Bottom rail on top, this time

After the Civil War there was brief period referred to as “Reconstruction” where the victorious Union Army enforced—or attempted to enforce—the implementation of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments in southern states. This included the temporary disenfranchisement of former Confederate officials, but it was the fact that in many southern states freed slaves actually outnumbered whites meant that as a voting block they had the ability to dominate state legislatures. However, this only lasted as long as the federal government enforced of the rights of former slaves. After Reconstruction ended and white Southerners retook control of their states, Jim Crow laws went into effect, bringing with it black disenfranchisement and new forms of slavery, like the peonage system.

But while it lasted, an escaped or newly freed slave could boast to his former master that this time it was “bottom rail on top.” This can also be said of the past two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which we find that it isn’t egotistical and narcissistic “high-tech” workers and others who thumb their noses at “inferior” so-called “low-skill” workers who are “essential” to maintaining civilization, but those on the “bottom rail,” like farm and food processing workers, maintenance and janitorial workers, warehouse workers, mail carriers, delivery drivers, shelf-stockers, and assembly line workers making survival gear like face masks and rubber gloves. Virtually the only “high skill” workers who are “essential” are those involved in the health care industry. 

Still there are those like Forbes, which is citing labor department statistics that claim that  the unemployment rate for “high-tech” workers, such as computer programmers and IT phone operators, have not seen significant impact. Most of these people are claimed to be working “remotely” at home, but as Stanford economics professor Nicolas Bloom said in Vox, most of these people are not doing productive work during the pandemic: “Most creativity is done in face-to-face environments. It encourages you to be ambitious and motivated. Full-time at home can be pretty miserable… Productivity now will be down dramatically. As a personal example, I have four kids and they’re at home, and I’m struggling to get anything done. And it’s not just that, it’s also that motivation and creativity come from being around other people. So I find it hard to be creative and, honestly, find it hard to self-motivate myself if I’m stuck in, you know, one room at home day in and day out.” So what do such people do in reality? They put on their ridiculous skin-tights and “work remotely” jogging and bike riding just to get out of the house.

Other “non-essential” workers: Donald Trump, William Barr, Stephen Miller and Trump’s newest press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who has absurdly received “praise” for being “well prepared” to spin the Trump administration’s lies. Deborah Birx is probably a non-essential worker, given that she is now clearly recognized as a Trump stooge willing to spin the COVID-19 pandemic politically to satisfy his arbitrary whims. And of course, Jared Kushner and Ivana Trump are non-essential as well. Most of the Fox News crew are also non-essential given their habit of spreading misleading and dangerous disinformation; the latest proof of this is Trump’s claim that he has been taking the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for the past week, after it had been touted as a “miracle” cure against the COVID-19 by Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, or at least until studies proved that the drug caused more deaths in clinical trials in those who took it than those who did not. 

Of course there are idiots in this world who hate so much to be proven wrong they insist on doing the wrong thing anyways, like Trump. Anything Trump says these days should be regarded as “non-essential,” save for the unfortunate fact that the country’s current slave “massa” has those dangerous familiars out there converting his insanity to everyday reality.