Get ready to bailout that poor, struggling oil industry - you know the industry that has billions in annual profits and that taxpayers already spend $20 billion a year subsidizing. Real man of the people here.
Migrant workers are fellow workers, migrants’ rights are workers’ rights, and nationalism is a crock of shit that’s imposed upon us to keep us fighting amongst each other for scraps because if we stood together there’d be nothing we couldn’t do.
The way immigrants are treated is pretty fucked up, isn’t it? I think so. If you think so, too, then you should join the fight for migrant workers’ rights over at https://iww.org
I don’t usually reference biblical anecdotes, but this seems too fitting.
In the book of Exodus, when the Israelites are freed from bondage and flee across the Red Sea, all they want is protection from the pursuing Egyptians. They don’t want to die. When the sea collapses on their enemy, they rejoice and thank the Lord who saved them.
But soon they start complaining. And after wandering a mere seven weeks, they grow impatient when Moses ascends a mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, something the Lord promises will protect them forever. When Moses doesn’t return exactly on time, the people revolt, they build a golden calf as something new to believe in, and — well, you know how that works out.
I bring this up because here we are, in 2020, pursued by a plague that has us terrified. A shutdown is in place, because nearly all science and medical experts suggest it is the best way to stop the threat. And at the start, we were grateful for the protection. We saw the slow but positive results.
But after less than seven weeks, our patience, in pockets, seems to be running out, and some of us are throwing angry protests and demanding freedom from this “protection,” and looking for a new golden calf to believe in, one rooted in anger, politics and an emotional knee-jerk leader, who says he’s leaving things to the states, then tweets out “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”
Which explains why I got so many questions last week from friends around the country, who saw a protest in Lansing that featured a logjam of cars, people screaming “Lock Her Up!” and a phalanx of gun-toting men in close proximity on the Capitol steps.
And they asked me, “What’s going on in your state?”
Here is my response.
That’s not my state. That’s not my Michigan. A few thousand folks in a state of 10 million is not representative of anything besides a pocket of citizens who want to express their frustration. Quite frankly, if it involves guns, you could whip up a thousand people here by whistling out your window.
But the Michigan I know, while entitled to practice its First Amendment rights, doesn’t defy common sense by clustering together during a virus pandemic that can spread itself through someone’s breathing.
The Michigan I know understands that if you catch this disease, no matter how young or old, there’s a chance, as front-line nurses and doctors keep saying, that you’ll walk into an emergency room on your own, and be in intensive care an hour later. And no gun will save you.
The Michigan I know can endure more than a month of inconvenience. We are tougher than that. Sure, we may not like that our golf courses are closed, we can’t put a motorboat in the water, we can’t shop for paint, and our lawn maintenance companies aren’t supposed to work — all things you could argue we can safely pursue, and you might be right — but we’re also smart enough to see that such things are not the fires of a revolution.
The Michigan I know can read the news. It can see that, despite a president incessantly bragging about how many tests we’ve conducted, we’ve barely tested 1% of the American population. In Michigan, we don’t have anything close to widespread testing. And without widespread testing, you don’t really know what you’re fighting. Or where.
The Michigan I know understands that. It understands if the state were to reopen too soon, we could reignite this virus to the point we just left: people dying in hallways, hospitals overwhelmed, bodies stacked in spare rooms, front-line medical and police forces decimated by infections, and a death rate that grows more horrible by the day.
For heaven’s sake, that was just, what, a week ago? Are our memories that short? Is our insistence on a new golden calf that strong?
Not in the Michigan I know. …
…we also know you can’t rebuild if you’re dead. And those of us healthy enough to survive COVID-19 could still spread it to someone who is not, without knowing it. We are all potential victims. We are all potential killers. That’s how insidious this disease is. …
I mean, we all know that this was just another Deplorables rally. And when your brain is the size of a really fat raisinette (read: you’re a Fox News viewer), it’s easy to see how Gretchen Whitmer = Hillary Clinton. NIAGARA FALLS! Slowly we turn….Lock. Her. Up.
Knowing all that, doesn’t it still LOOK like a bunch of armed REAL TOUGH GUYS™ whose candy asses can’t even live ONE MONTH “off the grid” without going “guano?”
