STRIKING OUT

    Following the non-story of this year's earlier threatened Railway Strike, two other unions: Hollywood's Writers' Guild of America, and the United Auto Workers are striking this week. The first of these, I hope never comes back: for Hollywood to fold would be a national blessing and they haven't had any decent screenwriters in decades anyway. As for the auto workers, like the railway workers earlier, the biggest news to me was that either industry was still unionized. 

    Unions today are something of a quaint relic of a day and age when working men were still presumed to have rights. Even farmers were unionized in some States. Today, Hollywood, Teachers' Unions, and Pro Sports Unions are about the only significant ones left in the US; and in those cases, the very organization set up to protect the financial interests of their professions are controlled by the industry itself. The same is true to a great extent of Government Employees' Unions, though in that case, it's used mostly to encourage nepotism and ensure a base loyal workers to political agendas. 

   It shouldn't come as any major surprise that the US is at the near-bottom of OECD countries when it comes to unionized labor (the bottom position is held by our Deep State colony, South Korea). During the Bush-Clinton Era, both parties sold out organized labor, and ever since, labor unions have become something of a nostalgic symbol---like clean streets, nuclear families, small businesses, and home ownership---of a great society that once was. 

   

    

    The rise of Neoconservatism and faux-Libertarianism within the Republican Party has anathematized labor unions to a great extent. One would think that a system that strengthened families and ensured high quality workmanship would appeal to Conservatives, but these days, it doesn't. That's not to argue that Democrats and Liberals care much about the working class either. Today, the Left's idea of 'supporting workers' is to raise minimum wages and eligibility for food stamps by a few cents. The Right's idea of supporting workers is telling us to work harder for less money and stop drinking Bud Light. 

    In the relatively small community where I was born, there were two large industries: a cannery and a railroad---both were unionized. A Neocon talking-point is that unions hurt small businesses. On the contrary: small businesses were flourishing back then. When a community has a minority of highly-paid skilled workers, small businesses are needed to support that infrastructure. Retailers, grocers, diners, garages, gas stations, etc. were everywhere. The small, family farms depended too upon access to the cannery and rail transport; and there were plenty of businesses selling farm equipment and supplies as well. Today, that entire county is a blot on society, the towns have about 1/3-1/10 of their former populations. Big Ag has taken over, and there's literally nothing there other than corn, soybeans, and Meth. In some of the smaller towns, the population in cemeteries outnumber the actual living residents, and some of the even smaller towns are altogether gone.  

    

     It also doesn't seem to dawn on many on the Right that Organized Labor would have been one of the most effective means of preventing the rise of Woke Capitalism, outsourcing to corrupt and dubiously-governed countries, and supranational globalist cabals like the WEF or the Gates Foundation. The much-ballyhooed consumer boycotts don't even make a dent in these Corporate looters' bottom-lines or their ideological commitments. A nationwide walkout, accompanied by other sympathetic unions---that would get their attention. It used to be too, that many unions retirement funds were tied to the stocks of the companies they worked for; hence the workers actually had a voice on the Boards of Directors and it's unlikely that any of the ESG woke nonsense would have seen the light of day in the first place. 

     The Controlled Opposition claims that Organized Labor infringes on the now non-existent free market and impairs the ability of Wall Street freebooters to turn a profit for their 'stakeholders.' Actually that is a variation of the same position that the Whacko Left holds; although they marginally include employees as 'stakeholders.' It's certainly not an anti-Conservative position for Labor and Capital to engage in things like Free Association and negotiating contracts between them. 

   The Neocons and fake Libertarians like to cast Organized Labor as self-serving and motivated by envy of their Corporate Overlords. This narrative is part of the Strategy of Tension that the Oligarchs pay politicians to promote to sow division among the general population. The Corporate/Deep State Cabal isn't committed to any ideology other than to maintain themselves in power. To the Right, they're portrayed as an antipode to Communism: If the Left claims that capitalist exploitation of the farmers and workers of the world is killing them, then the Official Counter-Narrative says that Capitalists producing value is the only thing keeping the farmers and workers of the world alive. Meanwhile, the Whacko Left holds the Official Narrative, that Capitalists are increasingly becoming woke and socially aware; and thus their vast concentrations of wealth and power ultimately work for the benefit of mankind. The Crony Capitalists win either way: with the Right in power, they get a free pass to loot the economy unabated; with the Left in power, they spend on social engineering schemes with one hand while getting their money back (with interest) in subsidies, tax breaks, and government contracts. 

    Unfortunately, today, most Americans have little respect for---and even less interest in---honest work of any kind; hence the idea of workers actually having rights is a concept that they can't readily support. The traditional view of a unionized blue-collar American workingman holding a productive job and maintaining a home and family doesn't set well with would-be Social Engineers on the Left; nor does the notion of such workers standing up to arbitrary authority appeal to many on the Right.

      If American workers learned that their Corporate Masters are dependent on them---and not the other way around---it would follow logically that this same class would not be especially tolerant of overbearing and arrogant Government bureaucrats either; since the latter is also dependent upon the productive class for its tax-base. That kind of 'wokeness' is what the Oligarchy really fears; so it keeps the population divided with meaningless political stunts or distracted into a stupor of permanent apathy with narcotics, voyeuristic sexual titillation, and environmental toxins.