The System Works (For Some)

 

                                 Photo from Museums of History New South Wales

Larry worked at an office where the boss was an asshole. His boss was vulgar, disrespectful, incompetent, and was constantly cheating workers of their rightful wages and benefits. He was a jerk to everybody, but he was especially cruel to Larry, even though Larry was one of his better workers. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t been born in the U.S., perhaps it was his very competence and intelligence that made the boss look like a moron slacker by comparison. You see, the boss didn’t get his position by working hard or by making great decisions, he got it because he was the owners’ son. Life is like that.

It’s not that the boss — we’ll call him Devon — was cruel to everybody. He was surrounded by a group of buddies (all of them male) who always agreed with Devon and who also treated everyone else as inferior. Especially Larry.

When Devon had been made boss a few years back, Larry welcomed the chance to have a fresh start with a new boss. He had worked hard for the old boss for years and never felt he got any recognition or a fair cut from the company’s successes which he had contributed to. But as The Who once said, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Or as the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Devon was even worse than the last boss.

But Larry was convinced that his hard work and smarts would attract the boss’s attention. It did, but not in the way he wanted. Devon singled Larry out, always belittling him around Larry’s coworkers and to his cronies.

One day, Larry decided he had had enough. After learning that Devon’s buddies got a huge bonus while he hadn’t received a raise since Devon became boss, Larry was going to give Devon a piece of his mind. And seeing the state of mind Larry was in and Devon’s unwillingness to hear other people’s point of view, he knew it might just devolve into an old-fashioned ass-whooping. It might not be the smartest career move, thought Larry, but boy would it feel good.

Beverly, who sat at her desk in the HR department that was between where Larry’s cubicle and the boss’s office were, saw Larry walk by and she saw the anger in his expression and how the muscles of his body were bunched up and ready for action.

“Larry,” Beverly called out, attempting to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. “Can I help you with something?”

As angry as Larry was, Beverly had always been kind to him, and he did not wish to be rude to her, even though he was prepared for a confrontation. “I’m on my way to talk to Devon,” he said, his desire for action being rerouted into a plea for understanding. His emotions getting the best of him, he began to state his litany of complaints that he was about to use as weapons against his unjust boss. “I can’t afford to get my daughter braces. I haven’t had even a cost of living raise since he became the boss. He refuses to take any blame for any of the idiot decisions he makes but he’s always willing to take credit for the successes of everyone else. He’s cruel to everyone who doesn’t kiss his ass, you can’t take him on his word for anything, he never follows office protocol, and his mere presence here has been driving off customers who have been loyal to us for years.”

It felt good to get all this off his chest, felt good to have someone he could open up to. He began to feel his rage subside because Beverly nodded in sympathy with every accusation he made. Finally when he was done, she wrote some final notes in a notebook and looked him in the eye with a great amount of compassion.

“I understand your problem, Larry. You’re not the first person to express these concerns. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll speak to the people higher up in the chain of command and we’ll come up with a solution. Just don’t do anything drastic in the meantime, Larry. You’re a good worker and we’d hate to lose you.

“Yeah, but I really want to give him a piece of my mind,” said Larry, his heartrate still racing.

“I know,” said Beverly, a soothing sincerity in her voice. “I’m sure that would feel good in the short term, but remember your wife and your lovely young daughter, Jessica. Just sit tight and let’s see what we can come up with.”

“Okay,” said Larry. And he walked back to his cubicle and went back to work. It wasn’t like him to confront anybody like that in the first place, the situation had just gotten so bad he didn’t know what else to do. He felt better knowing that somebody in the company was on his side and was going to do something about it.

So in the ensuing days he tolerated the boss’s bullying, knowing that change was coming. The system was going to correct this big problem that was hurting the whole company. Larry just kept his head low, did his work, and took the abuse. Secretly, in his mind, he uttered the thought: “Your day is coming, Devon, just you wait.”

But weeks passed and nothing happened. In fact, Devon was on his case more than ever before, as if he had somehow learned about his conversation with Beverly. His frustration grew once more until at last he decided to pay Beverly a visit to see where things stood.

“Oh, hi, Larry,” said Beverly. Larry looked into her eyes and somehow he could no longer see the compassion there, although her words were still soothing.

“I came to check to see what was happening. It’s been a couple of weeks and Devon has really been bearing down on me.”

“Yes,” said Beverly, “well I sent a letter to the head of HR at corporate, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

Larry was clearly upset but Beverly wasn’t about to acknowledge it. “I’ll follow up with you and let you know,” said Beverly. And Larry, trying to express just the right mixture of disappointment, anger, and faith, said he understood and went back to his cubicle.

More weeks passed and with them came more excuses from Beverly. For all her expressions of concern, it felt to Larry as if she wished he would just go away. Although Devon was the reason for all of Larry’s anger, he couldn’t help noticing that his anger was focusing more and more on Beverly. Although she was outwardly kind and caring to him and Devon was overtly being an asshole, it was Beverly who had put herself in the middle. Back at his cubicle, Larry found his thoughts of punching Devon in the face turning more to thoughts of throttling Beverly. Both gave him a feeling of justice achieved.

Larry continued to check in with Beverly over the following weeks and months, each time with less enthusiasm and less ability to disguise his impatience. Months eventually turned into years. And while Larry had long since lost any hope he had had in the system, he continued to play by the rules that were in the employee handbook as written by corporate which he had early in his career been forced to sign. Until at last one day he walked into Beverly’s office with no expectations at all but merely out of habit. So it was with great surprise that she greeted him with a broad grin and a tone of victory in her voice.

“Great news, Larry. Corporate got back to us and they have decided to act. They’re removing Devon from his position and are shuffling him off to some other place in the business.

Larry’s entire being lightened with this news. All his doubts in the system had been unwarranted. The system worked and Beverly had his best interest at heart after all.

“And the best news, Larry, is that they’re making me the new head of operations here. Effective as of now, you can come to me with all your problems.”

“Well, a few years back, Jessica needed braces but we couldn’t afford them. Her teeth have gotten worse as a result. Is there any way the company could provide some kind of dental insurance?”

“I’ll tell you what, Larry. Thing’s have become difficult lately, what with the economy being the way it is and with me having to fix all the problems Devon was unable to take care of. Why don’t you just remind me of this in a few months and we’ll see what we can do?”

And so it went, for several more years. Until at last Beverly was transferred to another branch and was replaced by Devon’s brother, Darryl. Larry grinds his teeth in his sleep at night, dreaming of throttling Beverly and regretting his lost opportunity of punching Devon in the face.

A few months before Larry’s retirement at the age of 71, he saw a picture of Devon and Beverly hugging it out at a corporate retreat in the Bahamas.

We Are Given The Choice Between Genocide And Genocide

 

We built a compromise world by negotiating an agreement with the corporations. We permitted them to keep the power in return for some concessions. We gave them our support to do what they wanted abroad if they treated us decently here in the heart of empire. They gave us a certain degree of choice in who and what we might vote for, along with the illusion that by voting we might make things better and better with time. We didn’t know the other side was biding its time, until any opposition governments around the world fell. Until they no longer had to make capitalism look pretty. Until the populace gradually lost any memory of morality and virtues that weren’t rooted in selfishness and obedience and apathy. We let them keep the power and in turn they gave us all kinds of toys to play with to keep us amused, to keep us distracted, to keep us as children.

And all this time we imagined the future was going to keep getting better. That we were progressing somewhere that we might want to go. Even when things started getting worse, we imagined such problems were just bumps along the road of progress. Even when we voted in the party we thought best represented our ideals and things still got worse, we thought we could fix our party, that our party cared for us. Even when our party and the other party started taking hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations, we still thought they cared for us, shared our values on the sacredness of democracy. Even when the corporations started writing the bills our representatives then signed into law, we just thought if we voted harder we could set things right. If we just hated and blamed the other side enough, we could have a country based upon human values and not corporate values.

And now the choice our corporate government gives us is that we can vote for genocide or genocide. That we can vote for war or war. That we can vote for censorship or censorship. That all housing will soon be owned by Blackrock. That the entirety of the internet will soon be in the hands of a few billionaires, and what is not outright owned by them will be controlled and censored by them. We thought the internet was going to save us, would permit us to share information and ideas across the world. We thought technology would bring us freedom. And community. But now we are screaming for big tech to censor us. Well, not us, exactly, just those we disagree with.

Our last rationalizations for supporting the system we have permitted are wearing out, but there’s a new Deadpool movie that will soon drop. And there’s a new Call Of Duty that will be out just in time for us to celebrate the birth of the Prince Of Peace. And in it you can save the world from Nazis by killing whatever people anonymous authority tells you to kill. Because killing is wrong unless some voice in your ear tells you to. Just do what the voices tell you to do and you will never have to worry about anything. You will never have to make a difficult moral decision. You will never have to hold your own government to account. You will never be alone no matter how lonely you feel. And the magic of the market will guarantee that whatever you spend your money on will be good for the environment. And will make you a better human being. Because the TV said so. Because the economic professors said so. Because I’m pretty sure The Bible and Declaration Of Independence say so.

Once our grandparents fought fascism. And oligarchy. And corporate capitalism. They spilt their blood on foreign shores and in front of padlocked factory gates. They walked across Pettus Bridge, rode buses across the South, provided mutual aide in Oakland’s slums. But they only managed to fight it to a standstill. But the forces that wanted to control and exploit us were never going to be satisfied with sharing power. That’s not what fascism is about. They plotted, and waited, and positioned their pieces on the chessboard. And they lulled us to sleep. But we’re having dreams that we are awake. And fighting for freedom on the beaches of Normandy, fighting for the environment on Pandora, fighting empire with light sabers. In our sleep we claim that we are woke. In our sleep, we are screaming “Wake up, sheeple” to people conjured by our sleeping minds. In our sleep, we are arguing with AI, repeating all the wisdom that has been pumped into us by the corporate media.

Even at our desks at work, performing mindless and unrewarding tasks, we secretly know we are Neo, fighting the matrix.

The Righteous Path Of The Righteous Party Of The Righteous Human Beings

 

I hold my friends to higher standards than I do others. That’s why I choose to be around certain people more than others, because I deem them to be more interested in doing the right thing. That’s why I might tell a friend he has had enough to drink and be less likely to tell a stranger at a bar the same thing. If I see a friend making bad choices, I want better for him and will weigh in on what he is doing. I also like to think he will appreciate my input even if he doesn’t agree with it. But even if he doesn’t immediately appreciate my advice, I still feel it is my obligation as a friend to give him my opinion.

I’ve always considered myself a Democrat. I cast my very first vote for Jesse Jackson in the primaries in 1984. I voted for Mondale in the general election that same year. I voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992. In fact, I have NEVER voted for a Republican candidate for any office even once in my life.

So please take all of that to heart when I offer opinions that are directed at Democratic voters. I want what’s best for you. You and I mostly have the same goals, though we seem to be choosing increasingly different paths in how we pursue them. When I offer an opinion or ask you to explain your behavior, know that it is YOUR values I wish to defend. When I criticize your tactics, it is because they are failing to produce the results both you and I wish to achieve. And if we disagree as to how to achieve those results, well, that is a subject for conversation and not repudiation.

First, I would like to point out that you are currently supporting a candidate who has quite openly announced her intention to continue to support genocide in Gaza. I am going to presume that you and I find this less than ideal and would, in a perfect world, like to stop the indiscriminate killing of children, or at least lessen it. I think that there ARE things the Democratic Party could do to lessen the killing of children. Furthermore, I don’t think the uncritical support of what could legitimately argued to be a genocide is a choice the Democratic Party has to make in order to win the election. In fact, I would argue that the party’s support of genocide is going to cost them more votes than it is going to gain them.

I assume you are a supporter of the Democratic Party because you feel that they are the morally superior party. I also assume you feel yourself to be of a higher moral standard than others because you call yourself a Democrat. If both of my assumptions are true, then I would suggest that a moral party would do whatever it could to put a halt to genocide. That if said political party was not doing all in its power to stop a genocide, it wasn’t really all that moral of a party at all. Furthermore, if the preferred party of a morally righteous human being was not doing all it could to prevent young children from losing their limbs and lives due to an unrestrained bombing campaign, it is incumbent upon any morally righteous person to call them out on it.

I don’t hear people who plan to vote blue calling out the Harris campaign. Voters have the power to make her pay attention. I would go so far as to say you have not merely the power but the responsibility to use it. I would even go so far as to say that the blood of children is on your hands should you choose not to use the power you have to influence your chosen candidate to alter her stance on the ongoing slaughter of innocents. Again, this shouldn’t cost her the election, it would merely move her toward a more morally justifiable position on the Gaza problem and more in line with the general public. There is no downside to this, pragmatically or morally. We need not call those who disagree with you nonpragmatic purists.

You say Donald Trump would be even worse. That may be true, but that is hardly an argument against insisting your preferred candidate take a moral position that would not hurt her politically. Would it not be the pragmatic thing to do to push your candidate toward a position with which the majority of Americans agree? A Gallop poll from March of this year shows that 55% of Americans disagree with “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza.” Surely support for Israel has fallen further given all the atrocities we have witnessed since then, the murdered journalists, the incursion into Lebanon, the increased chances of a war with Iran. Furthermore, 75% of Democrats disagree with what Israel is doing. And yet they are planning on voting for a candidate that has shown no signs that she cares what Democratic voters think.

Or are they going to vote for her? Assuredly some of them are going to regard genocide as a red line. Some will choose not to vote for a Democratic candidate for President for the first time in their lives. How then, is it an effective strategy for Kamala Harris to support Israel without reservation?

It is the stated strategy of Democrats to get their candidate elected and then worry about getting that candidate to embrace the more progressive aspects of the left. This has been the strategy of Democrats for the past 30 years. It has been a spectacular failure. They have asked for nothing from those who claim they want to represent them, and have received exactly that. They have demanded nothing and gotten even worse than the bare minimum they expected. Of all the failed strategies that have ever been concocted, I can think of none that have been less unsuccessful. And yet Democratic voters persist, more avidly supportive of the strategy than ever before.

I am one of those whom establishment Democrat types often call a purist or an absolutist. And yet I cannot conceive of anyone more purist than one who adheres so utterly to such a failed strategy. Nor can I imagine anyone being more an absolutist than one who insists everyone else support a candidate who has never had popular support, and who is now neck deep in the blood of children whose only crime is inhabiting land which the Zionists want to possess for themselves. I cannot imagine a world in which someone who demands an end to such a situation is labelled a purist.

These are harsh words, I guess. Still, they are written by one who does not see you as an enemy but as a friend who has taken the wrong path. They are harsh words but they are spoken not in hatred but with concern. I get it, there are other issues to consider, but none that you will mention rise to the level of what is happening in Gaza right now. And I do not see it as realistic that a political party that is on the wrong side of genocide is going to be very interested in doing the right thing on the issues you’re most concerned about. Consider their fight to raise the minimum wage as but one example of their desire to fight for you.

Again, however harsh it may appear, my intent is communication, not condemnation. You need us as much as we need you. To consider us as your enemy rather than a concerned friend with whom you need to have a heart to heart chat would be, I feel, a mistake.

It’s Red They Win, Blue You Lose (voting is a sucker’s game)

When the system makes winning impossible, it becomes foolish to play the game. This may sound like an excuse for quitting to many, but it is not. It may sound like nihilism to those who dare not stare directly at the truth, but they are wrong. It is starting over. It is letting go of what does not work in order to try something else. It is abandoning illusion in order to find the truth. It is leaving the comfort that conformity and obedience provide in order to find some solid ground on which to make a stand.

 People wedded to a dysfunctional system will accuse you of refusing to use the impotent instruments of change provided to you by those who would be your masters. In truth, you are coming to the realization that it is time to take charge.

I look at what others point to as a collection of victories and all I see does not amount to a pile of crumbs. Those who are swayed by such scraps are like gambling addicts, remembering every time they left the casino up for the night while ignoring their impending bankruptcy. They are blinded by the blinking lights of the machine that robs them. One more pull of the lever and everything will all be right. One more pull of the lever and all will be right. One more pull…

 This is not cowardice to refuse to go along, it is courage. It is not resignation, it is determination. Determination to take the reins of power from those who shake the nuclear dice. To take the microphone from the propagandists and paid spokespersons and speak the truth and not the party line.

 It is the unavoidable acceptance of facts, knowing that to think otherwise is to engage in self-deception and the abandonment of our responsibilities.

I assure you that once freed from the box they do all their power to keep you in, you will laugh at the idea that you once considered voting for Trump or Harris. You will howl with laughter thinking of how you once put your faith in those who already failed you so many times. That you gave your power to those least qualified to wield it responsibly.

 You will one day look upon such behavior as you now look upon the games you once played as a child. You will one day cringe at the decisions you make now as you cringe at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of your adolescence, grateful that you have survived it. Knowing that it was mere luck that you made it through those days before you realized just how precious life really is. And you will ask yourself “What the hell was I thinking?” And you won’t be able to answer, because you will no longer recognize the foolish person you are now. And you will gaze upon those people you once looked up to and realize just how badly they betrayed you, and what a fool you were to let them get away with it.

There will come a time when you will grow disgusted with playing children’s games, in being led by children. In playing grown up instead of acting like a grown up. There will come a time when you realize it is not a game, and even if it was, no one else has the right to write the rules for you. On that day you will feel good, even with the burden of responsibility resting firmly on your shoulders.

 The story of our time is being written by idiots. By psychopaths drunk with power and terrified of all they cannot dominate. By the morally bankrupt and by emotionally crippled children. Their narrative weaves the thinnest of veils so that you see only half of their evil mixed with illusory good. Their illusions and puppetry can only ever deceive those who wish to be deceived. Those with a critical and honest eye will pierce the wispy thin veil, and an illusion once pierced can never again be mistaken for reality.

 This will be your future. You will be made to see the truth for what it is, whether you desire it or not. Your only choice is whether to gaze upon it as a helpless child or as a grown up ready to act upon what can no longer be denied.