An endless battle for the rights of the underclass

September 2, 2023 by Heather Cox Richardson

On March 4, 1858, South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond rose to his feet to explain to the Senate how society worked. “In all social systems,” he said, “there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life.” That class, he said, needed little intellect and little skill, but it should be strong, docile, and loyal.

In contrast,

Lincoln believed that “[l]abor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed—that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior—greatly the superior of capital.”

[…]

The protection of property was crucial to this system, but so was opposition to great accumulations of wealth. Levelers who wanted to confiscate property would upset this harmony, as Hammond warned, but so would rich men who sought to monopolize land, money, or the means of production. If a few people took over most of a country’s money or resources, rising laborers would be forced to work for them forever or, at best, would have to pay exorbitant prices for the land or equipment they needed to become independent.

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The Cost of Strikes by Hamilton Nolan

When a strike doesn’t happen, there is still economic pain—it is just hidden away in a place where it can be safely ignored by the wider world.

Instead of viewing a strike as something that workers choose to engage in, try thinking about a strike as something that an intransigent employer chooses to cause by refusing to pay workers a far wage.

Workers do the work. Contrast that with owners, managers, and investors, who do not do the work. Of those groups, who “deserves” the most money? Call me a radical, but I would suggest that the people who do the work have the overwhelming moral claim to the money, and the people who did nothing but issue instructions to the people doing the work—or, even less impressively, simply hand over some of their own money for a little while to get the work going—have a lesser, secondary claim to the money.

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Dear Millennials: I’m sorry we didn’t stop them by Thom Hartmann (AlterNet)

When my boomer generation was the same average age as your millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth.

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Your generation today, in contrast, is about the same number of people but holds only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, if you’re the same age I was in 1990, you’re most likely struggling to own a home, are deeply in debt, and find it nearly impossible to start a small business.

And now that Republicans have handed all that money over to the top 1% — and five Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that billionaires and corporations owning politicians isn’t corruption or bribery but “free speech” — its getting harder and harder to do anything about it.

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It May Not Be Praxis, But We Need Corporate Pride by Cat Valente

Funny thing about corporate Pride. I think there’s an argument to be made that very few things have been more impactful in terms of getting this looping episode of Jackass we call a country on board with the validity, acceptance, and normalization of the LGBTQ+ community in the 21st century.

That rack at stupid Target represents such a vast and pervasive victory it’s hard to even call its corners.

There is nothing any single one of us can do that can come close to the sheer size of the massive neon sign Target hung up right in the faces of all those conservatives, the sign reading THIS IS FINE. THIS IS AS NORMAL AS 2 FOR 1 HEADS OF LETTUCE AND BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING. DEAL WITH IT.

If we lose corporate Pride, they’re going to think they won the whole war, and it will get very, very much worse for us out there, very, very quickly. Without that blinking neon sign dropped into the heart of their neighborhoods, the right will feel incredibly empowered in their crusade against anything not created in a Wonder Bread Repression Factory and not even have that one month a year where they have to sit with the pernicious, wriggling idea that they might be wrong about something.

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Trump plans to become a dictator — denial will not save you by Chauncey DeVega

The “enemies” that Trump and his next regime want to put in prison or worse, include not just President Biden, the Democratic Party’s leadership, and the members of law enforcement who are prosecuting Trump for his crimes, but all people who he and the Republican fascists and MAGA movement deem to be “the enemy” and “un-American”.

The American right-wing wing has been trained for decades by their news media and other political leaders and influentials to believe that Democrats, liberals, progressives, feminists, progressives and others who are not “real Americans” are to be eliminated and subjected to other genocidal violence.

I don’t want to give up my home or my community, but if it comes down to that or my life? 🇨🇦

I’d say I live in a liberal enough place I might be safe under a fascist Federal government, but there are plenty of conservatives who live here, and they are overrepresented in law enforcement. I’ve blogged openly under my real name about my political views, so I can hardly deny it. Our habeas corpus rights have been greatly eroded, so we can’t count on justice. And while I clearly want to keep myself safe, I want everyone to have personal safety. How much of a union are we if we abandon everyone with the ill luck to have been born in a red state?

This is why I don’t have much sympathy for the argument that both “red” and “blue” tribes bear equal responsibility for our cultural division — or even that the blue tribe is worse. (Not linking to it.) One side wants to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else while the other speaks truth to power. One side hates everyone who isn’t white, Christian, cis, straight, rich and male, while the other side advocates for equity and justice. Refusing to allow others to openly discriminate is not equivalent to discriminating against them.

Republicans like to play the victim card, but conservatives from the Midwest actually aren’t underrepresented in our government — they are in fact overrepresented due to the winner take all Electoral College system, capped number of House seats, and large states of the West.

Over the past ten, fifteen years, I feel like I’ve seen endless articles exhorting me, a progressive from a coastal, liberal state, to listen to the plight of “real Americans” — in other words, to defer to the poor poor Republicans in non-coastal states who understand what real life looks like and haven’t been led astray by book learning. This makes me bristle: I am as “real” an American as they, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that they have a greater claim to the nation’s future for holding “traditional” values. The US was founded explicitly secular, with references to God inserted onto our money and into the Pledge of Allegiance during the Red Scare 🙄 Ironically, many of these pleas are written by self-professed liberals.

Do conservatives ever see headlines asking them to consider whether progressives might have a point? Shouldn’t they be asked to question their views that everyone who lives in the city leads a “sinful” life, or that poor people deserve to suffer, or that anyone different from them is a dangerous predator? I’m frustrated at their success in anchoring themselves as the standard to compare against.

Cultural warfare was a political ploy designed to keep workers from recognizing our common ground and banding together against corporate abuses and thefts. (The policies I’m in favor of would make blue collar workers’ lives better everywhere, so the argument that I’m not considering their interests can fuck right off.)

Unfortunately, everyone who has bought into the culture war on the right apparently wants to exterminate everyone and everything that doesn’t follow their religious beliefs. That means I have to fight them so they don’t kill me and my friends — at the same time I’m fighting to make all of our lives materially better.

Just like Ukraine is fighting in self defense against a genocidal colonial invasion by Russia, I can’t be expected to hand over the keys to the nation to religious extremists who don’t see me as a fellow American, and who wish to extinguish the American experiment of democracy,  perverting the very idea of America, to steal power and enshrine their religious beliefs as law (while claiming to be patriots). We’re still fighting the Civil War in proxy. Defending myself (verbally) against those who name me enemy doesn’t make me the aggressor here. There’s no compromising with someone who wants you dead. This is existential.

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On Political Exhaustion by Jared Yates Sexton

Choosing to care is choosing to have your heart broken. I believe this to be true. But it is also choosing to see the world through eyes that can still marvel. See what it is that you are fighting for. What beauty deserves protection. Defining ourselves in opposition, be it to Trump or the GOP or this authoritarian death machine, only gets us so far. We must protect what needs protected while we choose to build something better, something that reflects the beauty of a world we love and a world we choose to see.

Emphasis mine.