Hard Work

The demolition of Trump Plaza, Atlantic City, February 17, 2021

Well, it's a New Year, meaning holiday-season "seasonal jobs" are about to come to an end, and unemployment is going up again.

In other words, Trump will lie and say he's brought it down.

Of course, when a Democratic President brings unemployment down, people who simp for conservatism will say that these are "people who have stopped looking for work." Retirees, people who have become too disabled to work (temporarily or otherwise), or people who are, in these simpers' minds, just plain lazy. (Right, as if Reagan, Dubya Bush and Trump weren't the 3 laziest Presidents of all time.)

The great comedian George Carlin liked to say, "Most people work just hard enough to not get fired, because they get paid just enough to not quit." He also said: "If work is so great, how come they have to pay you to do it?"

There's an old saying: "Hard work never killed anybody, but why take the risk?" In fact, hard work has killed a lot of people, sometimes all at once, sometimes over time. It's why we have labor laws and OSHA.

These men who have "stopped looking for work" don't have the incentive. Why risk death or permanent injury for low pay and low or nonexistent benefits? If the CEO doesn't care enough about his employees to treat them well, why should we be his employees?

This is not laziness, this is self-preservation -- something you would think Republicans, with selfishness being the leading trait of conservatism, would understand, and they would want to do something about it.

But no: Their own selfishness triumphs over the workers' desire to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay and to be safe while doing it.

Let's face it: If how hard we worked, alone, determined our success levels, then a coal miner would have become President by now, and Trump would be homeless.

Instead of casinoless. And feckless. And heartless. And brainless. And moralless.

Conservatives vs. Liberals

Conservatives like to say, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner."

Conservatism is the wolves having steak, and telling the lambs that there will be some left over. Whether the wolves are telling the truth or lying doesn't matter: Lambs are sheep, and sheep don't eat meat.

Liberalism is 100 rams head-butting the wolves, and then leading the lambs to proper food.

*

In 1776, the conservatives wanted to stay loyal to the British crown. The liberals said no, we have to declare independence.

In 1860, the conservatives, then the Democrats, said you can't do anything about slavery, and you shouldn't. The liberals, then the Republicans, said we must, and we will.

In 1900, the conservatives, by this point an unholy union of Republicans and Southern Democrats, said we can't write laws to protect working people, because it would encourage laziness. The liberals, by this point a union that only lasted a few years, of Democrats outside the South and a few Midwestern and Western Republicans, said that working people need protection.

In 1932, the conservatives said the federal government can't do anything to fix the Depression, and it shouldn't. The liberals said we must, and we will.

In 1941, the conservatives said we shouldn't go to war with Hitler, because he's fighting Communists. The liberals said we must, because he's a Fascist, and if we don't stop him, he'll do to us what he's doing to Europe.

In 1948, the conservatives said we have to roll Communism back. The liberals said containment was the way to go, because it would stop them and prevent World War III.

In 1962, the conservatives said we have to invade Cuba. The liberals said we have to find a solution that will avoid World War III.

In 1964, the conservatives said you can't pass civil rights laws, and you shouldn't. The liberals said we must, and we will.

In 1968, the conservatives said the Vietnam War was wrong because it was ineffective, and we can fight it better. The liberals said it's wrong because it's immoral.

In 1973, the conservatives said Richard Nixon is not a crook. In 1974, the liberals said, "See? We told you he is."

In 1980, Ronald Reagan said he could cut taxes on the rich, increase defense spending, and balance the budget by 1984. In 1982, the liberals said, "Congratulations, stupid: You vastly increased the deficit, and you took us from 7 to 11 percent unemployment. Now, we're going to raise taxes and save Social Security, and you're going to sign it, or else your next movie role is going to be in The Herbert Hoover Story." Reagan wasn't completely stupid: He signed the tax increase.

In 1992, the conservatives said it's a minor recession. The liberals said you're the ones who smoked and inhaled.

In 1998, the conservatives said character matters. The liberals said if it mattered as much as you say it does, half of you would be gone.

In 2008, the conservatives said we need to win the Iraq War, and let the auto industry go bankrupt. The liberals said we need to end the Iraq War now, and save the auto industry.

In 2020, the conservatives said COVID was a hoax, it will go away soon, protect yourself by injecting (fill in the cure of the month). The liberals said America is smarter than that.

In 2022, the conservatives said there is no right to an abortion. The liberals said you no longer have the right to use the word "freedom," because you just took one of the most important freedoms away, and we will make you pay at the ballot box, and we did, and we are still doing it.

Every single time an important decision had to be made by the country, the conservatives have been wrong, and the liberals have been right.

Take that thought to the polls.

Conservative Time Warp

Last week, Cindy Hyde-Smith won a runoff election for a full term as U.S. Senator from Mississippi. She defeated Mike Espy, a black former Congressman and President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture. She won just under 54 percent of the vote, a solid win.

She won despite her 2007 vote in the State Legislature that praised a soldier in the Confederate Army for his efforts to "defend his homeland." The South, not America.

She won despite her 2014 photo of herself outside the plantation home of the Confederate President, former U.S. Senator from Mississippi and Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, wearing a Confederate Army cap and holding a rifle, having written the caption, "Mississippi history at its best!"

She won despite being caught on video, after the general election but before the runoff, saying it would be "a great idea" to make it more difficult for liberals to vote.

And she won despite a campaign appearance in Tupelo, Mississippi -- birthplace of Elvis Presley -- in which she stood next to Colin Hutchinson, a local cattle rancher, and said, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be in the front row." This was seen as an endorsement of lynching: The practice of an unregulated mob, with no authority from any government at any level, finding a person and hanging him to death from a tree. In the South, lynchings were almost always done by white people to black people. It was sickeningly common until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

She won despite all of that. Or... Did she win because of all of that?

I went on Twitter, and saw John Stanway, a native of Toronto, but clearly a good observer of American politics, say this:

I think it would also be fair to say that all conservatives' brains are, in general, frozen in 1979. They still think we're in a crisis of corrupt union power, high taxes, high crime, and excessive regulation long after these problems have faded away, if they were ever that bad.

A responder, whose real name I don't have:

I think you might be giving him too much credit. 1979 seems too recent. I'm thinking maybe 1897--before women had the right to vote, after Jim Crow and disfranchisement started to become part of the South's legal fabric.

This matches something I've said for a long time: Conservatives want to take us back to the depression. And I don't mean the one in 1932, before the New Deal and civil rights. I mean the one in 1894, before both Roosevelts, before the regulations of even the Food & Drug Administration.

At any rate, I am reminded of the 1965 song of folksinger Phil Ochs: "Here's to the State of Mississippi." Where the calendar is still lyin' when it reads the present time.

The Real "Real America"

Two days until Trump is sworn in by one judge, and sworn at by 200 million Americans.

You know how conservatives, and people in the hinterlands, are always saying that people in coastal areas like New York, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Hollywood (they never say "Los Angeles" or "L.A.," always "Hollywood," as if studio heads haven't always been Republicans) -- and I'm including the Great Lakes, which have tides -- simply don't understand the interior of the country, which they call "the real America"?

Well, earlier today, I just read a comment by a Facebook Friend, who pointed out that the converse argument is, at the least, equally true: "The GOP spent 8 years so demonizing Mr. Obama, and terrifying these isolated miners and others with no real concept of the rest of the country so badly."

This is true. They assaulted people with propaganda, to the point where "the people" want Obamacare repealed, but they're terrified at the thought of losing the Affordable Care Act. It's the same thing.

They say, "Keep your government hands off my Social Security and my Medicare." When the Republicans they vote for have been trying to destroy them since 1935 and 1965, respectively.

They believe foreign aid is a huge part of the federal budget, when it's about 1/10th of 1 percent of that budget.

They believe "welfare" is a bigger part than it actually is.

They hate the Department of Energy, when it includes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that prevents future disasters like the one that nearly happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

And, of course, just as the cities on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are home not only to "the coastal elites," but are also home to white bigots, so, too, does "the Heartland" have a few people who seem like blue islands in a red sea.

One more thing: When the enemy they hate so much wanted to attack a place to symbolize America, they didn't go a "heartland" State like Kansas, or a "God-fearin'" Southern State like Alabama, or even anything in a "Purple State" like Ohio.

The enemy went after New York City.

And it wasn't the conservative Texas gool ol' boy that made them pay. It was a liberal Democrat, the man from Hawaii by way of Manhattan, Harvard, and the South Side of Chicago, who did that.

Every time the Republicans get into power, the push their conservative priorities, and mess things up. And the Democrats have to go in and fix it all, with liberal policies that actually work.

The Republicans have lied their way into power. As their favorite President of all time, Ronald Reagan, said in a very different context, "There you go again."