Lament of the Low Born

It sucks to not be born into privilege. We all know it. We may try to cover it over with little anecdotes about appreciating the simple pleasures and romantic notions of an honest day's work blah blah blah. For all those people who like to cry about the invocation of class warfare, the rich are just damn lucky that the poor in these United States still have enough to make class warfare an ideological campaign instead of a bloody one.

This week I had to purchase new work pants. When I first started buying them, I knew they were union made in the US. Then some were union made in the US so I had to look at the label. Then I could either get made in the US from foreign materials or assembled in Mexico from US materials. This time I just needed some damn pants and didn't even look at the label.

It would seem to me that if the country was really serious about building genuine economic stability and growth a wise course of action would be to boost consumption of American made goods. So why haven't we heard any encouragement towards this end? Why hasn't President Obama called for a vigorous campaign calling for people to buy domestic?

Well, he made a tiny squeak about it and was immediately shot down by big business and the European Union. It is easy to understand why the European Union would not want protectionist measures levied against their goods, but why domestic companies?

Possibly because those who spend the most financing campaigns have no desire to boost the economic stability of the working class. That's right, I smell a conspiracy afoot. A strong working class will make demands of their employers. They want benefits and an equal stake in the success of the company. No manufacturer can bring a product to market without a labor force. They know it and wish like hell it wasn't the case. Right now while companies are acting frightened, they are enjoying an unprecedented level of employee loyalty based in fear. People are less likely to farm around for a different job because the market for their 'unskilled labor' sucks. They won't make demands because their employers are systematically laying off or firing anyone they can. Unionization is right out, and corporations love that.

Fear is effective in the short term. The last administration got away with torture and murder and a whole list of lesser crimes because people were scared to death of terrorists. Prolonged fear will drive people ape-shit-bonkers and you end up with Timothy McVeigh, the Una-Bomber, and disgruntled employees going postal. Fear can only control a population until they realize that the bogey man in the closet was a fiction created by folks with an agenda. Rather than opting for a safer plan of working cooperatively with workers, companies just try to keep the fear at a 'safe level'.

I dare say that the bogey man in the closet this time around, the world financial crisis, was so convincing that the forces behind it have even scared themselves. Imagine directing a slasher movie. You shot it. You edited it. You know the film. Yet at the opening you still jump when the killer lashes out from the shadows. It happens.

Companies knew that growth based on credit was risky. Banks knew it, too. A lot of people figured they were good enough that if their current venture went down the tubes, they'd just hop on the next one. But it snowballed. The bogey man of economic uncertainty had gotten loose, snuck up behind them, and started chasing them through the moon shadowed mists of a dieing forest they helped to destroy. As they run away they hand you, the worker, the task of killing the bogey man. They raped you and violated you and beat you down until your life was a meaningless existence of booze poured down in quantities large enough to forget how much it all sucks. In a slasher film those who created the monster would be among the first to go and you would rise to the occasion and become the hero. This isn't a movie. They will get away and you will be fucked.

What can you do about it? Nothing. Shut up and get back to work, slave.

Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.