In a previous commentary here at Not My Tribe … I wrote that there was scientific evidence, as well as everyday common sense evidence, that work as defined and dished out by our upper crust bosses under capitalist society in America makes people sick. I was amazed that such a simple and easily verifiable observation provoked so little intelligent discussion by our esteemed readers! What gives?
Personally, I have easily worked about a dozen made-dangerous-by- capitalism job types in my lifetime and feel fortunate that I have not been totally crippled by the experience. Apparently not all of us have had these work experiences though, and not having actually done any of the dangerous work in America might put rather rosy blinkers over the eyes of some few folk about the dangers of American capitalism as well as world capitalism as a whole?
The experience of writing here on this blog about how work under capitalism eats away at workers, and then getting dissed off personally for having brought the subject up at all, I have found profoundly demoralizing. (what discussion began to occur about my previous commentary was quickly erased from this site//// I hope and trust that it does not happen again?). Why write about everyday life for me and others in this country, when one only gets disrespected and put down as being an idiot for doing so? There may very well be much better venues for political expression than this blog if this sort of thing was to become routine here on Not My Tribe?
Back to the subject at hand though. Much work in the US, as in all other capitalist societies is undertaken with little concern for the physical safety, let alone emotional well being, of the workers doing the actual work. Farm workers are put out into fields with cancer causing chemicals all around, not given adequate water to drink under the hot sun, and then are harassed like they are some sort of human vermin by Immigration. Yes, work in a capitalist society does make people sick, and many farm workers get sick here in America. Only a totally hard and contemptuous person would actually call such observations about the dangerousness of work in capitalist America into any kind of real question, IMO.
Farm work is only one single egregious example of the abuse of the American worker (YES, Migrant workers are from the Americas and should be considered American workers), and this abuse of us all who do the actual work goes on in each and every sector of our economy, and the damage to our health is extreme. This is a rather simple and obvious truth, and it should not need for multiple examples to be listed out to anybody, who has been living in US society and not born with a totally dead soul.
I have vacationed myself (kind of) from writing for over a week now, and will not write any further on Not My Tribe unless I feel it has some value. The value I have seen for my writing previously, was that simple observations of current events that were not totally rank with corporate lies was of some value even if done for only a small readership. That can still be of value if allowed here by the powers to be of this blog?
A blog that is written from a consistent Left perspective is a novelty here in Colorado Springs, as it is everywhere in this imperialist and hate driven society we call the USA. There are those who either don’t want that, or are in fact totally lacking in any appreciation for why Left viewpoints need to be given opportunity to rise up from out under the blanket of total corporate censorship and non-sponsorship of such? The motives are many for some folk not wanting a Left perspective ever to be expressed anywhere and always, and I won’t attempt to guess the motives of all who dislike what I have said about work under capitalism. We live in a soceity with multiple life viewpoints and perspectives.
Work under this capitalist society is a sickening experience, and some relief from it can actually be obtained by just being exposed to some simple honesty. That is what I strive to do when I write my commentaries here on Not My Tribe. Most all of you who have read this commentary actually do realize the simple truth that work under bosses put above us in the work force as overseers, is a profoundly alienating and deadly daily grind to our souls and our bodies. Not hard to figure out. I will write about it and other similar topics that express simple truths from a Left perspective. (if allowed to do so?)
One of America’s great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others.
I think it’s time to colorize 
When Americans step inside the big chain publishers’ bookstores, Barnes and Noble and Borders, they are almost always under the delusion that they are inside real bookstores containing real books. Nothing could be farther from the truth though. We instead have merely entered into the realm of publishing as product.
My first job was working at a Baskin Robbins until I learned I was earning only $1.25 per hour. The rate doesn’t make me 82, the pay was indeed well below a legal minimum, but what would higher schoolers know who didn’t dare ask? In my neighborhood, you asked for a job, the pay was supposed to be beside the point. In my neighborhood, Hollywood producers asked to use our quaint small town atmosphere for a film and our shopping district said no thank you.
In any event, I quickly learned that the kitchen variety ice cream scoop was a mere novelty like a not-better mousetrap. In the ice cream scooping profession, even if you were a high school professional who couldn’t dare ask what you were being paid, you had no need for mechanical gadgets. You rinse the spoon in water every couple of scoops. That resolves the ice cream stickiness which American households have determined to be the challenge. All sort of clever ejection devices obscure the real design criteria: an ergonomic axis that doesn’t wear out your wrist. 
Karl Marx died today in 1883. Though I consider communism to be largely a failed experiment, I do agree with many of Marx’ tenets. Here is the opening paragraph of The Communist Manifesto:
I found myself inside one of these boxes again, waiting for my wife to finish up some mall shopping I had tried to talk her out of. These 2 chains of supposed bookstores are like the Democrats and Republicans almost. Nobody can tell any real difference between the two of them.
The phenomena also shares something with the White Indian Series by Donald Porter. That’s a western series for readers who couldn’t be bothered to know about the lives of the Native Americans unless they were WHITE Native Americans. These readers can’t sympathize with Indians as victims, unless they are white Indian victims, and then preferably of course they should be white Indian victims of Indians.