CSotD: May Day, For Those Who Celebrate It
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Today is May Day, which is International Workers Day, aka Labour Day, marking the Haymarket Square Riots, which began May 1, 1886, and culminated in the explosion four days later.
Whamond notes the calls this year for a general strike, but I don’t think America is a general-striking sort of country.
I recall that the Mai-Juin riots in Paris in 1968 showed the difference between the more working-class sensibility of students there and the more teach-in oriented students here, and that contrast prevails around much of the world.
Besides, we don’t even take a day off on all federal holidays, much less have anything like the vacances de la construction when Quebecers drop tools for two weeks even if they aren’t in the construction business, because why not?
And I am old enough to remember when very little was open on Sunday, but we gradually managed to screw up that small break in our wage-slave pace. Even Quebec gave up Sunday closures, more’s the pity, though not until 1992.
Anyway, there’s no way you’re going to get a significant portion of the American population to walk out on a work day, and, in this country, all days are.
Not that we shouldn’t continue to fight, in our tepid American way, to improve things. Though, again, my age shows because I remember when picket lines were honored by other workers, and they were a great deal more effective than the boycotts many of us quietly observe over companies that insult our senses of justice.
Though not shopping at Safeway during the Farmworkers’ strikes was a lot more inconvenient and thus called for a greater sacrifice than declining to overpay for a cuppa Joe at Starbucks.
(The proper working-class gesture would be to bring your laptop down to the 7-Eleven.)
However, I have been inspired by First Dog, and my next great societal movement will be demonstrations demanding Breathalyzer tests in Congress. They could do it the way they do random drug testing in the Navy: “If your Social Security number ends in 4, report …”
And thanks to First Dog for the new adjective “hegsethed.” Copy editors please note that it is not capitalized.
There would be costs, of course. We’d have to pay for all those Breathalyzers, plus a few Jaws of Life extraction tools in case someone becomes pateled.
There has been a raft of seashell jokes and it makes me wish for the days when presidents read newspapers and could see the reactions to their excesses. But LBJ and Nixon wouldn’t have blundered into this foolishness anyway.
As noted yesterday, the indictment was made to humiliate James Comey with a perp walk, which didn’t happen, and however much it inconvenienced him, it’s a shame Dear Leader can’t see how loudly people are laughing at him.
And those around him certainly won’t bring it to his attention. I’m reminded of James Thurber’s Many Moons, in which various royal nitwits try to come up with impractical ways to keep Princess Celeste from seeing the moon. Any one of them could serve in Trump’s cabinet.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I wouldn’t suggest making any jokes about an aging, overweight glutton’s health, because that’s as much of a death threat as suggesting he be removed from office. I say that as someone who, in his younger days, was 86ed a time or two and yet, remarkably, is somehow still alive.
And I don’t even have the rugged constitution of an astronaut.
There are those who still believe, but, as previously noted here, he doesn’t have to outsmart everybody; he just has to outsmart the folks who will believe anything, and, using that approach, he’s two out of three at getting elected.
I’ll deal in more depth with the SCOTUS voting rights issue later, but Slyngstad raises the matter of discrimination, and life would sure be easier if it were this simple.
He’s not wrong that this is a major effect of the ruling, but the fact the GOP Six managed to avoid putting it so obviously adds a sheen of plausible deniability.
People who haven’t read the Constitution are fond of declaring that the Founders extended the vote only to white men, and sometimes “white male landowners.” Not true, and, in the early days of the Republic, both women and free African-Americans were able to vote.
The restrictions were imposed by individual states, which was why we needed the 15th and 19th Amendments, since amendments — with the notable disastrous exception of the 18th — provide, rather than restrict, freedom.
Note that I specified “free African-Americans.” Slaves were not allowed to vote, which brings up another misconception, and something that may bite us again.
Although slavery was permitted nearly everywhere at the time of ratification, it was concentrated on Southern plantations, enslaved people in the North being primarily house servants and farmhands.
Slaveowners didn’t want slaves to vote, but they wanted them to count for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, and there’d have been no ratification without the compromise of counting them as 3/5’s of a person.
It wasn’t an insult, because, if they’d each been counted as a full person, but not enfranchised as citizens, their states would have gained an overwhelming majority in the House that supported slavery.
However you feel about the compromise, if those states are now able to slice and gerrymander however they like, we may get to a point where representation is based on the full number of people living in a state, even though a significant portion of them don’t have a meaningful voice in elections.
Better show up for the midterms.
Juxtaposition of Dubious Language
Crabgrass provides a reminder of when Lola created an uproar with that word 26 years ago, but we’ve grown used to the jokes, though usually under the babyish word “toot.”
However, if I were laying out an editorial page, even if I agreed with Bok about the issue, that needless vulgarity would land his cartoon in the round file.
That’s not politics. It’s marketing.
And for the record, beans are good for your heart. They are not a magical fruit.
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