Self-Care

"The Problem With Telling Sick Workers to Stay Home" is a journalistic whine on behalf of America's low-lage workers. Which is nothing new. And that's the problem; it's nothing new. People have lined up time and again to remind us of how unreasonable it is to tell people who are living paycheck to paycheck that they should miss a paycheck or two, rather than risk exposing other people to diseases that may severely sicken or even kill them. And now, with COVID-19 (COronaVirus Infectious Disease {20}19) likely to spread through the United States, the lament that the working poor must work at all costs is winding up again.

It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the point. I stopped in Whole Foods on Thursday, and I drew a cashier who was obviously ill. He blew his nose quite thoroughly before ringing me up, and it was clear from his voice that he was very congested. While driving home, I considered dropping an e-mail to Whole Foods, noting that they may want to evaluate whether they gave enough sick leave to their grocery workers. Because while I understand that doing so increases labor costs, having someone working in the store whose job more or less requires them to touch every single item that someone is purchasing is just asking to spread diseases when that person is sick.

In her piece, author Amanda Mull notes: "(NYU School of Global Public Health epidemiology professor Robyn) Gershon emphasizes that having what feels like a head cold or mild flu—which COVID-19 will feel like to most healthy people—often isn’t considered a good reason to miss a shift by those who hold these workers’ livelihood in their hands." But the thing that struck me when I was driving home was that "those who hold these workers' livelihood in their hands" is, ultimately, the public.

When people complain that corporate America or the federal government aren't doing enough to protect public health by offering, or forcing offers of, generous time-off and sick-leave policies, beneath that lies an unspoken criticism of the public as a whole. It's a common joke around here, even with all of the Microsoft Millionaires and other people who are living large from technology company salaries, that the name of the grocer should be "Whole Paycheck." Laying the blame on corporate greed or government inaction/corruption camouflages the fact that the American public is highly price-sensitive. When it comes down to it, most people would rather pay $5.00 for something that comes with few to no worker protections than $6.00 for the same thing but allows the worker to work less. Because for most of us, our standard of living, our ability to squeeze more leisure and a batter life out of the amount of work that we do, comes at the direct expense of someone else having to work harder to have less.

All up and down the chain, there is a drive to get "the most bang for the buck." And I think that advocates for the poor and low-wage earners recognize this. And so there is a habit of finding people to blame who it is perceived can easily pay the cost. But that cost will always come back to the people who have no choice but to pay it. And changing the set of people who have no choice is going to have to come from the public, at some point in time. It's all well and good to complain that government isn't doing enough, but, at least in the United States, government is answerable to the public as a whole; at least those members of the public who are active and engaged.

In the conclusion of her article, Ms. Mull claims that the United States is asking low wage workers to shoulder the burdens of preventing a COVID-19 epidemic in the nation, yet refusing to give them any way of bearing those costs. But there's no request of the United States, or even the readers of the article to a) do more to bear those costs themselves or b) advocate for a distribution of resources that better allows the people we ask to do things to accomplish those things and then compensates them appropriately for their efforts.

And so we're let off the hook again. To be sure, I don't know what the readership demographics of The Atlantic look like. I would guess somewhat slightly Left of center and well-educated. From their, I suspect that I could guess at least a moderate level of affluence. This should be a group of people who can take at least some security in their own position; enough so that they can afford some limited sharing. So why not request it? Why not call upon each of us to be the change we want in our own lives, if not the world?

Looking For Trouble

Now, as a grown-up who never has a fav she doesn’t want to see problematized, I was excited to see that Eli Cook, historian of capitalism and author of The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life, had written an article for the Journal of American Studies putting [the Choose Your Own Adventure] series in its historical place.
Rebecca Onion. “Oh My God, It’s Milton Friedman for Kids”

The link to this article from the Slate homepage read: "The Choose Your Own Adventure Books Indoctrinated Kids With Cutthroat Capitalism." As one might expect, it's basically a hit piece on the series. The basic problem that Mr. Cook and Ms. Onion appear to have with CYOA is that some people took the fact that the books placed the outcome in the hands of the reader, and the choices they made, as some part of a supposedly sinister neoliberal plot to convince children that they, and they alone, were the masters of, and responsible for, the outcomes of their lives.

Not being the sort who sees conservative hatefulness under every rock, I found the article to be something of a stretch, overall. But the quote above stood out for me, namely: "Now, as a grown-up who never has a fav she doesn’t want to see problematized [...]" It helped me put into words what always bothered me about "woke" culture; the impression that it's a deliberate affectation. It's sort of like the stereotype of a hipster; the one in which a person creates a sense of ironic detachment from the world around them, not because they're actually detached and find the world a rich vein of irony to mine, but because it becomes a way of proclaiming their "betterness" than the people around them. In this case, people find things, especially things associated with the past, as "problematic" because finding problems with things becomes a way of signaling that one is the "right" kind of person, the sort who believes the right social-justice things.

And while I don't necessarily have a problem with the ideals and goals of the social-justice movement, I find its desire for purity to be off-putting. And perhaps a bit ironic, coming, as it does, from a movement that has as one of its goals the end of mass marginalization. But in the end, it's to be expected. People often define "right" as the opposite of "wrong," and "pure" as the opposite of "tainted." And so pointing out what is wrong and tainted, and then defining oneself in opposition to that, becomes a shorthand for righteousness and purity, but one that doesn't require any sort of self-reflection or work to live up to anything.

Of course, this isn't unique to the social-justice movement. All movements have their purity wings. "Wokeness" stands out for me, because even the word itself strikes me as a sort of purity test. I get that it isn't intended as such; my own history is the source of that particular impression. But it bugs me nonetheless. Now I better understand why.

Make the Oscars American Again

As I'm fairly sure that you're aware, President Trump has been reported to have been unimpressed that Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The North American distribution house for the movie, Neon, hit back on Twitter that it was "Understandable" that the President didn't like the movie. "He can't read," they snarked.

I suspect that they missed the point. President Trump's alleged desire to always be the center of attention has been well remarked-upon by the news media since the 2016 primary campaign season. One would think that in the intervening four years, they would have come to the realization that some of the President's statements can be chalked up to that desire for attention. Of course, this does leave them in something of a quandary. After all, someone will dutifully report on anything that the President has to say, no matter how pointless, and the "What Has Trump Done Now" constituency will rush over to read it. Being left off the bandwagon in bad for clicks, and thus, advertising revenue, so nothing must be left to lie as unimportant.

But it's also just as plausible that the President really didn't care one way or another about the Academy Awards. His comments were made during a reelection campaign rally in Colorado Springs. This places the President in front of an audience that has been very receptive to his "America is the best" rhetoric, and the case can be made that his calling for more movies like Gone With the Wind and Sunset Boulevard to be made and, presumably, to win Best Picture, is simply pandering to an audience that believes that even if the United States isn't best at literally everything, that institutions that reside in the United States should always favor domestic productions above all others. And drawing attention to a disagreement (real or fabricated) with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their lack of patriotism plays well in "the Heartland," especially for those whose understanding of "patriotism" goes beyond "my country, right or wrong" to "my country is always right."

Partisanship often expresses itself in an understanding that the world is withholding from one what they truly deserve. And eventually, that deserving stops becoming due to having earned something in a way that can be objectively demonstrated. Rather, it becomes an assumed entitlement; the deserving becomes the proof of having earned it. Talking about these entitlements doesn't always have to be particularly dramatic, or bellicose. Sometimes, simply reminding people that the things they like aren't well enough appreciated by the people they don't like is enough.

Moldy But a Goodie

So, Burger King has a new ad out, in which a Whopper goes from pristine to decayed over the course of 34 days in time-lapse.

Early reaction to the campaign Wednesday was a mix of applause for the shift away from preservatives, to disgust.
Burger King portrays moldy Whopper in new TV ad

I've seen some of the negative reaction, and for me, the point is less about the daring or honesty of the advertisement, and more about the unrealistic expectations of food that are now commonplace in the United States. Food, especially perishable food, left unprotected for a month, is going to become moldy. That's a fact of life, or in this case, death. Nothing about a Whopper, or the majority of the food we eat is alive when we eat it. And decomposition is what happens to dead biomass. That's where new biomass comes from. Digestion and decomposition are different processes, but not completely so; it's reasonable to say that mold digests food. And food in the middle of the digestive process is pretty gross, too.

It's also worth noting that we have an inconsistent relationship with preservation. The (false) idea that Twinkies are so loaded up with chemical preservatives that they have a shelf life measured in decades is often cited as proof that they lack any real food ingredients. Even the actual shelf life of Twinkies, twenty-five days, is often viewed suspiciously.

This paints a picture of a society that wants things to be a certain way; in this case, wanting food to be safe and visually appealing over time, but doesn't really want to understand how it is made to be that way; in many cases, through chemical additives (natural or synthetic) that arrest the decomposition process. And this can contribute to a dialog around food that is fundamentally dishonest. Food companies tell the public what they understand the public wants to hear, and, in turn, the public treats it as the truth for long enough that they lose sight of the fact that it's a lie.

I Declare!

So, the Washington state Presidential primary is coming up, and ballots have been arriving in the mail.

I'm not a partisan, and so I've been debating whether or not to participate, because the parties are requiring a declaration of party. In any event, I checked the ballot, and on the return envelope are the party declaration statements. What I hadn't expected is that the verbiage is different for each one. To wit:

Democratic Party:

I declare that my party preference is the Democratic Party and I will not participate in the nomination process of any other political party for the 2020 Presidential Election.

Republican Party:

I declare that I am a Republican and I have not participated and will not participate in the 2020 precinct caucus or convention system of any other party.

I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised that the parties themselves had written these declarations, and therefore, they're worded differently from one another, but I had expected simply checkboxes with the party names next to them.

This is the first time that both parties are using the primary to select candidates at the state level. Previously, the Democrats used a caucus, and the primary was simply an afterthought, and I hadn't really paid any attention to the process as a whole. And given how late it was in the overall primary season, neither had anyone else.

In any event, it's an interesting piece of trivia. The actual election isn't for another two weeks. We'll see if it produces anything interesting this time around.