Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Get Back To Work

I just saw a commercial that began with the 'now more than ever' and 'during these difficult times' schtick. I thought it was going to be an ad for car insurance or beer or Viagra...but that was not the case. As the music swelled and a montage of hardy-looking folks unfolded the selling point was how... we all needed to get back to work! Plot twist!!

Yes, it was a commercial for work, or rather it was a paid ad to remind you lazy, good-for-nothing freeloaders who have been hiding out from a global pandemic that killed 100,000 citizens and is still going on in the middle of civil unrest...that the best medicine is to get back out there.

I want to know how the marketing meeting for this ad went down...a bunch of suits sitting in a conference room and then their boss storms in and says 'Americans need to be reminded of their most basic dignity...life, liberty, free speech? No, they gotta go flip those burgers, bitch! It's been almost a month and 40 million lazy Americans decided to become unemployed. So we gotta motivate them with some powerful images and voiceover speech.

Look, Americans love to work...or they have bought into the idea that they should love work because it makes them a virtuous Christian soul. Americans eat their lunch at their desk, Americans stay late b/c they don't want to be thought of as lazy, they come to work sick and spread diseases because they can't afford to take a break, pop out babies and have the shortest maternity leave before they run back to the assembly line, buy their own supplies for their classrooms so that they don't let students down. The avg American really believe they can work themselves to wealth. Despite all the evidence, the avg American thinks 'if I just work hard enough, I will overcome.' We work harder, not smarter. Americans forsake their family, health and happiness to work. I know people who have worked themselves to death.

The only thing American workers don't get...are the benefits of their labor. Last in pension, last in healthcare, last in unemployment, last in childcare support. How does a ruling class overwork, underpay, and continue to get the lower class to keep driving, keep pushing, keep working despite the need for reform?
It's simple: they used race. They told the white working class person to fear the black guy taking their jobs. They told the black guy that they're lazy and need to work twice as hard. And then they told both of them that the Mexicans are coming to takeover everything. They rotted out the Northern and Rust Belt unions by getting low-information, high school educated white factory workers to fight against expanding unions. Shareholders increase their wealth exponentially by sitting at home on their butt, but they push the main point...the whip has to be cracked, the illusion of the lazy worker has to be maintained to get them to work themselves to death. 

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