Hanging on my wall in my office is a framed piece of art I did as a ten-year-old.

Its relevancy tugs at my heart today, as we stand on the precipice of millions of Americans going hungry as they lose food aid, while Trump builds his frivolous, gilded ballroom financed by his billionaire bros.

Wealth inequality has never been more glaring.  

Even in 1965, as a 10-year-old I knew that a society couldn’t be all that great if there was such a discrepancy between the haves and have-nots.

Greed Is Good

But the difference between today and the Johnson years, when I drew this picture, was that though income inequality existed, our government wanted to do something about it.

If there was hunger, we would try to feed them.

Provide health care for the elderly and the disabled,

One thing I learned that year was that our country, like my parents, would always take care of us. Our government would be there to catch us if we fell. Especially in old age.

1965

1965 was a great year

A Kandy colored world, melding flower power with the New! and Improved! it was the beginning of the Great Society that brought to fruition the principles that defined us as Americans. The good and caring America I pledged allegiance to every morning in school.

It was great not only because of the Beach Boys, or Hermans Hermits, or   Sandy Koufax pitching a perfect game. It wasn’t just the marvel of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can, or the fact that I took my very first airplane ride, performed at the N.Y. World’s Fair or The Beatles, yes, the Beatles played at Shea Stadium, a mere car ride from my house.

We were living in a Great Society. Or striving to be one.

The year began with President Lyndon Johnson promising to create  a Great Society “where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.”

LBJ had won the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. We had a president who used this mandate to push domestic improvements he believed would better Americans’ quality of life.

He passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, erasing America’s longstanding policy of limiting immigration based on the nation of origin. We would live up to being a welcoming nation to the ideals of Lady Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor your huddled masses yearning to be free.”

Johnson fought a War on Poverty and created  Medicare/Medicaid,  and Head Start. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law, outlawing discrimination and voting practices adopted by southern states during the Civil War. He signed the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for the Arts.

We were moving as I believed America always did- forward in an inclusive way, trying to correct past wrongs. That was the America of my youth that I witnessed and believed in. The society was flawed; it was messy, and we were getting mired in Vietnam.

But we had a president who wanted to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, and improve the quality of life for all Americans through social welfare programs and civil rights legislation.

Everything Trump is dismantling now.

“Greed is Good” Detail of childhood drawing, Sally Edelstein 1965

Trump is perverting Johnson’s War on Poverty and turning against the people,  depriving them of resources, finances, and health care. The very people who likely voted for him.

When the SNAP program shuts down, we will have the most mass hunger suffering we’ve had in America since the Great Depression.

We are no longer a Great Society. It has fallen into the ash heap of history. Trump’s society is a cruel one.

And that’s the point.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream

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