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.