Being Disposable
Here in Massachusetts, our COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing. And our governor is trying to force teachers back into the classroom anyway. Why? Well, if teachers are teaching, then parents are freed up to go sell their labor at a discount in order to further enrich some already rich people. Or, as we say in the United States, “participate in the economy.”
My wife works in an elementary school. Like so many people, she is, in the eyes of the government, disposable. They know that people will die if they reopen schools. But not people that matter.
This is true, too, of the parents who will be freed up to work if schools go back to in-person instruction. Some will die from a disease they contract at work, but they fundamentally don’t matter. Nor do most of us — if we did, they would have paid us to stay home. But they didn’t. They’d rather we die. I used to see statements like this and roll my eyes at the hyperbole. Not anymore.
I’m not writing this to ask for sympathy. I’m not facing hunger or homelessness, and I’m very well aware of how much I’ve benefited from being white in this country. I’m also aware of how disposable other people have always been in this country, and the extent to which I was oblivious to this when I incorrectly thought I wasn’t one of them.
Instead, I’m writing this as a warning to the people who matter. Because the number of people who feel disposable is growing. Some of you may soon join our ranks. People are being evicted, people are going hungry, and our government will not help them. Meanwhile, Tom Brady, with a net worth of 200 million dollars, did get almost a million bucks from the government to put into his fitness business. Because unlike me, and probably you, Tom Brady matters.
More and more of us are aware of how little we matter except as “human capital.” And even the mildest suggestions — the idea that we might get a break on our rents or mortgages, or get medical care and medicine without going broke, for example, as people in every other country as wealthy as this one do — are met with scorn even by people in the political party that pretends to care about people. “Don’t ask for government to do anything other than protect the interests of the rich,” they say. “Be realistic.”
Because I got to go to school with people who matter, I believed for a little while that I mattered too. I was successfully indoctrinated by American society. I believed in the flaws of this country, but well into adulthood, I believed in class mobility, in hard work, and in American exceptionalism. Our system is flawed, I thought, but it’s the best one possible, and I’m proud to live in such a democracy. Now I recognize that I was conned. That the “freedom” they talk about all the time ultimately means United States of America offers its citizens the right to say whatever they want while they starve and freeze in the dark. Hooray.
I will vote as long as I have the right to, but ultimately I have no attachment to this economic or political system. It’s a meatgrinder, and the overwhelming majority of us are meat. We all deserve better.
I’m too old to be a revolutionary. But neither am I going to be sad if this country proves too cruel and stupid to sustain itself in its current form. Nor will I be appalled if the guillotines come out. In fact, I’ll be in the crowd, cheering.
