as the gig economy. So, pap decided to retire and pray my generation would take up the fight to correct humanity’s errors.
In pap’s later retirement years in the 1990s and 2000s, the old man survived heart surgery and took to healthy eating through hibachi barbecuing. When I’d visit to cut the grass in the summer months, I often found him lounging on the back porch glider, surrounded by stacks of nonfiction books and novels. “I like books that make me think,” he’d say, “but I don’t finish many of them. I always find something else I like.”
As a semi-educated adult, I often debated leftist politics with pap and we’d discuss the deeper ideals of the human spirit. When I’d ask his opinions on venial servants of power, like Bill Clinton, his responses were usually preceded with a quick shake of the head. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing” was one of pap’s standard responses. His words revealed a deeper confusion. The socialist politics he’d worked to implement for all people had somehow been trashed by a generation of offspring that rejected common sense.
The Democratic Party’s wet kiss to the conservative revolution seemed to hurt pap the most. The party he looked to for leadership and moral stability for the working class had thrust a claw hammer between his shoulder blades. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) headed by the Clintons and Joe Biden turned their traitorous backs on the people, so they could pursue dollars from Chase Manhattan, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and many other corporations. The DLC’s philosophy was simple — cater to the ruling class and then force the workers to slave in obedience. After all, these political front men to power believed labor rights and taxes to be grave sins against profit maximization, a neoliberal concept invented in the 1970s.
When pap and I discussed these issues, his face often turned beet red. To ground himself when our chats drifted too far into rage, pap would point to “that communist from Cleveland” (Dennis Kucinich) or “the socialist Jew” (Bernie Sanders) as the remaining examples of a once great political leadership.
Pap died in the late summer of 2007. Before he departed, I asked him for his opinion on then Senator Barack Obama. Pap was contemplative, but then said to me, “The Clintons and the Bushes will never let him be elected. There’s too much money on the line for them to let a black liberal run things.”
My grandfather, the fiery union champion and civil rights supporter had contracted the disease of political pessimism that droops the eyes along with the spirit. It’s an illness I now see in the mirror, and I see it smeared across the faces of young activists. Through pap’s gloom, however, a glimmer of hope still sparkled under his worn veneer. “If he does make it,” pap said with a half smile, “maybe he can turn things around.”
It’s hard to admit this, but I’m grateful pap didn’t live to watch Obama bail out the bankers, ignore a generation of lead-damaged children, or build private-for-profit immigrant concentration camps to torture the poor. A large part of my soul is empty without pap around to laugh at the pundits and rage at the politicians. But when he died, he really did have a glimmer of hope. I’m glad he took that with him to the afterlife. If he’d lived a few more years, I believe his defeat to the capitalists in retirement would have turned into a soul-murdering blowout in his final days.
The full force of the wealth class inside the Democratic and Republican establishments have destroyed the populist rise of Bernie Sanders and his movement of working people.
Most people don’t know this, but the U.S. political industry is a gargantuan operation, made up of capitalist media pundits, lobbyists, think tanks, tech and marketing consultants, staffers, and the local, county, state, and national parties. Tens of thousands of people are employed around the country to form a virtually impenetrable firewall that protects the wealthy from the will of the dumb masses under popular democracy.
Knowing this basic truth, it’s still amazing to watch these soulless minions coalesce around babbling degenerates, such as Joe Biden or Donald Trump. While Biden’s long history of crimes against humanity should have him locked up for the rest of his miserable days, the ruling class appreciates loyalty. Therefore, career politicians like Biden and boot-lickers like Trump are given permission to suck off the hardened cocks of Wall Street’s kingmakers (and queenmakers). After all, the political establishment knows the most direct route to power is on the backs of the people.
Sanders’ socialist threats that harken back to the victories of the Greatest Generation, who’d won certain inalienable rights, is simply a bridge too far. Sanders and his proletariat followers must be reminded of their places — serving the ruling class until death.
The fight to save our planet from the ravages of global warming driven climate change and usher in the renaissance of American union manufacturing under the Green New Deal is a task for the young. Pap fought great battles for us. With or without Sanders, it’s our turn to fight for the grandchildren yet to come.
In many ways, pap was more than a grandfather. His mentorship and religious understanding greatly defined my worldview. His wisdom empowered my spirit. Our times spent chatting about politics at my young age are some of my warmest memories. That’s probably because pap had a sense of calm patience that allowed me to clumsily stumble upon truth.
Pap knew how to playfully tease to soften the harsh blows of honesty. This was sometimes necessary, because he refused to compromise his ethics for short-term gains or to win friends. His steadfastness is something each of us should aim to achieve, even if we’re not always successful.
The most important political lesson I ever learned from pap was completely unspoken. Watching him gracefully navigate a culture that sold out the working class revealed to me a man who lived his full truth. In such dark times, pap simply lifted his head and his fist in righteous forgiveness for all those fools who knew not what they do while they nailed his generation to crosses. Even as an elderly retiree, he found ways to fight on for his loved ones and for his enemies in a sense of solidarity that time has forgotten.
Solidarity may just be the truest form of love.
Perhaps we can reclaim it
for our loved ones,
for our neighbors and enemies,
and for ourselves.
Note to Readers: The Greater Pittsburgh area is ground zero in the nationwide struggle to stop the fascist slide into ecocide. I’ve developed a grassroots platform titled Rust Belt Revolution to take on the long fight for environmental, labor, and civil justice. We must raise public consciousness and apply pressure to political and corporate actors to end fracking and usher in the American renaissance of union manufacturing under the Green New Deal. Your support is absolutely required.
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Solidarity forever!
