Steinbeck and Twain are at the top of my list.

Steinbeck was one of the greatest...I have read every thing he wrote.

Another great one...But Steinbeck had a style of writing that really appealed to me...I am not sure why, but the way he told the story just made me love his writing...Books like Tortilla Flat and Cannery Roe made me laugh, and Grapes of Wrath made me cry...he could hit my emotional buttons.

Or Sinclair Lewis for that matter.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/22/1188589/-Ted-Cruz-is-disappointed-in-all-you-people-insulting-him-for-being-a-McCarthyite-jackass

I believe that the Big Men of Will Roger's time are the intellectuals of today that speak to this country about all of the workers, the downfall of the Reds. The Big Men were FDR, JFK and many more. Today the Big Men are the intellectual and others that support, speak out, and work with and for the Reds. Will Rogers said it may be up to the Big Men, to end the problems in America. Our current president seems to me, to be dropping out of the Big Men types.

Please view the video above on YouTube. Then after it finishes, there is a list of videos. One of them is Will Rogers' radio address about unemployment and how employment will end the problems in America.

See the flag on the ground of red blood and white stripes. Looks like the head of a cut up snake is resting on it, the Fourteenth part/generation. This picture reminds me of the TEA Party Flag of the sidewinder, Ted Cruz.

http://www.gadsden.info/history.html

The head of a rattlesnake can come back to bit you after it has been decapitated. It is not over.

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Will it ever change...and if so, how?

I believe that the people of the world need to be educated about the exploitation of labor. It's from a lack of understanding of socialism that people are completely unaware of it's elements, which are in the people's favor! We need to get rid of this negative connotation socialism has today, especially in the United States. That's my opinion.

Interesting, a lot of Jack London's writing entertained the Horatio Alger myth and at the same time promoted a socialist utopia.

No wonder the tortured soul took to drinking.

Although it has one little spot that seems ridiculous today: one of the women completely convinces authorities that she's harmless because, after all, she's to be married soon.

Though it made no difference to me. I still have the complete collected works of both.

The cynical Mark Twain was a hopeless optimist; Jack London, the dreamer, was steeped in pessimism.

Yesterday I forgot to compliment how beautifully you described the difference between the two men. Downright poetic.

Think about it.



Off topic, but referencing your sig line and germane to the OP, this is what Harry Bridges was up against in July, 1934:

National Guardsmen protecting a convoy of Belt Line Railroad trucks during the longshoreman's strike of 1934

Those were dark days indeed. A particular relative of mine, young at the time, wound up with a big steel plate on his cranium where he took blows during the Great Dock Strike. Lived into his 90's somehow - a big pugnacious Irishman who kept a lot of speed and agility longer than most men. I loved him dearly, and he didn't mind telling stories of those days either. Including the time he knocked one of his own brothers on his keyster for helping break a strike at Granny Goose. He used to intone, "Regardless of what other wrong a man does in life, he can be forgiven anything except crossing a picket line." And he meant it too.

He left me one of my most prized possessions, his 50-year service pin which I keep in my bank box with a note that it is to go to the Harry Bridges Institute. He was Harry's West Coast business agent eventually, and I also inherited his personal copy of Bridges' portrait which still hangs in the union hall from what I hear. People look at mine and ask, "Is that Jacques Cousteau?" I just answer, "No, but he sure does look like him, doesn't he?" No point in trying to explain to these MidWesterners, many of whom have never traveled more than a couple hundred miles from home. They don't care one iota about anything except what Pig Boy tells them on the radio. I did once tell a woman it was Harry Bridges, who founded the Longshoreman's Union. She gave me a blank stare and asked, "What's that? I never heard of it." She knew everything about other local folks' social and sexual escapades and brushes with the law, etc. and that's all she cared to know in life. Period.

and absolutely flipped. His books were considered too mature and radical for kids, but I believe he was largely responsible for my political awakening even before my terrible teens.

Did you ever read The Wayward Bus. It always fascinated me how Steinbeck could make the stories of ordinary people so riveting.

He was also responsible (kinda) for the first time an adult called me a commie when I was caught with his books, some of which were actually banned from schools and libraries at the time. Like forbidden fruit, it only made his work more attractive. For awhile I even had to stoop to putting covers on his books so people wouldn't freak out so much. My mother had been a lit major like me, so I didn't have to hide anything from her or the rest of the immediate family. But oh my word, lots of people back then hated Steinbeck the way they hate President Obama now.

But I named my one and only child, a son, after John Steinbeck.

John became more a cross between Eric Hoffer and Studs Terkel, but his namesake helped him along the way.