On Memorial Day

Why does God permit suffering?

The State tells us that the murder of ourselves by ourselves is acceptable, or, rather, neccessary. And so, on Memorial Day, in America, we might wonder if we should suspend this question or interrogate it.

In memoriam, in marmoreal memorial, today, our war dead, we remember, and those who made war and lived through it. Even if your sacrifice meant little to you, it means a great deal to me.

We remember you, today.

Fourteen Points about You, Me, and Everybody Else

I, actually, don't look anything like this.

So, I've been meditating on the last few days for the past three months.

And I have a couple things to say about it:

1.
If you wanted "CHANGE," Honey, you are about to get some REAL CHANGE, for real. 

I hope it's to your liking.

2.
I never thought the day after an in-inauguration would move me more than the day itself. The day after became a new kind of the-day-itself, and I thank each and every one of you for making that happen.

3.
The Law is something we subscribe to--and when it is often wrong--we resist it. The United Republican Democratic States of the continent of north America only exists because of resistance, dissent, and revolution. 

Never forget that while we agree to disagree, we disagree in order to agree. We build consensus out of dissent. But you have to know shit in order to disagree and then change your mind. 

Know shit. Be educated, nuanced, sophisticated, smart, and compassionate. 

Listen. Know more later than you know right now.

4.
We are all immigrants to this land..

No human life took hold in the western hemisphere, until immigrants, who crossed the Bering Strait/Sea, long ago, in our prehistory, settled it.

After that, the settlers were all people from across either of the oceans that nestle us in "the West," some of them, even in the earliest days before the Republic for which the American flag stands, brought here forcibly to labor without pay and to make more people, their children, who would also be forced to labor without pay, and to foster grandchildren, great, great-great, and great-great-great, great-great-great-great grandchildren, to be ensnared until the present day, and after, in American law and the "Justice" system, to be imprisoned, paid lower wages, to be denied the franchise, and to, on the average, die at a younger age, unless they were made to join the lowest ranks of the armed forces as cannon fodder or, often unarmed, shot dead by the police.

We are all immigrants to this land. This land, which is your land, this land, which is my land, from California to the New York Island(s), from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land, which, in point of actual fact, was not made for you and me, but which is a land upon which we are all living, so, we certainly had better start figuring out how to get along better, because none of us is going anywhere. Except for the very old, who tend to vote Republican.

We are all immigrants to this land.

5.
Respect people who came here because they had the temerity to believe in The American Dream. A Dream that still exists in those foolish enough to believe in it. Do not let them down! Respect immigrants. We are only a land only of immigrants.

6.
Jews are actually people.

Muslims are actually people.

Women are actually people.

Women's rights are human rights.

And black lives actually do matter, too.

Why is this so hard to get through your skull? Black lives mattering is not about all lives not mattering, it's about the fact that, heretofore, it didn't seem to matter to much of anyone not black that lives lived by black people matter, too. Not just your bullshit. This isn't that hard. Stop resisting it. It's called normalization, motherfucker. It's called Brown vs Board of Education, motherfucker. It's called Loving vs Virginia, motherfucker.

Could we, please, put a stake into that insidious vampire, in my lifetime? Please? It just makes you look like an ignorant asshole. And you're probably not that ignorant or that much of an asshole to completely disregard reason.

The point isn't that black lives matter more than all other lives when they're black, it is that lives actually matter when they're not white.

Honestly, this is so American basic. It's something even a racist could understand. In America, all men are created equal, even when they are black, even when they are women. And yet black men are disproportionately killed by the police and women are disproportionately underpaid, even when they are white, and even in Hollywood. The evidence is epidemic; the evidence is moribund.

Black lives matter, too.

I guess there's only one way to find out.

7.
Corporations are not people. People are people.

Any questions?

8.
Money is not free speech. 

If you have more money that does NOT give you more speech.

And THAT is the American way, okay?

Any questions?

9.
I'm sorry you grew up in coal country--or oil country. I'm sorry your fathers and mothers killed themselves to give you life, clothe you, feed you, and do everything they could to make your lives better than theirs. They were good people doing good things in this life. But the fossil fuels are fossils. 

We have to move on from fossil fuels. If your local, state, and national governments haven't done all they can--and I am certain most of them have done very little--to help your communities with jobs, most especially in the renewable energy sector, then blame THEM and vote them out of office. 

The canary in the coal mine isn't that big business found lower-wage workers to do the job you used to, the canary in the coal mine is that no one gives a fuck about funding a proper public education for you or your children, or figuring out a way to help you find a job.

You're not lazy. PS Black and brown people aren't lazy, either, Cracker. But we pay taxes to the government to make our lives better, not worse. I will happily pay all the tax dollars you let me to get your kids an education, get you healthcare, get you off drugs without incarcerating you, get you a job you like that will make you solvent enough to feed yourself and your kids, pay your rent, buy your home--if you want to--and live life for sunsets, dancing, laughter, friendship, love, music, reading, philosophy, pleasure, family, joy, education, civic duty, goodness, and NOT doing unto others as you have them NOT do unto you. 

We are our sisters' keeper. And our brothers', too.

10.
Rich people do not know more than we do and do not, as a function of their wealth, make your life, my life, their lives, or anyone's life better. Wealth only takes away some of the harm that life deals out to you, personally. Wealth doesn't make you happy or smart.

If anything, wealth just makes you better at taking advantage of other people.

And is that who you really want to be?

11.
The canary in the coal mine isn't a canary, it's the whole fucking environment telling you to stop burning fossil fuels. When the planet is dying from the fumes--instead of a tiny bird--I'm pretty sure it's time to pay attention.

12.
Educate yourself--because the Republican-led government doesn't care about your mind or body, male or female, white or black or brown. Speak truth to power. Volunteer; not just for religious groups--the world actually includes things beyond religion--and in this country, we're supposed to have a separation of church and state, which is a good thing. And here's why: it may not be your church. Are you really willing to take that chance? Stop trying to get your government to enforce your religious details and get them to embody the compassion that Allah, Adonai, Jesus, God, and the Buddha have been telling you to embody for the past ten centuries.

Vote. Run for office, locally. For Christ's sake, believe in something that doesn't only include you.

13.
I lived in the same city as Donald Trump for twenty-two years. If you voted for him, I feel sorry for you. But you probably didn't live in the same city with him for twenty-two years.

Because, if you had....

14.
The perfect is always the enemy of the good. 

Strive to be good. Strive to be happy. I bet no one told you it was very important to strive to be happy. Strive not to be angry. Strive not to be anxious. Strive to be compassionate. Do some yoga. Strive to be happy.

That's it. So, anyway.
Please, have a great day.

Labor Day: On the Value of Labor

Today we mark the annual, ritual acknowledgment of labor we fail to find, and fail to remember, in the "celebration" of Labor Day--which is really nothing more than the gateway exit from Summertime.

I closed a recent post with the ironic assertion that one's labor has no value. This notion is, of course, preposterous and vile. Under the non-protective (except to itself and its systems and beneficiaries) aegis of, following the term-setting rubric of, within the immersive environment of Late Capitalism, it is easy to forget that your labor has value.

Your labor has value.

Your labor does not have a price tag.

Your labor is not a commodity. It is not a thing.

The value of your labor is not--and does not derive from and is not defined by--your salary or wage.

Your labor is not defined by your job description, nor does its value proceed from it.

Your labor is a presence and an action.

Your labor is attached to, and emanates from, a person and a personality, a past, a present; a body in space and time.

Your labor is inextricably bound to and in your sleep; your nutrition; your exercise; your lodging; your familiars, friends, family, and dependents; your leisure; your play; your pleasure; your gender; the color of your skin, the perception of your ethnicity, your education, your class; your age; your health; your mental health; your happiness, your anxiety, your depression, your joy; your thought; your ongoing education; your travel time; your time; time.

Never forget your labor has value. Your labor has value. Your labor has value.

You have value.

Happy Labor Day.

Labor Day: On the Death of the American Economy

On September 6, 1936, the day before Labor Day, President Roosevelt addressed the country in one of his fireside chats:

[Workers] deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.... The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom -- a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.

At a time when our nation's elected office holders (one is loathe to call them "representatives" or "officials") prefer to punish the electorate--not to mention their children and dependents or the nation's very economy itself--by "sequestering" public funds in an extraordinary demonstration of bad faith and political oneupmanship, which is only part of a much larger abdication of civic duty and public interest, this Rooseveltian example from an earlier time not only confirms that we have indeed fallen but begins to suggest how far. 

It is an unspeakable idiocy that those in possession of government office do not comprehend (or perhaps care) that unemployed individuals, who are denied unemployment insurance benefits, are former and potential consumers no longer contributing to the economy or the collection of income taxes, because these "benefits" are understood, after all, as taxable income.

The distinction between "benefits" and "taxable income," in this case, is far from meaningless and verging on the perverse; moreover, to give it another turn of the screw, most unemployed individuals, having been employed taxpaying individuals in the past, have in some sense--and a very real sense indeed--funded the benefits they are--or are no longer--receiving. The unemployed individual is then taxed on this income that is the outcome of his tax burden, in an ever-dwindling eternal return of taxation on taxed income renamed as "benefits." The term "benefits" here is a perjoration suggestive of something wholly unearned--and which is distributed parsimoniously and rebukingly as if it were a handout--which is manifestly not the case. This is only scratching the surface of the nearly systematic dismantling of the American economy by deregulation, the coddling of the financial sector, the movement of jobs overseas, and the abjection of the American consumer. A healthy economy requires consumers to purchase goods and services which allow businesses to stay open and employ individuals who are themselves consumers and taxpayers. Now, re-read the quote from FDR.

[Workers] deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.... The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom -- a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.

Happy late Labor Day, everyone.

Labor Day

S.G.C.

What do we celebrate, after all, on Labor Day? 

Grover Cleveland set Labor Day up in the 1880s but placed it at the end of the summer, in September, to keep it far away from May Day, the Communist and labor movement's very European day for honoring The Worker and the hard-won eight-hour work day. That's an easy way to remember the difference between Labor Day and Memorial Day, incidentally: Labor Day can never happen close to May. Anyway, that's how I do it.

That initial reticence of Cleveland's has now blossomed into a full denial of the value of labor and the worker in twenty-first century America. Unions? A joke. A labor movement? What's that? Worker's compensation? Fair wages? Benefits? Insurance? Vacation time? Job security? In the Age of the Corporation, the pursuit of profit has overshadowed everything else. Companies move production and customer support "offshore" (in every possible way, a repellent term), in the pursuit of ever-higher profits. CEOs make salaries many times over lower-ranking employees for the first time in decades. And who suffers in the pursuit of corporate expansion and profit: always the rank and file worker. Always.

How did this happen? Well, the founding fathers put careful strictures on corporations, keeping them within states and denying them the right to buy and own each other, i.e., other corporations. But one day, the Supreme Court allowed--and not even in an actual decision--that corporations were persons, and therefore were granted the right of freedom of speech, ownership, etc. The 1950s, and 60s, especially, marked a backlash against earlier corporate exploitation and indulgence, but with Reagan and deregulation, the backlash against the backlash has increased exponentially. Under the current occupant of the White House it has only gotten worse, as if you needed informing of that with the many scandals of corporate interests and the lobbyists who serve them. Your government serves corporations, not you. Your government does not care about you, your health, your livelihood, your job, your wages, your ability to feed your family, or your safety (remember the mine workers killed recently, none of the many violations reported were investigated. If those violations had been acted upon, those men would be alive today. This is just an FYI.).

But always remember, even if Labor Day is a joke, always remember that your labor has value. Even as you toil in a salaried job for more than the eight-hour work day that was guaranteed over a century ago, I hope your labor has some value to you.

Hey, let's repeal the child labor laws, too!

But don't worry, be happy. There's always a silver lining in every dark cloud. Truest of the dreams is The American Dream. Trust in The American Dream, in a country where anyone can become President. Remember that we live in a society unburdened by class. Trust that progress is the driving engine of our time and that your representatives have your best interests in mind. Don't forget that when God closes a door, he always opens a window. In spite of everything, still believe that people are good at heart. And always remember that murder will out.