Evaluating the lot of working people today

I once read that the reason kids hate school is that the purpose of school is to prepare them for a world of work that they will often find to be unpleasant. I read that many years ago when one of the main complaints about work was its tedium. What we have witnessed since is a lot of that tedium being wiped out by technology-stoked efficiencies.
Back in about 1980 I had a chance to be a "distribution clerk" at the Minneapolis Post Office. But the job rang of so much tedium as to rob you of your soul.
Who would have dreamt in 1980 the kind of storm clouds that lay ahead for our stalwart U.S. Post Office? The institution was the hero in the movie "Miracle on 34th Street," when it could demonstrate that there really was a Santa Claus.
The U.S. Post Office has been a wonderful work haven for our nation's military veterans. It had a union that asserted itself quite effectively.
But then we had the microchip which opened the door for inexorable technology advancements. Indeed tech moved forward like a relentless bull. A piece of folk wisdom has it that the whole tech avalanche happened because of that flying saucer that crashed in New Mexico. Whatever the origin, tech has turned our world upside down.
The Post Office may still have a union but I would guess it's vestigial. Unions seem like an annoying throwback - annoying because the vast majority of us simply aren't in one. Today you're supposed to thank the Lord if you simply have a job. Owners and bosses rule.
And even many of the bosses are what George Ure of "Urban Survival" would call "mid-level corporate suck ups" with no more job security or real prestige than those at the bottom.
But none of us are supposed to complain. When I was in college, the youthful and exuberant boomers of the time flirted with the "new left." We had high regard for unionism and workers' rights.
Students willing to call themselves Republicans were as rare as that elusive spotted owl.
Workers' rights are so yesterday. Unions are in retreat as shown by the Florida governor's veto that was the only thing standing in the way of teacher tenure getting nixed. Not that I don't think teachers need to be declawed a little.
But there is no discernible uprising against this chipping away process vs. the once important pillar of basic job security and worker dignity in this country.
If you want to see a rare exception, tune in to the Ed Schultz program on MSNBC.
I hear no meaningful outcry against the growing gap between rich and poor. This amazes me, based on my recollection of those "new left" years on college campuses. But maybe that was a mirage in the first place. Because, I remember that at the same time the rhetoric of Malcolm X seemed so appealing, a lot of students calling themselves "business majors" quietly made their rounds on campus. They looked poverty stricken like the rest of us but they were ready to leapfrog beyond that.
A top executive of the Wells Fargo Bank was a student at St. Cloud State University at the same time as me. He was probably one of those little mammals scurrying around the rocks while the "new left" dinosaurs were headed to extinction.
I have always been amazed at how these prevailing moods come and go, in academic settings and society at large.
Given the trend of the rich getting richer (but crying for more tax cuts) and the poor struggling ever more, you might think that college campuses would be the place for a rebellion to begin. Hardly.
Colleges court well-heeled benefactors. As my friend Glen Helberg is fond of putting it: "Money talks and bulls--t walks."
Of course, unionism and workers' rights were always about money but it was about money for the masses of working types. I don't sense even a hint of a pushback from America's working class now.
Have we just been pounded into subservience now, like the horse character in George Orwell's classic "Animal Farm" (who protested only after he had gotten too old to fight back)?
Ed Schultz advocates for it, but his voice gets lost. The common folk instead seem enamored with tea party rhetoric which insists that more of the shackles allegedly imposed by government be thrown off. The rich can thus get richer.
Wall Street can continue its gluttonous ways. Politicians look the other way as the privileged hogs indulge themselves at the trough. Consider the TARP legislation.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gets by with rhetoric that would have gotten her tarred and feathered in the marketplace of ideas of the 1970s. She warns BP Amoco to not get bilked by the U.S. government (us) in the wake of the oil spill. What amazes me is that her words still have currency.
And the tea party thinking sprouts from a common class of citizens, people who ought to appreciate the kind of safety net an active and benevolent government can provide. Why?
It probably sprouts from a primal sort of paranoia. A well-known book on the topic, which I confess I haven't actually looked at, is "What's the Matter with Kansas?" I doubt that the author is as blunt as me, using words like "primal," but I think he looks through the same lens.
I remember that in the 1970s, any political candidate who even hinted that Social Security needed some scrutiny (for possible austerity) was toast. Instant toast. "Liberal media bias" - bless that - would pounce on it.
Then conservatives got the idea that they could just buy out the media. Remember the movie "Mississippi Burning" in which the local motel wouldn't do business with the G-men who were attacking racial persecution? The top G-man (Gene Hackman) gave instructions to a subordinate to just "buy the motel."
"How much do we offer?" the subordinate asked. The answer: "Whatever it takes."
As Mr. Helberg states, "Money talks and bulls--t walks."
Conservatives solved the problem of left-leaning public television by getting power and then making sure that conservatives got installed there, like Tucker Carlson (a whining dweeb, eventually signed by Fox News and then marginalized).
Of course, today in the new media universe, we need public television as much as we need two parts of the human anatomy associated with waste excretion. (I learned that expression from an old trombone player who used a coarser term for the part of the anatomy in question.)
It is not at all taboo today to discuss possible austerity with Social Security or anything else in government. The Republican challenger to Senator Harry Reid in Nevada has actually talked about eliminating Social Security. Well, she certainly would eliminate Social Security as we know it. Although she backtracks like heck when she's challenged on it.
President George W. Bush did the same thing, initially talking about "privatizing" Social Security and later scrambling for euphemisms that would enable him to sell the idea better. Finally the likes of Bush and tea party product Sharron Angle in Nevada pushed the language of "personalizing" Social Security. How could anyone argue with "personalizing" something? Let's invent new language to deceive the public. Maybe not.
George W. Bush tried those end runs for a long time. He even tried paying off pundits.
Angle has a track record that makes me think she climbed out of a crashed flying saucer in the New Mexico desert. But the shocking thing is that she's actually a viable candidate. The polls show she's in the running.
Perhaps the thing that's wrong with Kansas is spreading through the whole country.
The slumping economy hasn't kept people from streaming through turnstiles to watch major league baseball players who are paid in sums that are so wildly high they become mere empty numbers. They don't mean anything to us anymore.
The money that Tiger Woods rakes in (or that his ex-wife gets in a divorce settlement) playing golf becomes a number on a page (or computer screen) only. There is no populist revulsion. Yet.
Times can indeed change. Maybe the Ed Schultz rhetoric will begin to take hold. Maybe we'll soon see a "tea party on the left," as Bill Maher would put it (and he'd readily join).
I'm old enough to have seen grand swings in the political mood, and it could certainly happen again, as could a flying saucer crash in the desert somewhere.
-Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com