Crossposted at My Left Wing and Daily Kos
I am pissed that Democrats don’t adequately address the issues of poverty, or the REALITY that HELL-FUCKING-O, not everyone is going to Harvard even under the best educational system.
True, in a city like Boston with over 50 colleges & universities within city limits, it’s not surprising if the barista at Starbucks has a PhD in Russian Literature – but for the most part there will always be a working class doing the shitwork of society, and they deserve to be paid to clean up the shit of white collar professionals just as much as those white collar professionals deserve to get paid for their skills & expertise, they deserve to be paid to clean up the poisonous shit left by the multi-million dollar earning corporations and the fat cats who don’t have to work for a living now at all. (NO ONE should be earning less than $10/hr – that SHOULD BE the minimum wage, because people can actually LIVE ON IT!)
I’m all for an educated population, but when people talk about education as the stepping stone to A Better Life, all I can say is that THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ROOM IN THIS WORLD FOR EVERYONE TO MOVE ON TO THAT BETTER LIFE. Still got to haul the garbage, clean the office buildings, empty the bedpans, stock the shelves, work the machines, make the clothes – it’s tough work, but SOMEONE has to do it, and those people deserve respect for the ass-breaking hard work they do standing on their fucking feet all day long every day – no job is harder on the body than a shit-level job. Even if you’re a computer programmer working 80 hours a week, you still get to sit down at your desk, wear clean clothes, and go to the bathroom when you want. You are probably not subjected to random drug testing, reflexive suspicion of theft, or fake personality tests designed to determine if you are likely to try to form a labor union at your place of employment.
Politicians would not have so much as a roll of toilet paper to wipe their asses without factory workers.
So let’s GET REAL, shall we, and embrace the working class of this country for serving the very noble purpose THAT IT IN FACT DOES.
I voted for sanitation workers, which I took to include the folks that have to go down into the sewers for a living. That has to be the most god-awful job on the planet; they have my eternal gratitude for doing what they do. My first job out of school was in the lab of a water and pollution control department for a large city, and even handling the sewage samples in a lab was outrageously stomach-turning.
Would it be cruel and unusual punishment to sentence Tom Delay to six months of the ordinary labor in the sewers these folks do every day (not asking him to do anything unusual, just to live a while in their rubber boots)? If so, why?
Food for thought there…
I knew there were categories I wouldn’t be able to think of, not having done those jobs – but I have done factory work up to my elbows in chemicals all day, and food service, watering plants, all kinds of clerical stuff, packaging stuff for shipping, janitorial work….
My revelation: What I do matters. What we all do matters. Society says it doesn’t, but let them go without food, coffee, indoor plumbing, transportation, clothing – the stuff doesn’t just materialize on its own.
Thanks for posting this! Sometimes it seems as though the working class is not worth a first let alone a second thought to politicians of any stripe. And if we are discussed it seems mainly to bemoan our perceived right wing tendencies. I haven’t seen much in the way of right wing slant, or no more so than among any other group of people. There was a study done recently on this idea and it seemed to debunk the What’s the Matter with Kansas strategy. Seems to have gotten little attention and as I don’t know how good the science is behind it I can’t really say how true it is. I don’t have a link but it was posted under the title What’s the Matter with Whats the Matter with Kansas-might want to check it out.
Also if we’re discussed it’s with pity at best, disdain at worst – as if They could live without us!