Have you ever heard of Joseph Hillstrom, aka Joe Hill? Look him up the internet. Do some research. Fascinating stuff, I assure you. Joe Hill was an immigrant and a songwriter and a poet and a union organizer who fought tirelessly for workers rights. Tired of being mistreated by their employers, Hill and a slew of other workers just like him joined together to demand fair treatment. Hill was just one small part of a wave of workers who banded together in the early part of the 1900's, desperate to change working conditions that were exploitative and tenuous at best, and downright dangerous - even life-threatening - at worst.
Would Joe Hill be shocked to learn that in 2012, the battle for workers rights was still being fought? I have to imagine that he would.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in the United States of America in 1970. That's right. 1970. After decades of being subjected to hazardous working environments and life-threatening conditions, a law was finally passed to ensure workplace safety. The bill, like all the failed attempts to protect the American worker that had come before it, was vehemently opposed by big business and the United States Chamber of Commerce. Politicians in the pocket of corporate interests attempted to water the bill down, or remove crucial elements. In the end, compromises were made and deals brokered. The act was implemented.
It actually took until 1938 for a law to be passed restricting the ability of employers to exploit children for labor at extremely low wages. It took the great depression to pass the law, ironically enough. It was only when adults, desperate for jobs, resorted to working for the pittance paid to child workers that Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to step in and pass a law which included restrictions on child labor. Previous attempts to regulate the exploitation of children were blocked. That's right. Blocked. The forces of industry, and their enablers in the political sphere, wouldn't even consider the welfare of children ahead of the desire for greed and profit.
My point here?
My point is that Capitalism, despite being depicted draped in an American flag and woven into our national fabric, is far from benign. Corporate America only cares about you in the sense that you have a few pennies to line their pockets. The idea that an unregulated market is desirable is a delusion propagated by those who stand to gain the most from a lack of regulation, and those who have taken a deep swig from the pitcher of Kool Aid these same snake oil salesmen have been passing around for decades.
The tenets of Libertarianism and the growing pocket of far-right, free-market ideology is a delusion; a pining for a dangerous time that has somehow been washed in the sepia tones of a false nostalgia. Unregulated financial markets and a lack of workplace regulation and the inability for workers to organize isn’t “liberty” or “freedom”. It's exploitation and the machinations of greed that have been repackaged under the banner of Ayn Rand and “Don't Tread On Me” flags and a revisionist version of American history that frankly never really existed.
Libertarianism and the invisible hand of unregulated commerce are smoke and mirrors. A dangerous illusion. The idea of government as an unnecessary behemoth bent only on oppression? Another unfounded illusion.
Do people really want to go back to the days of polluted rivers and poison air and children forced into factory work for a pittance? Wait, I digress. There is no more factory work in America. Those wonderful Capitalist souls - those mythical and celebrated “job creators” - have shipped our manufacturing jobs overseas, to countries who don't have a government willing to protect their citizens from exploitation for profit. My mistake.
I'm not standing here taking a giant piss on the head of Capitalism. Should I be? Probably. But putting that aside, and looking at a Capitalist system objectively, I can easily see the positives. I'm not saying that a desire to make a profit is bad. I'm not saying that all corporations are soulless and evil. What I am saying is that human beings tend to be imperfect creatures, and the siren song of wealth and riches and the trappings that come along with it are hard to resist. I'm saying that corporations need policed. They need to be reigned in when their quest for riches ultimately begins to override their humanity.
Is government capable of evil? Certainly. That's why our elected leaders are all held in check by myriad checks and balances. Different branches hold other branches in check. Free elections ensure that politicians are held accountable by the people. Is it a perfect system? No. It's been tainted by big money and a corrupt corporate influence, bent on rigging the system for their own financial gain. But you know what? You can vote those corrupted politicians out. Try voting out the CEO of Exxon-Mobil. It ain't happening. I'd much rather be ruled by an elected politician than a corporate kingpin beholden to no one.
Back to Joe Hill.
Today, the new scapegoat for our financial problems has become labor unions. Through a campaign of disinformation and exaggeration and outright bullshit, unions have become the new face of a fabricated Socialist evil bent on the destruction of God's America. It's all a big steaming pile of garbage, of course. The corporate kingpins have seized on a golden opportunity to use misinformation to weaken the bargaining position of the American worker. They see a chance to exploit the worker in the name of more profits, and they're running with the opportunity. The death of the middle class and the environment and America's industrial base? Collateral damage in a mindless grab for riches. If you think they wouldn't giddily scrap existing environmental and labor laws, you're kidding yourself. Our elected officials, particularly the ones with an “R” after their names, are more than happy to help them. Who needs to represent the people when you can hitch your wagon to the gilded corporate gravy train?
Are unions perfect? Of course not. Like politicians and corporations, unions are flawed. Over time, some have become corrupted. The obvious thing to do would be to fix those flaws. Instead? Instead we're told that we should simply castrate the unions. Do away with them. Oddly, millions of Americans either don't notice or don't care that the voice whispering these sweet nothings about rendering organized labor extinct belong to those who gain the most by stripping workers of their rights. In reality, destroying unions because of some corruption would have been like completely disbanding Major League Baseball over the Black Sox scandal. It's a ridiculous and calculated overreaction.
Despite the work and sacrifice of people like Joe Hill, we're still fighting an uphill battle for the soul of the working class. Hell, for the existence of the middle class. Decades have seemingly taught us nothing, as we're led gleefully down the road to serfdom. Many of the voices leading us there are doing so in opposition to their own self interests. The financial titans leading the charge? What can they do but laugh as one lemming leads another right of the cliff?
Joe Hill would hang his head in shame.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
The Grind
I had something of a disturbing revelation on my commute home this evening.
It was a little after five, and I was sitting in traffic on Cameron Street near the Farm Show Building, listening to a Duncan Trussell podcast. I looked at the clock and did a bit of mental math. Home by 5:30. Probably be in bed sometime between 10-11. That's how a majority of the week goes, right? You spend the bulk of your waking hours at work, then cram your "life" into a few hours in the evening and whatever portion of the weekend you don't spend working on necessary domestic duties.
It hit me, sitting there in my car, that we spend so much of our life toiling away, and so little of it actually living.
How did this happen, and who decided this was a good idea?
When did we decide that all the bullshit we produce and purchase and worry about until we die with bloody holes in our guts was more important than actually living?
Who decided that our souls would in essence be sold before we were even born? Our childhood's nothing more than a prelude to picking our poison and leading a life of running endlessly in circles, usually making a lot of money for someone else while we worry about paying our bills and caring for our kids and fighting our fellow human beings for the scraps we depend on to eke out a living.
Who decided that spending our mornings idling on smog choked highways to chase a few bucks was progress? Who decided that getting a few minutes a day to choke down tasteless food before returning to a windowless cubicle was acceptable?
Whoever he was, rest assured he wasn't one of us. He wasn't someone who misses the sunlight and the caress of a warm breeze while he sits under artificial lights and tries to convince himself that he's lucky to have this opportunity to spend his life toiling away just to get by.
No, he wasn't one of us.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Winter Decided to Stop By Today
Winter decided to stop by today. About time, if you ask me. Almost sixty in the dead of winter, while seemingly a nice respite from the cold, is at the same time a little disconcerting. Besides, it’s not like we’ve been laboring under a lot of frigid weather so far. We really don’t have mind-numbing temperatures to “escape” from. With the exception of a brief cold snap that lasted no more than a few days, this winter has been anything but winter-esque. It’s disappointing, when it comes down to it. I like my seasons…seasonal.
Today? Today it’s snowing. Big, fat flakes that stick to a man’s beard. That great kind of snow that turns the grass and trees a beautiful white, yet leaves the roads and sidewalks bare and wet. In short, it’s an adult snow. This is no snow for children. Children don’t give a tin shit about the roads and sidewalks. They don’t spare a thought for the adults forced to wield shovels while sucking wind and nursing bad backs. Children pine for the thick, wet snow that’s most easily molded into snowballs and forts and snowmen. They not only pine for it, they pine for a lot of it. Heaps of it. School-closing piles of it. You can mark the passing of your childhood by the exact date that you see a forecast of a foot of wet, road-closing snow and you groan instead of doing a happy dance around the living room.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m an adult, and I like a good snowfall. Love one, actually. But all of us old folks know that when the inches of forecast snow start creeping into double digits, we start wincing at the thought of aching muscles, screaming backs and nightmarish commutes. You know that old saying about too much of a good thing? It applies here.
I went for a walk in the snow at lunchtime. I listened to Sigur Ros (which would be mandatory listening on snowy days, were I king), took in the snow covered landscape and breathed in that lovely and unmistakable smell of a snowy day. (Lorelai Gilmore could always smell snow coming. As she once said, “It's coming. I always know. I can smell it, and I'm never wrong.”) I didn’t think about the commute home or cleaning snow off of a car or any of the hundreds of winter weather inconveniences. I just walked and took it all in. I looked at the snow like a kid does, if only for a brief time. Oddly, that childlike feeling has carried over into the afternoon. I’ve been looking out the window, watching the birds flit around the snow covered trees, and I’ve been feeling the greatest sense of peace.
Maybe we need to take a step back once in a while and think like kids. Forget all the adult bullshit we muck up our lives with and reduce things to their basics. Look past all the noise and static and concentrate on the simple beauty in everything. Maybe the kids have it right. Maybe. Don’t tell them I said that, though. Those smug little bastards, with their young, strong backs.
Today? Today it’s snowing. Big, fat flakes that stick to a man’s beard. That great kind of snow that turns the grass and trees a beautiful white, yet leaves the roads and sidewalks bare and wet. In short, it’s an adult snow. This is no snow for children. Children don’t give a tin shit about the roads and sidewalks. They don’t spare a thought for the adults forced to wield shovels while sucking wind and nursing bad backs. Children pine for the thick, wet snow that’s most easily molded into snowballs and forts and snowmen. They not only pine for it, they pine for a lot of it. Heaps of it. School-closing piles of it. You can mark the passing of your childhood by the exact date that you see a forecast of a foot of wet, road-closing snow and you groan instead of doing a happy dance around the living room.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m an adult, and I like a good snowfall. Love one, actually. But all of us old folks know that when the inches of forecast snow start creeping into double digits, we start wincing at the thought of aching muscles, screaming backs and nightmarish commutes. You know that old saying about too much of a good thing? It applies here.
I went for a walk in the snow at lunchtime. I listened to Sigur Ros (which would be mandatory listening on snowy days, were I king), took in the snow covered landscape and breathed in that lovely and unmistakable smell of a snowy day. (Lorelai Gilmore could always smell snow coming. As she once said, “It's coming. I always know. I can smell it, and I'm never wrong.”) I didn’t think about the commute home or cleaning snow off of a car or any of the hundreds of winter weather inconveniences. I just walked and took it all in. I looked at the snow like a kid does, if only for a brief time. Oddly, that childlike feeling has carried over into the afternoon. I’ve been looking out the window, watching the birds flit around the snow covered trees, and I’ve been feeling the greatest sense of peace.
Maybe we need to take a step back once in a while and think like kids. Forget all the adult bullshit we muck up our lives with and reduce things to their basics. Look past all the noise and static and concentrate on the simple beauty in everything. Maybe the kids have it right. Maybe. Don’t tell them I said that, though. Those smug little bastards, with their young, strong backs.
Monday, January 2, 2012
It’s a New Year…and We’re All Going to Die.
First off, let me start by wishing everyone a happy New Year! Hello, 2012 and goodbye, 2011! Out with the old and in with the new! Oh, and did I mention that we’re all going to die?
It’s true. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but apparently 2012 is the year that Quetzalcoatl returns and a rogue planet smashes into Earth and pestilence and famine and Newt Gingrich are unleashed upon the planet by four badass horsemen in dusty leathers, driving hybrid SUVs. Finally, after many false predictions of our imminent demise, the Mayans have come along to make good on the threat of extinction. This is it, folks - the year it finally goes shithouse.
First, let’s indulge in a brief primer on this 2012 thing. Apparently the Mayan calendar ends on 12/21/2012. So one ancient civilization’s calendar ends and it’s lights out, humanity? If you listen to the “experts”, many of which have all manner of 2012 doomsday books to peddle, the answer is an emphatic yes. 2012 will not only be the year of the inevitable Russell Brand/Katy Perry divorce, but it will also be the year of the return of feathered serpents and a cornucopia of blackened suns and plagues and boiling seas. Never mind the fact that these conclusions are based on a complete misunderstanding of the basic workings of the Mayan long-count calendar. “It ends in 2012, so we’re clearly right and proper fucked!” (The calendar of fancy chickens hanging in my kitchen ended on 12/31/2011, and the planet hasn’t been sucked into a black hole yet. Make of that what you will.)
The slightly boring truth is that the Mayan calendar was divided into cycles, and the calendar ends when it does because a cycle comes to an end and then along came the Spanish with their Jesus and their diseases and their lust for gold and good ole’ fashioned conquering and putting people to death with swords - thus the end of the Mayan calendar. There was no plotting of the next cycle because, well, the Europeans did what they did best upon arriving in the new world, and that was to exterminate the indigenous cultures. So the long-count calendar was replaced with a more Jesus-friendly calendar. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. It makes perfect sense when you look at it realistically, but damned if it isn’t dull. No wonder the more wacky theories took hold. Feathered serpents beat out that boring cultural subjugation every time.
Planetary doom aside, there’s another 2012 theory held by the crystal-gazers that still buy Yanni CDs which postulates that 2012 isn’t the literal end of humanity, but a spiritual end. In some new age circles, 2012 is when all of humanity spiritually evolves into the next level of existence. Have these people seen any coverage of the GOP debates? If you can watch that collection of piss-poor excuses for human beings and still postulate that we’re on the cusp of spiritual evolution, then you’re a better person than I am. If anything, we seem to be going in the opposite direction of forward, from the perspective of evolving. Every year we seem to devolve even more, from where I’m standing.
Look, I’d love to buy into this idea of spiritual evolution. I’d love for humanity to suddenly open their eyes and grasp the simple yet elusive truth that we’re all one. We’re all connected, and everything that we do on this spinning rock effects everyone else is some way, shape or form. I’d love for humanity to denounce greed and selfishness and hate and move forward together. That being said, I wrack my brain and yet I can’t think of what it would take to make that happen. I sat drinking coffee with my best and oldest friend the other night, and I said, “I really achieved some level of inner peace when I grasped and accepted the fact that we’re an incredibly stupid species that are destined to extinct ourselves.” It’s pathetic, but it’s the truth. This, everything around us, is simply not going to end well. Christ, we can’t even sustainably use our resources to ensure our survival, because our greed and selfishness overrides our common sense. Imagine that…a species that consciously destroys its habitat in the name of material possessions and money and power. How can that species possibly embrace spiritual evolution? I mean, a lot of them can’t even accept physical evolution despite the evidence in front of their faces. It’s enough to make you wonder if we don’t deserve destruction at the hands of some feathered Mayan deity. At least if it happened now, the rest of the innocent species on planet Earth might have a shot at it when the plague of humanity is gone.
So now what? How do I proceed in 2012? Well, I proceed with cautious optimism and hope. I continue to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, even though that fades a bit with every passing year. I go into this fresh and shiny year with the hope that if 2012 does indeed have some cosmic surprises in store, they’re more of the spiritual awakening variety instead of the celestial shit storm that finally rubs us from the annals of history. I hope that we can see clear to stop being such selfish assholes, and go forward with love and respect and kindness. At this point we deserve to be on the shitty end of a celestial cleansing. Let’s start this crazy year by turning all that around.
Dare to dream, right? Dare to dream.
It’s true. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but apparently 2012 is the year that Quetzalcoatl returns and a rogue planet smashes into Earth and pestilence and famine and Newt Gingrich are unleashed upon the planet by four badass horsemen in dusty leathers, driving hybrid SUVs. Finally, after many false predictions of our imminent demise, the Mayans have come along to make good on the threat of extinction. This is it, folks - the year it finally goes shithouse.
First, let’s indulge in a brief primer on this 2012 thing. Apparently the Mayan calendar ends on 12/21/2012. So one ancient civilization’s calendar ends and it’s lights out, humanity? If you listen to the “experts”, many of which have all manner of 2012 doomsday books to peddle, the answer is an emphatic yes. 2012 will not only be the year of the inevitable Russell Brand/Katy Perry divorce, but it will also be the year of the return of feathered serpents and a cornucopia of blackened suns and plagues and boiling seas. Never mind the fact that these conclusions are based on a complete misunderstanding of the basic workings of the Mayan long-count calendar. “It ends in 2012, so we’re clearly right and proper fucked!” (The calendar of fancy chickens hanging in my kitchen ended on 12/31/2011, and the planet hasn’t been sucked into a black hole yet. Make of that what you will.)
The slightly boring truth is that the Mayan calendar was divided into cycles, and the calendar ends when it does because a cycle comes to an end and then along came the Spanish with their Jesus and their diseases and their lust for gold and good ole’ fashioned conquering and putting people to death with swords - thus the end of the Mayan calendar. There was no plotting of the next cycle because, well, the Europeans did what they did best upon arriving in the new world, and that was to exterminate the indigenous cultures. So the long-count calendar was replaced with a more Jesus-friendly calendar. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. It makes perfect sense when you look at it realistically, but damned if it isn’t dull. No wonder the more wacky theories took hold. Feathered serpents beat out that boring cultural subjugation every time.
Planetary doom aside, there’s another 2012 theory held by the crystal-gazers that still buy Yanni CDs which postulates that 2012 isn’t the literal end of humanity, but a spiritual end. In some new age circles, 2012 is when all of humanity spiritually evolves into the next level of existence. Have these people seen any coverage of the GOP debates? If you can watch that collection of piss-poor excuses for human beings and still postulate that we’re on the cusp of spiritual evolution, then you’re a better person than I am. If anything, we seem to be going in the opposite direction of forward, from the perspective of evolving. Every year we seem to devolve even more, from where I’m standing.
Look, I’d love to buy into this idea of spiritual evolution. I’d love for humanity to suddenly open their eyes and grasp the simple yet elusive truth that we’re all one. We’re all connected, and everything that we do on this spinning rock effects everyone else is some way, shape or form. I’d love for humanity to denounce greed and selfishness and hate and move forward together. That being said, I wrack my brain and yet I can’t think of what it would take to make that happen. I sat drinking coffee with my best and oldest friend the other night, and I said, “I really achieved some level of inner peace when I grasped and accepted the fact that we’re an incredibly stupid species that are destined to extinct ourselves.” It’s pathetic, but it’s the truth. This, everything around us, is simply not going to end well. Christ, we can’t even sustainably use our resources to ensure our survival, because our greed and selfishness overrides our common sense. Imagine that…a species that consciously destroys its habitat in the name of material possessions and money and power. How can that species possibly embrace spiritual evolution? I mean, a lot of them can’t even accept physical evolution despite the evidence in front of their faces. It’s enough to make you wonder if we don’t deserve destruction at the hands of some feathered Mayan deity. At least if it happened now, the rest of the innocent species on planet Earth might have a shot at it when the plague of humanity is gone.
So now what? How do I proceed in 2012? Well, I proceed with cautious optimism and hope. I continue to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, even though that fades a bit with every passing year. I go into this fresh and shiny year with the hope that if 2012 does indeed have some cosmic surprises in store, they’re more of the spiritual awakening variety instead of the celestial shit storm that finally rubs us from the annals of history. I hope that we can see clear to stop being such selfish assholes, and go forward with love and respect and kindness. At this point we deserve to be on the shitty end of a celestial cleansing. Let’s start this crazy year by turning all that around.
Dare to dream, right? Dare to dream.
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