obgligatory november post

Hi self who reads my shit caked commentary on culture, society, self, science, ad nauseum.

Nothing new really to report. I work here. I work there. I save money. I don't spend much other than what I blow on restaurants. Oh boy. I am getting fat. That's nothing new. I expect to if all I eat is restaurant food. Blah blah. Gorge, gorge. Work, work, cash, spend.

The cycle is in full motion. I do various odd kinds of work. Nothing could be more odd than to teach public speaking to engineering students only to turn around and work on their projects as an iron worker. Thus is the strangeness of life. Our economy is a no-economy. I am unsure what will come of the future of labor in the United States. Now it seems that absence makes the heart grow fonder for low-wage jobs--the same ones that left briefly only to return as non-union and no promises jobs. A different ethic reigns where people who complain are labeled as such while the larger picture of who benefits and under what conditions goes unstated. If we are the labor our only recourse to garner an honest wage is to do what our forebears did--strike. We have to organize and demand a better wage. This is a democracy. We can't merely hold that notion up and practice it for a few minutes every major election while we spend the majority of our lives toiling under the capricious hand of capital. That's a farce. It's an ideological smokescreen. We cannot for one moment think that hard work will produce riches. Hard work produces a wage decided by the person creating that job. 'Suck it up' is the motto of the day.

Globalization and a non-partisan unpatriotic global dollar define the terms. No wonder old men are being framed as terrorists. It was set up this way. Crash a few planes, crash the markets, and in the ensuing panic loot away, destroy files, and rewrite the laws by placing metal braces on the Constitution. The Patriot Act is fascism in plain sight. We don't reduce our freedoms in order to be safe. That's ridiculous. We could also limit the speed of automobiles to that of walking in order to reduce crash fatalities to zero, but what's the good in that. The risk a government takes in giving its population freedoms is a risk of control. Prediction and control is being orchestrated. We have a two party system that crowds out any 'fringe' voices. You know those voices. Fringe voices that call for universal health care--that's socialism by the way. They gerrymander districts to place the balance of power between the two parties into predictable cycles of election, incumbent challenges, reelection, and a steady replacement of unpopular candidates with future unpopular candidates. Each one is equally groomed to play to their monied handlers. The level of distrust and distaste for politics is also orchestrated. If you still believe that government is the problem you will work against it without realizing that in a democracy you are the government. You. The anxieties that we feel and the retreat to God and guns is driven by this total lack of accountability which signals a lack of control in the politics of the day. Of course we also have the dying media to grant culpability as well.

I am sick of the same tropes, the same sacred cows, the same demagogues, the same jobs, the same pay, the same fears, the same diversions. I can only disconnect myself so much from the media apparatus. But here I am listening to public radio all day long. I absorb it. I am unsure why I do. It informs my political cantankerousness.

On that note, I will continue listening to the radio. I will continue to teach my class. And I will continue to scrape by.