Bread and Circus
A grim fairy tale that's about to explode into an unmanageable and very real crisis
I have devoted most of this last year to Gaza and the joint US-Israeli Genocide, to their high-tech, machine-slaughter enterprise that will wipe Gaza clean so they can build resorts and casinos.
Too bad they murdered all the cheap labor. I guess that’s where we come in: We have lots of experience with slavery and ethnic cleansing.
So, yes, Gaza has been the defining moment of my adult political life and the reason behind starting this blog. But my roots are in labor and the fight for economic democracy. I was a punk, radicalized by Reagan, and have been in the fight for workplace democracy as long as I’ve been protesting for Palestine. If I had to give you my honest appraisal, I’d say we have lost, or at the very least, are close to losing the fight for economic justice. The Thatcher-Reagan model of global neoliberal finance capitalism has brought with it a staggering rise in wealth inequality, and after 9/11, both parties worked together to consolidate their dominion and strip us of our most basic freedoms:
The Patriot Act, which led to massive illegal surveillance of US citizens
The demolition of habeas corpus, which Chris Hedges fought valiantly against before finally losing to Obama at the Supreme Court.
The death of freedom of expression online, which took place on June 26, 2024, at the Supreme Court again (are you seeing a pattern?) And there was not so much as a peep from the mainstream press.
We got our asses handed to us, and when I see the brazenness of these two criminal organizations, the Democrats and the Republicans, I am, believe it or not, still able to feel shocked. What’s more, I am in no way surprised by the Supreme Court siding with power and capital because they’ve been doing so for years. What kind of country offers us a choice between (1) a bloviating, racist demagogue-slash-crooked, megalomaniac, slumlord reality TV host, and (2) a genocidal fool who sent an entire generation of Ukrainian men to their graves while telling beheaded-baby propaganda lies for Israel? The message is: “We know you are frightened, uneducated, and you won’t fight back, so enjoy eating the slop we feed you or we’ll cut off the already meager crumbs we toss your way…”
Ukraine, like everything else, is a money grab. Don’t forget that the country has been swallowed up by big equity ghouls and Wall Street firms, like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Things promise to get real juicy. Will this absolutely reckless and foolhardy currency printing bonanza end up with Americans needing suitcases full of cash to buy a loaf of bread, like in Weimar-era Berlin? No, they’ll do what they always do: impose brutal austerity measures for those of us on the bottom while exploiting some sideshow event – COVID, Russiagate, Nobama Birthers – and funnel even MORE wealth upwards as we perish…
… in slow motion.
The pain will spread,
bellies don’t get fed,
Down here in the hole
We really are in a hole, or maybe one of Dante’s circles of hell, which makes me think of Philip K Dick. I’m staying away from his stuff, for a while, at least; he’s starting to make sense, and that’s never a good sign. We have a problem here in the US, because while a huge swath of pissed off people demanding justice is great, we must remember: this is a mass of politically illiterate and fretful folk, easily swayed via social and other media, and the left has no organizational structure, no effective apparatus, that can reach out and provide direction and solidarity for a bunch of people who feel both very alone and frightened for their financial security. They are angry, alienated individuals, and the right is much better poised to reap the benefits of this current panic and inarticulate angst.
Since we’re talking about the economy, let’s not forget that we’re paying for Ukraine’s welfare state benefits — the very ones they won’t give to US citizens! We pay for their social services while workers here get nothing. Plus, Ukraine has been swallowed up by big equity ghouls and Wall Street firms, like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. After I ran through my unemployment, in June, I was told the maximum I could get in terms of emergency benefits — IF I applied to every possible program— was $247. But somehow we can afford to send billions in aid to Ukraine and provide the weapons and money for them to engage in a futile struggle, the purpose of which was to bleed Putin and leave Ukraine ripe for the picking. Well, it’s been picked dry, to the bone, but you didn’t hurt Russia at all.
Who did you hurt? Average Americans and Europeans, now reeling from the horrific policy decisions of both Genocide Joe and Trumpzilla.
Think of how much of this current shitstorm was launched by the Dems. And they still refuse to acknowledge how utterly criminal, mendacious, and thieving a party they have become over the last decade. Trump is really no more or less evil than the rest of that class of sociopaths who run this shitshow for a rapacious plutocracy. Mango Mussolini queers their hustle, that’s all. But he is also another anti-worker creep, and when people wise up and face the fact that this is a war we have to fight on two fronts, against two parties, then maybe we’ll have a chance.
That bar graph above, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, explains the uneasiness I’ve been feeling as of late. Finding a job is a nightmare right now. I’ve been doing pro bono work for a foundation that helps to feed single moms in the Fayetteville region of North Carolina. I want to keep doing so, but I have bills to pay. In any case, since this is my page and I ain't bothering anyone with a paywall, I’m going to give them a free shout out. They do great work, and times are tough, so if you feel like giving, you can check out the Rose Francis Foundation here.
I thought I’d be able to step back into an online writing gig almost immediately, but it is tough out there for everyone. It’s going to remain that way because the ruling class is nervous. There’s been a massive upward funneling of wealth that has killed class mobility, and our government has been propping up the economy with reckless amounts of quantitative easing, especially over the last five years, when Biden used QE as his one-size-fits-all cure for tough economic times. That means they’ve been printing money like mad. This is the cause of our currently out-of-control inflation, and the model is not sustainable. Biden relied on QE so much, in fact, that we saw the worst inflation rates in over 40 years.
Where does this leave labor? First, I’m going to give myself a refresher course and explore how we got here. Much of what I’m summarizing comes from the work of Wolff and Resnick, and I highly recommend their video courses on Marxist political economy, which are easier for beginners to follow than the David Harvey stuff, which is great, too.
Wolff claims that, economically speaking, things started to unravel in the 1970s and argues that there were three major contributing factors:
Women entering the workforce en masse
Computer technology
Germany and Japan becoming major industrial competitors again
How did the ruling class react?
One of the most important ways in which Capital has maintained control over the working class has been its relentless attack on unions and worker rights. Much of the right-wing reaction to the New Deal focused on the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the NLRA, which was meant to place the government firmly on the side of the workers. An unrelenting assault on the provisions of the act left it hollow and all but dead by 1980. That very year, Reagan was elected, and he reminded labor of where the government stood as soon as he set up shop in the Oval Office in 1981, when he fired the striking air controllers in one fell swoop.
The Democrats, who squealed like someone had just pissed in their Cheerios, well, they had no problem backing Genocide Joe and doing the exact same thing to the rail workers just a few years back. Yes, good ol’ “Union” Joe Biden crushed one of the most important labor strikes in decades.
Both parties, of course, are guilty when it comes to chipping away at workers’ rights. I look at the facts, soberly and rationally, and for me, at least, it’s hard not to notice the cognitive dissonance, the denial, the anger, the hostility at the workplace, the stress at home, the need to self-medicate — all of it — and wonder why we put up with it.
I have three university degrees and a teaching certificate, a whole bunch of publications, and I struggle to find work. It’s the same for all writers, young and old, and the irony is that we built the model that’s replacing us. It’s hitting everyone I know, regardless of where they are in terms of class and status. Machines are also replacing people in the service industry, and that is truly concerning. How many Americans work in the service sector? That’s right, 75%.
Should we give up and simply hope that we get the lesser of two sociopaths and hope he continues to toss us crumbs? But that’s what we did to get us here — do you see it now? Look real hard, and let me leave you with this:
That’s right — We’re working harder and producing MORE while our real wages have declined, year after year, for five decades.
They take that money, your money, and they use it to fund the murder, the rape, and the torture of innocent women and children. They arrest senior citizens for saying, “Stop Killing Children!”
We are going to get hungry, and when that happens, you need to be there for your friends. US citizens are thoroughly propagandized, and it will take a lot to shake them up, to get them to the point where they can see the things that have been right in front of them for so long. The reason we need to be there is that fascism will present itself as it always does: the easy solution to a nasty problem that you don’t want to think about.
That last sentence is, by and large, a good description of the average American voter, unfortunately.
In the meantime, write, organize, educate, share knowledge, and give back. If politics is an essential part of your life, your spiritual path, or your source of meaning, then the best advice I could give you would be someone else’s. A paraphrase of the always eloquent Terence McKenna:
Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, and give back in a practical, hands-on way….
If we could manage that, we could build real networks of resistance. I just reckoned we ought to start thinking about this. We can’t just let crazies run wild and rape and pillage and then sit back and say, “I just can’t figure it…”
There’s no better place to start than the workplace.
Semper Fi, my brothers and sisters. I have it on good authority that perseverance is about to pay off. In the meantime, shake a hand, comrade.
Peace,
Pauly