Here I go again – the at-will piece of human detritus that I am, according to Oregon’s great employers, twice now, non-profits, sacking me because I pushed the state’s vocational rehabilitation careerists outside their pathetic Little Eichmann lives by pushing for my clients – adults with developmental-intellectual-psychological disabilities – to get as much out of the state’s bureaucracies that are filled with middling folk who do not give a shit about people.
At-fucking-will means No Rights in the Workplace. That’s what these doublethink folk call it – right to work states. Making 18 bucks an hour, driving my ass off daily in three counties, in so-called green-my-ass Portland, the gentrifying center of the Pacific Northwest. Immediate termination, with the flippant – “Man, you are great, wow you really do great work for our clients, and, darn, I just am so upset I have to do this, but you just are not a good fit for us.”
So screw the argument about unions versus some other collective bargaining thing (read up on Unions here, you betcha, been stealing from pension funds to pay the man, the corporation, to line Union Bosses’ Pockets — may they rot in hell!). My rights as a human being have been cut off at the knees. Fifty-eight, over-educated, way too many decades as at-will, precarious, adjunct faculty-part-time journalist. So, those great gobs of jobs available in this bullshit economy, what, as even a tenured millionaire socialist like Economist Wolff says – Looking at 38 percent of workforce sacked, singled out, not working.
Wolff: I think people are feeling the pain throughout the global economy because this is a global effect. Europe and China and the United States are in many ways the three poles of the world economy. Everybody else caught up in the relations among them. So everybody’s hurting. But in a capitalist economic system of the sort we have, when there is hurt those at the top are the ones best positioned, and have the resources to push the pain away from themselves and push it on to those just below them. And so it, if you like, trickles down. And the folks at the bottom, the temporary workers, the part-timers, the unskilled, those in the least capacity to protect themselves are the ones upon whom the ax eventually falls. And they don’t have anybody else to pass it down to. So everybody’s hurting, but those who should hurt the least hurt the most, and those who should hurt the most hurt the least. It’s the way our system works.
Where does this take you, in your brain, in a society that judges you on work, on your acquisitions, on where you stand in the consumer sun of America? No retirement nest egg, no power to do or change the system, no cadre of friends and family willing to pool resources and beat this criminal capitalistic system. We are dog eat dog, sharks, a country of fear, and like the politics of fear we deploy, our own communities are spiritually and intellectually razed.
Reading Andre Vtlchek’s piece on the expat disease Westerners have seeded in developing countries — here posted at DV — and I have been considering seriously getting out of Dodge, and hitting the road, maybe Dominican Republic for a year, write, and not opt out but opt in, into another society, just away from this criminal white-Zionist land, well, it does some of us to pause when Andre speaks, or writes. But this is a death society, murdering and economic hits every second, but we cry crocodile tears when some kiddo goes ballistic and shoots up a community college. We are the Breaking Bad goyim, the country of elite dual citizens in Zion of Old and the New Zion of Indigenous Genocide, full of Uncle Toms, Tio Tacos, the entire cultural crap that is the second most potent mind drug we are all taking, all the mantras about nothing leading up to Black Friday, leading up to endless strafing of the common good, all this bullshit seriousness in the academia about our cultural shit, all the Hollywood and Pro/College Sports delusions, all of it, all those non-existent safety nets, and here I am, sacked as a social worker-teacher-supported employment specialist, developer of jobs, with all those certifications the non-profits paid for, and sacked, because getting people jobs who are deemed PWD – people with disabilities – is a job to the higher ups, not a calling or duty and necessity that should demand equal pay for equal work.
I’ve tried to restore some humanity in being sacked last week. They gave me ten minutes to clear out my desk. Hand over the laptop and Samsung tablet. Walking down the hallway of shame, boxes in my arms, I saw some of the fine people I got on with, who were my side, asking what the fuck? But with eyes, that fear, that, “It could happen to me” look. My supposed fellow workers, texting me all the time while employed, but not one texting me now, not one bit of sorry, not one goodbye: “Man, sorry to hear this happened . . . good luck, man . . . keep your chin up.” This is what our American families and American schools and American values teach us!
This is the state of this country’s mental disease – consume, and oh, sure, you get to pick that consumption track for sure – some go to Walmart, some go to mom and pop store selling the same stuff made by the same slaves of Capitalism in whichever country you want to pronounce on that care label –- Cambodia, Bangladesh, Honduras, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Mexico, China. This is it – fear, at-will, inhumane daily intercourse, no guts, fearing that any day that job will be outsourced, downsized, part-time shifted, mechanized, digitized. Then it’s the streets. It is the streets, for sure, for Americans who have either sided with the system, or for folks like me who have fought the system daily, moment to moment.
The Consumer Warring Gulags of America, of Europe, and Andre is so right about getting away from this shame, this dead from the neck up culture, this lobotomized and drugged Western civilization, where absolutely NO one around me is willing to go toe-to-toe on what it means to be American, left-right, Zen-Zionist, old-young, with-without. So the wrong seeds and bad breeds leave, head for sun, pot-belly sipping, sagging skin gated community paradise!
No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European, North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations. They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.
Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrants are snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.
Overall, Western immigrants are arrogant and stubborn; they feel no pity for the countries they are inundating. What surrounds them is only some colorful background to their precious lives. They are unable and unwilling to “adopt” local customs, because they are used to the fact that theirs is the “leading culture” – the culture that controls the world.
They come, they demand, and they take whatever they can – often by force. If unchecked, they take everything. After, when there is almost nothing left to loot, they simply move on. After them, “no grass can grow”; everything is burned, ruined and corrupted. Like Bali, Phuket, Southern Sri Lanka, great parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and East African coast, just to name a few places.
So, if I make that leap again, out of the United States of Israel, well, it won’t be veiled in any of the drivers that Andre explores in his great piece. How can I help? How can I help? That is the biggest shit-storm of a question in this society? There are not systems for educated, able, willing, crafty, social justice practitioners to insert himself or herself in this society. No open arms, alternative life agreements. Rents are criminal, food and insurance, all of it, a constant usury system, here, or in Dominican Republic (thanks to the Western criminals, governments, NGOs and corporations, all), anywhere. That willingness to work on community efforts, maybe move to Detroit and help, do, work, it’s not embedded in America, in any country with the “Western Culture” bullshit oxymoronic label.
I tried here, Portland, shifting careers, moving into another circle, and my reputation of pushing bureaucrats – almost exclusively corrective women – has defamed me. I’ve tried to find out why I was sacked, how a state agency in the Department of Human Services can accuse me of working outside the box withOUT any word, letter, notice that I am that person.
My boss felt bad, really bad, considering the decision. But I followed up this wrong termination . . . . My boss said she talked to counselors, who said they would be reluctant to work with me. Imagine, me asking, “Well, if I clear up any misunderstanding, are things okay? Keep me on, and I will clear things up. What is it that I am being accused of?”
These people with their crafty jobs in non-profits are as bad, or worse, than the corporatists. Shame on my bosses for caving, and I spent two days talking to people in Salem and in charge of vocational rehabilitation, and I got NOTHING. No word or red flag or anything on my name. Even counselors I thought might have been upset by my brash style, they contacted me and said they never ever told anyone I was a bad seed. No lawyer will take my case — ahh, right to work state, and the legal tics sucking only the blood that maximizes their 33.3333 Percent of the “take.”
But there are factions out there – this woman’s club of social workers – that speak from the sides of their mouths. This industry – imagine, getting people work trials and jobs who live with developmental disabilities, called an industry – is small, and if you make one misstep or piss off one corrective and recriminating female counselor, well, you might as throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I know, I know, some readers might be thinking – “Go out with dignity. Cut your losses, and stop complaining. This is life. Just move on. Don’t push when the writing’s already on the pink slip” (note, I never got a termination letter in writing, another grand scheme of the demon-crats and repulsive-cans in the one party system – that is allowed in our society . . . . termination without cause, without a hearing, without anything in writing?).
The reality in this retaliatory, punishment, fine-tax-levy-penalize society is that we have no communitarian spirit, no helping hand foundations, starting with K-12, in the families, until we have not one person out there with the ability to say –
The fucking banks, insurance, real estate, big ag-big energy-big pharma-big med-big prison-big military-big legal-big tech-big education industrial complex have screwed us, and, well, let’s fight back, push back, break back, in any way possible – out scam the liars, thieves, felons. Pool our energy, our resources. Stop the lie of a home is your castle and it’s rugged individualism. Stop talking behind their backs, and call them out, retaliate against the industrial complexes by opting out, stealing (sic) time, stop paying taxes (sic) and just continue to shame and denigrate the systems, daily, hour by hour, minute by minute.
Unfortunately, we are corrupted, and those expats heading out, a vast majority of the ones I’ve run across in Mexico, Vietnam, Central America, Thailand, well, they are the germs and parasites that are responsible for so much of the rest of the world’s pain.
The ignorance and misshaped humanity of the people I have dealt with for a good chunk of my 58 years on planet earth have gotten me here – girted, stripped of any sense of living. Each breath is monetized by the Zionists, the leading edge economists of this fucked up world. Here, Andre, again, my sentiments:
During my two-week stay in California I detected no remorse. When I showed and explained how millions have been killed by Western imperialism, people would say “oh how terrible!” Because, that is what they were trained to say. But there was no determination to change things, no true feelings.
Wherever I went, I felt thoroughly out of place. I was expected to “fit”. I was told not to show images too shocking, as people were “very sensitive”! Eventually, I decided not to show any images at all. It was understood that I should be polite. While all I wanted was to shout insults to the faces of those self-righteous men and women, who were following that appalling Christian tradition: do some good while ignoring real evil, all in order to buy some credit before facing eternity.
I kept hearing cliché statements about peace, about democracy. Some wanted justice and an end to wars, but clinging desperately to the symbols of the Empire, to the legacy of its old collaborators, like Vaclav Havel, Pope John Paul II, Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa…
I couldn’t breathe. I lost the ability to write. I felt anger building inside me. The anger was suffocating, strangling me. It was unhealthy anger, mixed with frustration! It was not that sacred anger one feels when going to a battle against great evil. It was also somehow petty, indescribable, and pathetic. It was breaking me, humiliating me.
I hated the fights I had to fight here.
You know, I got sucked into the Soros Democracy Now, years ago, and I even interviewed her — Mx Millionaire Goodman — for one of the fund drives for the Spokane radio station on which I had a weekly hour long show covering radical climate change-sustainability issues, and I know hers is a creepy background and the show is girdled, by Zionists, and there she was, Patty Smith, this past Friday, some sad thing of a human. Mother of punk rock (not), award winning biography. Three books, oh, great books indeed (not). Imagine, she went on and on, glowing over the stars she thinks are great, doing great things – DiCaprio, Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Neil Young. Imagine, her reckless nothingness, this punker, Patti Smith, saying how she still loves Obama, that she voted for him twice, that he is still a good guy . . . . Oh My Fucking God. And then the National Propaganda Radio interview of her with that Israel-loving Steve Inskeep. Patty Smith, radical (not) making the rounds this weekend.
I just saw Jill Stein on Tavis Smiley – after Goldman Sachs and Walmart did their sponsorship of his show. Imagine this shit-storm that is capitalism, that is America, attacking all sides of our ability to think, to move, to even make a decision outside the DNA of our Retailopithecus and ConsumoSapiens selves!
What is my choice? Stay in the Portland area, where rents and housing are out of my league, as all those refugees from California come in with a cool five million from a bungalow sale and fuck up a community’s ability to house its people? Constant gridlock, 12 hours a day. What’s the figure — 250 more people a week showing up in the Portland metro area to find their shekel factory? Of course, I am trying to regroup, reconstruct, reimagine what life could have been if I had gotten a tenure track job somewhere – Gonzaga 13 years ago, Spokane Falls Community College 12 years ago, University of Texas 18 years ago, El Paso Community College 15 years ago. I wonder what my life would have been if I had stuck to a newspaper gig, stuck in some small town in Arizona, or got on full-time on one of the dailies in Spokane or El Paso, Tucson . . . . Too fucking young to be thinking those things in this shit-storm of a country, Amerika!
No one I work with or who am friends with really wants to go deep, under the veneer of this cultural wasteland that is America – all the buy-buy-buy enthusiams; all the calorie-laden stories of gays and marriage, this or that school shooting, this or that wasted blip of TV-Print-Radio time death-culled on the stories written by and delivered by the very people who are the problems, not the solutions, TO ANYTHING.
People tell me to run for office, and people think I am a millionaire because I have the chutzpah and supposed pedigree (intellectual, educational) that would certainly belie a successful career somewhere in this shit-storm country. No, I am not – I am worse off at 58 than at 48. I am dying quicker than I thought I’d ever be dying. Twenty years ago was like a different world and history. When I was 28, I was working and living in Mexico. That place, thanks to Zionism and Capitalism, is dead.
Is this my death viewed in the mirror mirror on the wall, as in death by having no need or want or connection to this society, this money laundering scam, this idea hijacking lack of all things good and great, this deadening-us-on-all levels society that writes the world’s up or down thumb in every single category on planet earth?
So, is it perspective, or counting my luck stars I am not living in Mogadishu or Syria? Or what? How can so much of a life be considered detritus in this country? Does this rotten country really want me washing dishes for a living as comeuppance for not complying, for not sticking to the script of conformity? What is it that will drive a stake into the heart of this country. Into Europe’s soul? Into Australia’s and Canada’s brain? This world is turning zombie. One millennial and one baby-bomber at a time, every nanosecond.
A Kwanzaa Poem
by the Seven Foot Poet
It’s about love
It’s about life
It’s about our culture
Our family our community
Our genius our birthright
It’s about love
It’s about life
It’s about our culture
Our family our community
Our genius our birthright
We remember our glory our stories
Yesterdays yesterday
Those that came before me
Today’s today
Rebuilding our way
Tomorrows tomorrow
Sunshine good times
And learning from our sorrows
It’s about love
It’s about life
It’s about our culture
Our family our community
Our genius our birthright
Umoja – Unity
Kujichagulia – Self-determination
Ujima – Collective work/collective responsibility
Ujamma – Cooperative Economics
Nia – Purpose
Kuumba – Creativity
Imani – Faith
It’s about love
It’s about life
It’s about our culture
Our family our community
Our genius our birthright
Umoja Kujichagulia Ujima
Ujamma Nia Kuumba Imani
Note: I was given humane treatment by one African-American, around my age, already keyed in with what it feels like to be “let go”; i.e., fired or terminated. He has spent time listening to me, and he has shown a dignity and humanity that should be possessed by all. He was my immediate supervisor who was not in on the firing, or the rationales. He is new to the company I worked at since August 14, and he too knows his precarity, his probationary status, his replace-ability in the world. We are tools, rusty cogs, splintered levers, bent pistons in the machine of progress, a devolution of what it means to be human not on a rampage to destroy everything and everyone under us!