American Aristocracy

At the beginning of the third season of Buffy, after she killed Angel and fled to the city, she stumbled upon a colony of demons that abducted humans off the street and stole them away to a world where time ran faster than here, where a few days or weeks of slavery aged them to near the point of death, at which point they were discarded as if they were of no further use or value.

If this isn't perfect symbolism for the state of labor in this country, I'm not sure what would be.

Human labor as an infinitely renewable resource, eminently disposable workers who can be replaced as easily as snatching another warm body off the street. What happens to us once they're through with us is of no consequences, for only the needs of the corporate masters, the consumption of our energy through labor, makes us worthwhile in their eyes. Those of us who do not feed the starving beast are beneath contempt, barely worthy of oxygen or sunlight, much less decent health care or food.

No other struggle defines us at this point in history than the class struggle, marked by an ever growing divide between the haves and the have-nothings. Those who bought into the American dream, who worked hard to attain that elusive goal of home ownership, are beginning to realize that everything that had been promised was, in fact, a lie. A shiny prize held out like a carrot dangled before a donkey, a glittering lure to draw the fish to the hook.

"Work hard and you will be rewarded."

Except... not really. Work does not produce wealth. Maybe it did, or, at least, provided enough for comfort. Now, more than ever, work produces debt. Unless one is very fortunate, to enter the work force with any chance at a decent wage, one must be willing to shoulder a load of debt that makes at least the first few years of one's working life the effective equivalent of carrying a fat banker on one's back 24 hours a day. And the minute it seems as though that banker might be induced to climb off, he is replaced by the grinning vampire representing the health insurance industry.

Every day grinds a person a little farther down, making the average person realize that no matter how hard one reaches, dreams seem just a little beyond the reach of one's questing fingers. The masters take and take and take, giving back as little as they can, until you have little to show for it except your house payment, car payment, credit card payments, school loan repayments, insurance (home, auto, health, and maybe even life), utilities, groceries, and incidentals. Rather than getting ahead, you find you're falling ever so much farther behind.

As children we are told that we can be anything we want to be, but how many of us can afford to tell our children that now? How many paths lead to success, prosperity, or even security? How many households are one unexpected medical disaster away from bankruptcy? More than we like to think. This, in the end, is what separates us from the American Aristocracy. We live balanced on the edge of a knife, where a lost job, a medical expense, an accident, or any number of critical occurrences can rob us of anything resembling security or happiness.

And make no mistake--this was not happenstance. The Aristocracy does not care if we fail as individuals, as families, because we are replaceable, disposable, and malleable. We can be molded into whatever shape suits their needs at the time, because we have become desperate.

Even now, today, as we see Congress debating health care reform options, we have only to open our eyes and ears to hear the voice of the Aristocracy speaking in far louder voices than we can manage. We cannot have even that tiny bit of security, for it might give us strength to resist and resistance must not be allowed. The illusion of freedom cannot be compromised. We have "free elections" (which are certainly NOT free, financed as they are by servants of the Aristocracy), but we are held in economic bondage nonetheless. Not to the state, as the idiot worshipers of Ayn Rand might say, but to the plutocracy, the oligarchy, the hands that ply the puppet strings.

If we are ever to be truly free, we ourselves must summon the courage to reach up and cut those strings, to risk falling to the ground. Maybe we will need to crawl before we can walk, but walk we must. The time has come, the pivotal point has been reached. They have never been as vulnerable as they are right now, with their mechanizations laid bare for all the world to see. The health care crisis is a grand lever, a huge fulcrum that affects every single American from nearly all walks of life. If there's ever been one point in time when it was more obviously "us" against "them," it couldn't have been more blatant than it is right now.

This is our Bastille Day. Do we have the guts? Or shall we fall back and let them win the most significant battle of our lifetimes?

I wonder.

"As children we are told that we can be anything we want to be, but how many of us can afford to tell our children that now?"

It has been a horrifying week, one in which I have felt incredible sadness. I am ordinarily an eternal optimist, but this week, I felt like someone close to me died. I am not a huge fan of GM, however, I hold dear the maker, the worker, the union member -- that they were sold down the river again. It kills me. On top of that, the health care reform talk has been an unbelievable disappointment. I don't know that I can support a party that is so willing to screw over its constituents anymore and am very disheartened.

So for my son, what can I offer? My plan now is to try to keep him in school as long as is humanly possible. I used to think I should get him trained in a practical skill so he always has something to fall back on. But, for what? So he can be chewed up and spit out? So his labor can be devalued and denigrated? He is smart, creative and inquisitive. Do I really want to see the powers that be snuff that out?

Somebody has to be in the wings, willing to take risks, make new ideas and develop and innovate. Who will do that when they are trapped under debt, ground down every day in no-growth no where jobs?

I think we need to learn to feed ourselves, and tell the corporate citizens who seem to be the only ones who have a voice in this country, in this government to fuck off. That is a hard road to walk as we are now all barefoot as many have lost knowledge and skill on surviving as we have been trained from a young age to buy a new one rather than make one (whether it is a radio or a hamburger).

I was shocked to read 'Underground History of American Education'and to listen to a couple of tapes by that author, to learn of the intentional dumbing down and tracking of American kids -- instigated by both capitalist and liberal elites, to some extent -- beginning in the early 1900s. Some of the big names in education and other famous figures were all in favor of it.

Your de-skilling comment intrigues me.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/

Site recommends "A Different Kind of Teacher" on redirecting education by the same author when I put that into Amazon I got

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto (Paperback - Feb 1, 2002)

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto (Hardcover - Oct 1, 2008)

Not having read any of them I hope someone else can say if they are crap or not.

Weapons of Mass Instruction. Thanks!

Weapons of Mass Instruction. Thanks!

but i can't find anything pertinent via google.


here's some other stuff:

http://books.google.com/books?id=tprbwAj9XzMC&pg=PA103&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=SBQE50EXo6gC&pg=PA43&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=V9gOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA465&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=uHYMHUZqluoC&pg=PA21&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=WqI9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA14&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=tF8C6NlrkbQC&pg=PA19&dq=de-skilling&lr=

http://books.google.com/books?id=1g60MM3ogpAC&pg=PA195&dq=de-skilling&lr=


If you google you'll find more.

I will read more about it. I'm glad you mentioned it, for when I am considering how my son can spend his summer, I will look for some injection of practical skills that unfortunately they have no opportunity to learn during the school year.

One of the Gatto articles talk about how the excess of schooling causes kids to 'miss important appointments with themselves and their families'.

I look back to my greatgrandfathers who were ships' carpenters or waggonmakers or captains of a sailing ship, and I can't help but think they felt as if they were masters of their own destinies more than most workers of today.