Having Something to Say

There's a famous Fitzgerald quote about writing...something along the lines: "You don't write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say."

The Wire - Season 2 is thematically about the end of the American working class. The tragic lead is Frank Sobotka, a Union treasurer who gets mixed up with importing illegal goods to grease enough hands to get a canal built, hence bring more ships and more work for the longshoremen he represents. Towards the end of the season, he laments that America has become a nation that doesn't build anything, we are all middle men - we take out of the pocket of one and put in the pocket of another.

Prop Joe puts it more succinctly - all business is buy for 1 and sell for 2.

I think about this sometimes. I waver. I am suspicious of the protectionist idea of preserving American work and American jobs. Sometimes I think these folks are stuck in the past. Victims of nostalgia who are getting the shit end of the stick in a competitive global economy.

But goddamn if the Wire doesn't make a case for it. Because what are men like Sobotka, who has trouble communicating this thoughts and is prone to banging on a desk and punching a fence when frustrated, to do?

Politically speaking, I don't identify with the folks who do the Wire...old school Union Democrats, basically. I'm a college boy from the coast. But who gives a shit? They are sad and angry and like Fitzgerald says, have something to say. And with this game, that's the trump card.