When a Movement of the Left Does the Opposite of What It's Supposed To
For most of my adult life, I've been hoping for a movement of the left that would make the power structure tremble in fear, creating a national mandate from which said power structure would have no choice but to make meaningful concessions that would improve Americans' personal and financial security. I guess I should have been careful what I wished for. We finally have the movement of the left that I'd been hoping for arriving at our national doorstep, except its intent is to give Americans less personal and financial security rather than more.
Over the past few years, and particularly in the last month, the energy on the American left has been wholly and unflinchingly dedicated to cancel culture. And they've now been officially co-opted by corporate America, who now has at their disposal a volunteer army of pseudo-liberal snipers dedicating their lives to culling the corporate payroll and reminding workers across the economy how easily their bosses can ruin them.
The corporate boardrooms have to be absolutely tickled to see the Twitter mob doing this round-the-clock volunteer work on their behalf, seeking and destroying an ever-wider swath of people for naughty things they've said or done, or in a couple of high-profile cases, what their family has said or done, either recently or at some point in their life. "See what we can do to you!" sneers corporate America as it fires someone for an insensitive Twitter rant or because they appeared in blackface a quarter-century ago, as the ostensible champions of the weak cheer on the corporate gladiators as they take a sword to their serfs.
This is the opposite of how it's supposed to work, guys. After a half century of uninterrupted union busting and reduced economic security for American workers, a populist uprising was supposed to be about restoring some of that security, not bequeathing an even more muscular culture of fear to the bourgeoisie. And while there's plenty to dislike about police conduct and some questionable tactics by their union, the left doesn't seem to realize that the rationale from which they increasingly condemn the existence of police unions is a template that is easily transferable for justifying crushing all unions. If they are successful in removing union protections and collective bargaining power for police officers, they will find it even harder to successfully commandeer union organizing elsewhere in the economy.
Far as I can tell, the current movement overtaking the country not only represents 180-proof cultural poison all but guaranteed to completely tear the country apart and render our differences irreconcilable, but also represents one giant step backward to any organized ability for the working-class to gain leverage against the corporate overlords eating everybody's lunch. It seems as though all of history is one extended lesson in the masses being unwilling architects of their own demise. In an ideal world, the Twitter illuminati vowing their stated set of goals could muster up the introspection needed to realize the strange bedfellows who've co-opted them have an entirely different set of sinister priorities, but it seems unlikely. The "woke" will probably just continue to be useful idiots too naive to realize that they're serving the enemy until the wreckage they've incurred is beyond repair.
Over the past few years, and particularly in the last month, the energy on the American left has been wholly and unflinchingly dedicated to cancel culture. And they've now been officially co-opted by corporate America, who now has at their disposal a volunteer army of pseudo-liberal snipers dedicating their lives to culling the corporate payroll and reminding workers across the economy how easily their bosses can ruin them.
The corporate boardrooms have to be absolutely tickled to see the Twitter mob doing this round-the-clock volunteer work on their behalf, seeking and destroying an ever-wider swath of people for naughty things they've said or done, or in a couple of high-profile cases, what their family has said or done, either recently or at some point in their life. "See what we can do to you!" sneers corporate America as it fires someone for an insensitive Twitter rant or because they appeared in blackface a quarter-century ago, as the ostensible champions of the weak cheer on the corporate gladiators as they take a sword to their serfs.
This is the opposite of how it's supposed to work, guys. After a half century of uninterrupted union busting and reduced economic security for American workers, a populist uprising was supposed to be about restoring some of that security, not bequeathing an even more muscular culture of fear to the bourgeoisie. And while there's plenty to dislike about police conduct and some questionable tactics by their union, the left doesn't seem to realize that the rationale from which they increasingly condemn the existence of police unions is a template that is easily transferable for justifying crushing all unions. If they are successful in removing union protections and collective bargaining power for police officers, they will find it even harder to successfully commandeer union organizing elsewhere in the economy.
Far as I can tell, the current movement overtaking the country not only represents 180-proof cultural poison all but guaranteed to completely tear the country apart and render our differences irreconcilable, but also represents one giant step backward to any organized ability for the working-class to gain leverage against the corporate overlords eating everybody's lunch. It seems as though all of history is one extended lesson in the masses being unwilling architects of their own demise. In an ideal world, the Twitter illuminati vowing their stated set of goals could muster up the introspection needed to realize the strange bedfellows who've co-opted them have an entirely different set of sinister priorities, but it seems unlikely. The "woke" will probably just continue to be useful idiots too naive to realize that they're serving the enemy until the wreckage they've incurred is beyond repair.
posted by Mark at 6:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home