This is later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast more what you Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. He's the author of the Politry Prize winning and
Their Children after them twelve other books as well, among them Journey to Nowhere,
the Saga of the New Underclass, which by the way, inspired Bruce
Bringsteen to write Youngstown. Dale Maharidge is joining us because his newest creation is
called American Doom Loop dispatches from a troubled Nation nineteen eighties to the twenty twenties.
And in it, Dale you pose America of the twenty twenties is living
with a cultural shape shifting rooted in the nineteen eighties. How so well,
I covered homeless starting in the nineteen eighty but the word wasn't used back then.
They were called winos. We wouldn't use that today, of course.
But and then I covered the first schoolyard shoot in nineteen eighty nine. Patrick
Purdy in Stockton, California, shot up a school yard, killed some kids,
and wounded a whole bunch of others. And most importantly, I covered
a lot of the rising anger we see in America today that you mentioned,
Bruce Springsteen and Youngstown where they shut down the steel mills and fifty thousand high
paying jobs were lost. It was very democratic place, it's not very republican,
but both parties kind of failed the workers, in my opinion. So
a lot of the stuff we're seeing today started in that decade, stuff like
homelessness. I had a student last year who didn't believe me when I said
there had not always been homeless. When I did the story in Sacramento in
nineteen eighty, there were no no people like we see today. It was
the usual public inebriates. But housing policies failed in places like California and New
York. A lot of these rich suburbs, mostly boomers like me, didn't
want quote unquote affordable housing near them. Well, at Los Angeles, that
means housing that costs eight hundred thousand dollars a lot more, a lot more
than an Oklahoma city, I hope. Yeah. Yeah, oh no,
that that kind of money. You could buy three houses and a big hunk
of property. Yeah. Right. So they basically the subreimonites, the boomers,
one of the exclude their own children, and so places where there's affordable
housing has a whole bunch fewer homeless. Jackson, Mississippi has won sixth to
homeless for Capita as La. But the rents in Jackson, Mississippi are eight
hundred dollars a month versus twenty eight hundred dollars a month in Los Angeles.
So we need more housing. And that's just one of the issues I write
about. Dale Maharaj is with us and the book is American Doom Loop Dispatches
from a Troubled Nation nineteen eighties to the twenty twenties. What's another example,
because I ask I lived the nineteen eighties. I was in high school and
college in the nineteen eighties. I remember living with the nuclear threat at the
time. I was competing in high school and college debate and one of the
techniques we would use and debate was what they call the ultimate negative. When
you were in a debate and you were trying to make your point, you
tried to have an ultimate negative was at that time was nuclear war. I
contend it seems like nuclear war is no longer a perceived threat, but that
that's been shifted over to environmental threats. Am I right? Oh, the
climate doom loop. Yeah, it's something that's a backdrop to everything. We
don't deal with that every other issue doesn't matter. But that was not something
I was reporting on in the nineteen eighties, so it's not in my book.
But I agree with you that climate is affecting every nation. No one's
going to escape what's happening. But in terms of what your book deals with,
that's seems to be part of the doom loop. Right. Well,
we don't like dealing with things as society. We always push it off to
the side or to a future generation. Well, the bills come and do
American doom Loop dispatches from a troubled nation nineteen eighties to the twenty twenties.
You mentioned. I keep hearing about how divided we are as a nation right
now politically, but I mean I remember there being division all through the nineteen
eighties and beyond. Well, it's just exacerbated. I go back to Youngstown
where there's a lot of anger. It gets funneled, sadly into some hate
groups. The left isn't excluded from heating either. Of course, we haven't
seen armed action by the left at this point, but we've seen the right
wing take over that refuge in Oregon, for instance, or storm the capital
and that anger is rooted in things that happen in the eighties job displacement.
I covered a white supremacy group in Secondmento in nineteen eighty four. I told
them I was a journalist. I embedded with them and listened to them.
My job description is listening. And the funny thing is lee when you talk
to people like this, I agree with like eighty percent with them, and
we disagree on the twenty percent, but we're not listening to each other any
far. That's one of the big things that's changed now. That's the biggest
one, I think, and I'm wondering what role digital technology has to do
with that, because we don't have to listen to one another. All we
have to do is read what is typed out in that little device in the
palm of our hands and respond to it exactly. And it's easy to be
hateful when you're sitting in a room on a phone or a computer and you
can say all kinds of nasty things. We actually have to communicate with somebody.
You're real, they're a lot like you. So we need more real
face time, not fake face time. American doom Loop dispatches from a troubled
Nation nineteen eighties to twenty twenties Pulitry Prize winning author Dale Maharaj do you deal
with the effects of digital technology on the doom Loop? I don't. It
was way beyond my capacity. And also, as again, it was in
the eighties. We didn't have the cell phones, so you can't compare it
to anything in the eighties. No, No, Well, what else in
the eighties has has circled around and is being re perpetuated? Now, well,
I go back to that school yard shooting I covered. I mean,
I used to hunt. I grew up in Ohio. I'm gonna post it.
You know, I have some dym in the ray for a shoting for
hunting, and you know we don't need hundred shot drums. That's not meant
for deer, that's meant for humans. I think that should be illegal.
But again, it doesn't mean I think somebody should hunt. So it just
seems that common sense to me that we shouldn't have hunterd shot drums floating around
in circulation. Dale Maharaj is with us, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning
and their children after them, his newest creation, American Doom Loop Dispatches from
a Troubled Nation nineteen eighties to the twenty twenties. Thank you for joining us
and we look forward to the read. Thanks Lee, Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation