“I was looking for a job when I got this one”, is a comment some of us have made upon separation, or anticipated, or hypothetical, separation from a job. For some it is a posing of a devil-may-care bravado, because the job, particularly this job, is not central to my existence, or worth.
Now, with the bastard, fascist, capitalism we have now...it is not comfortably done. Can one go to a next job quickly [or at all]? Are we free to drop out, and not suffer because of it? Poor economic times reduce freedom.
Some few of us, used to rate 'fun factors'. Each job can be placed on a scale, each job has a fun factor. There are people who increase the fun factor on a job. Men would not stay on a job when the fun factor was too low. Such concepts reside in the minds of dinosaurs.
We have become wormy, maggoty. Of course, there were always such pukes, but few of them were allowed to thrive. Now, the milieu encourages it. When we were religious, avarice was a sin. Group solidarity and mores prevented much. But, America has made capitalism a religion where the devotees are sinless.
Some of these comments, i make historically, some societal, and some particular. Now in history, many postulate turning points. Thomas Carlyle spoke of 'great men'. Franklin Roosevelt was such a man, acceptable to Carlyle, and to Tacitus. Roosevelt, and the C.I.O., and the A.F.of L. allowed America a better compensated working class [which many call 'the middle class', it is not, we still have to acknowledge its use that way]. This is when America became America for most Americans. Then the apostate, Ronald Reagan came along.
The Republicans always hated Mr. Roosevelt, and tried to undo the things he did for America and Americans. Nixon would employ dirty tricks and do anything to get power, but much of his programmes were not a repeal. But then came along the reaganistas. Reagan in his first year attacked labor, and labor has not recovered. Reagan had been an union president, before he was a politician; but he colluded with General Electric. Reagan killed the Air Traffic Controller Union [PATCO] in 1981. Since then, in America strikes only occur in base ball. Unions have become weakened considerably, and corrupted. They have become the opposite of militant, yet the Repukes want their abolition.
Corporate greed got a green light. The 1987 movie 'Wall Street' had the character Gordon Gekko rhapsodise Greed. Since then Wall Street gave us the conditions of pre-Roosevelt America [with the addition of a continuously shrinking unionised work force], and a second depression. The movement Reagan had started, has gotten so extreme, Reagan would not be accepted in it now.
America has allowed this to happen. Now for a month a spontaneous movement, which began in Manhattan, Occupy Wall Street has caught the media's attention. It spread, first to large cities in America, and this week to Europe. Most of these people are young and schooled with a desire for some sort of idealism, and not politically affiliated, or corporately affiliated. In all those things, they are most unlike the Teabaggers. They adopted the epithet, 'We are the 99%'. They have occupied public space in a modern tented Hooverville. They were organically formed, and grew. They are largely self-policing. They realise in the larger picture that a real power holding elite [not just the literate, whom have been accused by the propagandists of that elite] have contempt for America, and control it. They are advocating for democracy, economic democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment