Soup Kitchen

I started my "deferred resignation" administrative leave (all at once voluntarily and completely against my will) back in April, which I know I shouldn't complain about. It's not the worst thing to not have to report to an office every day or stress about outputs or collaborations or which route is best to take in the hallways at the office at which time to avoid having to actually speak with anyone. Work is, it turns out, a lot of work.

As an American, there are only two things I know for sure: 1) these colors don't run, and 2) the value of a human life is starkly and manifestly quantifiable. Before you click away in disgust, no, I'm not winding up to some woke-ass spiel about the what-really-should-be-unsustainable-but-we-seem-to-be-pretty-good-at-sustaining-it epidemic of gun violence that is met with a forceful and defiant shrug of the shoulders by our elected leadership every time it breaks into the news cycle, or the way in which specific socioeconomic or racial demographic subgroups in this country are subjected to violence (at large and by authorities) exactly as though they deserved less protection than the hegemonic rump that controls all the levers of power and means of production.

I'm not doing that here! That would be bleak and so Woke 1. Social justice and equality before the law? What is this, 2020? As the kids probably still say: so cringe! Did I use that right? They still say that, right? Also, unrelated, what is "gyatt," anyone? How would I use it in a sentence? Should I try? I probably shouldn't try.

Right now, I'm not sure who I am. The thing that defines us as citizens in this country is, and this is not exactly groundbreaking social science or even really that deep a political insight, how we stand in relation to productivity. How much of our day is being spent contributing to the economy, and if it isn't the correct amount, how should the power of the state be used to punish us for noncompliance with the expected output norm? And the math is super simple, like obviously if you don't have a job, the public humiliation by political actors and the vulnerability you experience in terms of food scarcity, proximity to violence, police harassment, educational abandonment and social experimentation is not only tolerated but expected. Cheered, even. It's such a deeply ingrained societal truism that poor people vote against the interests of disgusting other (imagined) poor people and in the interests of billionaires as a matter of course, election over election, as part of a specific engineering program to frustrate and defeat the development of the idea of shared political interests among the wide base of the population that have the least. Pointing it out is like pointing out misogyny. Everyone's like "yeah guy, duh."

If you do have a job, is it the right job? If you're complaining about schools and food and the brutality of the police-state-within-the-state, well, have you thought about just getting a better job? It's the promise of America, after all, that literally every person should be able to be middle class. The fact that economies do not function in that way, never have, never will and there isn't enough money in the whole history of the world to make that sort of reordering even remotely possible isn't relevant or worth exploring, but the promise of it is enough to warp perception just enough to make something like the modern Republican Party (or even the non-modern one dating back to at least the New Deal) viable.

So if someone, just hypothetically, isn't doing anything to actually contribute, like not working at all, but is still on the payroll and collecting a check, is that person a) a dirty freeloader worthy of our scorn, or b) a folk hero living the dream, sticking it to The Man?

Like, I'm not on public assistance, except I'm definitely having my lifestyle subsidized without being required to put in work. It sounds fishy, but when you remember the context that this was a scheme cooked up by the richest person who ever was, well, I guess I have my answer. You can't be wrong or stupid or misguided or a narcissistic waste of space if you have a lot of money. Wealth is self-justifying. I feel like I'm covered. Thanks, Elon.*

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*Did it hurt to type that, even as a rhetorical bit? Reader, it did.