If you grew up during the prosperous Populuxe America era as I did, you should be aghast that the United States is hurtling backwards in every measure.
Watching America fall through the trapdoor under the First Felon’s misgovernance, we must be aware that those miles of excruciating progress our society has made from the middle of the last century is turning to dust and being strewn upon the wind.
Women’s rights, civil rights, justice, fairness, even wages have either been curtailed or thwarted. Our society is retrenching in so many areas.
Whether Americans realize it or not, or even want to acknowledge it or not, our country is in retrograde. Perhaps Americans have become too stupid to notice this. Or maybe the inheritors to my generation have calculated it’s better to coast than strive.
The most disheartening factor of all this backsliding is those who benefited greatest from rewards realized by prior efforts towards a more just society are the very ones braking America and dragging her back. It’s one thing to have advances clawed back. It’s another entirely altogether to yield them.
There’s no reason for women to have forfeited the bodily autonomy their mothers and older sisters achieved. There are no reasons for any non-Anglo American to again accept returning into the second-class slots that decades ago multitudes of righteous marchers, boycotters, advocates, and provocateurs agitated against and either substantially weakened or altogether erased. There exist no reasons for any Americans, for anyone standing upon American soil, to be treated then misjudged arbitrarily or cruelly because of perceptions of who he or she may or may not be.
Lastly, there is no cause for working people who toil longer, produce more though be compensated less than the result of their improved labor deserves.
How did America decide to cease going forward as well as forfeit what she could of progress?
Clever men, evilly wily ones at that, surveyed the nation. Their search revealed Americans must be the softest, most easily distracted patsies around. Particularly the willing dupes who’ve been persuaded sinister forces have conspired to leave them behind.
Oh. No. Not overlooked at all. Not set aside in the least. But convinced they’ve been. Or thoroughly swayed by the lie that all the groups they’d once seen their inferiors had benefited from advantages specifically funneled to them, channeled away from the fair-haired kids.
In twisted ways the complainers and malingerers are correct. Those perceived to have leapfrogged past them have benefited from “advantages.” Hard work which spurred them towards their goals. Navigating past the sort of barriers and over hurdles which had been intended to dissuade any less determined. A focus on success that at times might’ve been mistaken for maniacal.
The above used to be a hallmark of any once marginalized American segment seeking to rise. Now instead of resorting to the tried and true, the unmotivated, the disincentivized see strivers’ efforts as undermining theirs.
These reversal of top cat fortunes weren’t gifts given to underdogs. They were earned after achieving the bona fides several times over. Then when the prize still remained withheld rightful recipients often had to wrench it from the incredulous clutches of skeptical authorities and other doubting powers that be.
The shrewd men who sought to deepen and spread fissures into crevices only needed to be clearsighted enough to see into what pliant putty they plunged thumbs.
So successful have these sly boots been in making the disaffected trip themselves, they’ve extended their audacity. Bad enough the American middle class has shrunk because collective bargaining is under stress. However, the same string-pullers sowing discord have gotten the hands making the profits to further forfeit what little rewards are grudgingly parceled out to them through shameless arguments the wealthy deserve more.
No one should dispute that if the reward is earned it should be collected. But as the 21st century bobs along, the wealthy above us now becoming fabulously so aren’t just scheming to feather their piles. They’re clutching and grabbing as if it’s going out of style.
Moreover, the general public has been hypnotized into admiring their ruthless rapacity.
Rather than understand and adhere to the self-survival notion, “Like manure, money works best when it’s spread around,” these hoarders of wealth have thoroughly gamed the system.
Dissatisfied with contributing any share, much less their fair shares, to the maintenance of an orderly society, the ultra-rich have acquired compliant legislators and governing executives to pervert financial strictures to favor the highest earners. While there are sops thrown in to mollify the turgid masses below, those are pennies against heavy dollars the rarefied suctioned.
Although there have forever been gaps between the wealthy and those less-so, what’s expanding now between the two is a gulf. In the past, the American working public would’ve correctly revolted at the accretion of money we see today pulled to the top. Affluent as the upper layers were during their eras, the amounts being pumped upward were nowhere near as skewed as today’s. Those men and women would’ve judged the imbalance as obscene.
Why don’t we see this?
Unfortunately for our America, we’ve become complacent. The last five decades have seen industry forsake our country. It’s been abetted by financiers and assisted by elected officials. What other industrial nation has let its manufacturing base slide offshore? Yes, the promise was cheaper wares. Yet never answered was where those left unemployed could turn to find new positions. Certainly, those of that era found new jobs. However, little-to-unremarked was how the new employment paid less and provided fewer benefits, both forming the backbone of a fat, happy, prosperous middle class.
Now with technology on the rampage, the same question needs to be asked of men and women made redundant by galloping software. How will they sustain themselves? How much of the ancillary provisions that make work worthwhile will be diminished or altogether discarded?
Of course, never mentioned are the severity of the pay cuts incurred after new jobs are finally found.
Older readers with industrial backgrounds should recognize the above questions as the sort that will challenge 21st century hourly and salaried personnel. Until those who created the wealth wised up, bosses had the upper hands. With them they crushed. Their arbitrariness knew no excess when it came to squeezing further profits by soaking employees. So onerous were these conditions they forced the birth of organized labor. Otherwise, had management not resorted to viciousness or hadn’t regarded its laborers as dispensable, it’s likely the history between the pair would never have been so contentious as to energize the fathers and mothers who would form the rank and file.
From them emerged the golden period of labor which make inheritor American generations envy and fantasize. The one job whose wages made a home, a car, discretionary spending on consumer goods and leisure attainable. This and a company managed pension at the end.
Now with American workers more productive than they’ve ever been, pay is barely commensurate. Benefits are grudgingly provided. Lastly, accountability from below is unequaled by responsibility from above. Working in America has become a one-way street.
One without recourse. Just remorse.
Though the current labor force might love to blame bosses for their plight, they need to find mirrors. By becoming lax and letting what had been the vast powerful middle class shrink, American workers have made themselves vulnerable. And bosses are nothing but opportunistic.
When advantages open in their favor, they will exploit them. These recent years especially so because those ridden over have become so pliable their listlessness has made them accomplices in all but name.
An apt cartoon reflecting this might be one where a boss figure has a plate heaped with cookies. He’s surrounded by clearly blue-collar types. Each has a plate holding just a single crumbly. The caption would read, “Sorry, fellas, we don’t have any more cookies to go around.”
Working people shouldn’t be this spiritless. Yet the more our society advances technologically, the fewer of us heed our animal survival instincts. Three or four generations ago, two questions would’ve been asked. First, “Why do the wealthy need more?” Second, “Where is mine?”
Both questions go in hand in hand. And always should.
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