If there is one turn of phrase for which I'm known, well, it's probably Terrible Bargain. But if there's another phrase for which I'm known, it's: I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
For reasons that I probably don't need to explain to anyone who's been paying attention, I've lately been thinking about the ways in which accusations of anger (or fury, or rage, or whatever variations thereof) are used as discrediting strategies in the same way accusations of offense are.
And in the same way that marginalized people are accused of being offended, when what we are really are is contemptuous, marginalized people are frequently accused of being angry, when what we really are is frustrated.
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against anger; to the contrary, I find anger can be useful, and necessary, and the root of progress.
But there are a lot of times I am accused of being angry (as if that's a bad thing) when I'm not actually angry—and I see that happening to a lot of marginalized people, especially women of every and any intersectional identity. We are dismissed out of hand as angry, when we are really frustrated—usually because we are being obliged to play games around having our lived experience audited with a validity prism being wielded by a privileged person who erroneously sees themselves as An Objective Arbiter, who is, in so doing, literally frustrating our ability to assert expertise on our own perceptions.
Frustration is not anger. (Although it certainly has the capacity to morph into anger, or coexist with it.) Frustration is "a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems."
That is the thing I am feeling when I am most likely to be called angry. Overwhelming dissatisfaction as a result of the cyclical and systemic lack of being heard, respected, treated as an equal.
So, to the lexicon of useful phrases I add this: I'm not angry; I'm dissatisfied.
[Originally posted March 28, 2013.]
An Observation
Daily Dose of Cute
"Whazzat?"
Dog + Cat + Horse + Giraffe = Greyhound.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
Atlanta's mayor tweeted before the snow started falling: "Atlanta, we are ready for the snow." Whoops.
The GOP has plans to make their case to the middle class. Good luck with that! "The challenge for Republicans is convincing voters that their newfound concern is sincere." LOL!
[Content Note: War on agency; anti-choice terrorism] More terrific news from my terrific state: Proposed legislation in the Indiana state senate could mean that doctors who treat people post-abortion may be publicly named. Which is, of course, an intimidation tactic. Anti-choicers get real mad when I say that anti-abortion legislation is state-sponsored terrorism, but the Republican Party supports this garbage knowing full well that anti-choice terrorism exists, and that people die because of it.
[CN: Racism; racial slur] Travis Waldron on "The Epic Battle to Save the Most Offensive Team Name in Professional Sports."
A fascinating new stem cell breakthrough: "Two new studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature describe a method of taking mature cells from mice and turning them into embryonic-like stem cells, which can be coaxed into becoming any other kind of cell possible. ...This method by [Dr. Charles Vacanti, director of the laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston and senior author on one of the studies] and his colleagues 'is truly the simplest, cheapest, fastest method ever achieved for reprogramming [cells],' said Jeff Karp, associate professor of medicine at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute."
[CN: Environmental devastation] Monarch butterflies are in trouble. Sadface. One of my favorite early memories is lying in the grass in the backyard, when I was about three, and trying to stay perfectly still after a monarch butterfly landed on my nose, and walked up across my forehead before flying away.
[CN: Injury] Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, who was severely injured in a skiing accident last month, is being slowly awoken from a medically induced coma. There is still a chance he could eventually make a full recovery.
Cheerios is back with another ad for the upcoming Superbowl featuring the "controversial" mixed-race family. Ha ha suck it, haters.
Republicans Really Think People Are Stupid
[Content Note: Class warfare.]
So, I'm reading this article in which conservative commentator S.E. Cupp (who is also the author of a book titled Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity, lol) interviews Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and he says that the Republican Party needs to communicate that they don't want to cut programs; they want to reform them.
Whether talking about entitlement reform, food stamps, unemployment benefits or social programs, his one word mantra? Emphasize "reform."Sure. Because "more freedom, more opportunity, more prosperity" is not inextricably linked, especially for the lower classes, to "more government, more benefits, more assistance." More freedom and opportunity and prosperity happen by a magical combination of lower tax rates for corporations, bootstraps, and pixie dust.
"The mistake I think we often make is," he continued, "if we're the party of no, and we're the party of austerity, the people of this country want more. The difference is, the left offers them more government, more benefits, more assistance. We should offer them more freedom, more opportunity, more prosperity."
Later, he says, on raising the minimum wage:
"It is a cheap political stunt that may be well-intentioned by some, but it has an incredibly buzz saw type effect on the economy. And it's nothing more than a photo-op to pretend that people are doing something about creating jobs."Yep, just bury that shit beneath the word "reform," buddy. See how that works out for you.
I mean, this is the sort of thinking we're dealing with: Someone who imagines that there is a better way to "more freedom, more opportunity, more prosperity" for the working poor than raising their wages. That raising their wages is just a "cheap political stunt" and a "photo-op." That entrenching poverty among the working poor doesn't have "an incredibly buzz saw type effect on the economy" (whatever the fuck that means). That maintaining the status quo after decades of wage stagnation is somehow "reform."
Jesus fucking Jones.
HERE IS A HEADLINE FOR YOU
"For 2016, Hillary Clinton has commanding lead over Democrats, GOP race wide open." In case you were wondering how things are shaping up almost three years before the election in which no one has announced a candidacy.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker MammaBear: "What was the best part of your day today? (Or this week, month, etc.) I love reading Shakers' happy moments!"
Big Money
Earlier today in comments, I answered a question about how to raise the minimum wage without inflating the cost of goods and services, and that passing those higher costs onto workers:
There needs to be a way to raise the wage without passing that cost on to those same workers.Apropos of this idea: Fortune 50 CEO pay vs. our salaries.
There is: Prioritizing people over profits and flattening wages so that executives don't make hundreds of times as much as average workers in the same company.
Certainly there are cases, especially in very small businesses, where it's not feasible to significantly raise wages without raises prices on goods or services, but there are a lot of businesses where it would be totally feasible to raise wages and keep the price of goods or services stable, if only corporate executives and/or shareholders were willing to give a little.
ETA. And it's a sharp commentary on our national priorities that this isn't even considered a solution that's worthy of public discussion, so thoroughly certain are we all that it's never going to happen.
If a CEO making 6,258 times the salary of a typical worker in hir company claims there's no way to raise wages without raising prices, they're lying. It's sheer avarice.
Noted
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Well, here is one possible answer to the constantly asked questions about why Republicans won't STFU with their shitty comments about women: "The latest survey from Democratic PPP released Wednesday showed [former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee] surging among Republican voters nationwide in the wake of his head-scratching comment about the female libido."
According to the poll, 16 percent of GOP primary voters said they would prefer to see Huckabee as the party's presidential nominee in 2016, making him the top Republican in the field. Only a month ago, PPP showed Huckabee polling at 11 percent and trailing both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) among GOP voters.Their base eats that shit up.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cashews.
Recommended Reading:
BYP: [Content Note: Racism; fat bias; othering] In Lengthy Essay, White Woman Laments about Being in Yoga with a Lone Black Woman
Flavia: [CN: White supremacy] Pulling My Hair—A Media Strategy
Trudy: [CN: Racism] Thoughts about Shonda Rhimes' DGA Speech on Diversity
Joseph: [CN: Homophobia] A Man Tells His Coming Out Story Through a Conversation with His Dog
Dani: [CN: Misogyny] "Someday I want to write a book with no male characters."
Carla: For First Time Ever, College Football Players Organize to Unionize
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
On That Nation Piece
So, Michelle Goldberg wrote a cover story for The Nation entitled "Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars." And, because the piece largely sets up these "Twitter wars" as a war between white women and women of color, I'm having trouble composing a response that doesn't read as cookie-seeking and/or nothing more than an attempt to distance myself from other white feminists.
So, I'm just going to say this: I really find the article objectionable, for a lot of reasons. And it has not been my personal experience that women who make good faith criticisms of my work want to harm me, but that they want me to listen and to do better, because when I fail, I harm them.
For discussion of the piece, please see: @Karnythia, @DrJaneChi, @Blackamazon, @TheAngryFangirl, @thetrudz, @dreamhampton, and @scATX. If your first instinct is to push back, don't.
Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to additional responses in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
Contemplative Sophs.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Reproductive policing; misogyny.]
"We should sell that message. Not in a mean way to tell people who already have made a bad decision, but if you've had one child and you're not married, you shouldn't have another one. ...We need to be telling kids 'don't have kids until you're married.' It's your best chance to get in the middle class is not to have kids. There's all kinds of ways, and we can debate...but there are all kinds of ways to stop having kids. ...You know, but we have to teach our kids that. But some of that's sort of some tough love too. Maybe we have to say 'enough's enough, you shouldn't be having kids after a certain amount.' I don't know how you do all that because then it's tough to tell a woman with four kids that she's got a fifth kid we're not going to give her any more money."—Senator Rand Paul, at a luncheon in Lexington, Kentucky, last week.
First of all: "The idea of withholding benefits from women who have more than a certain number of children is actually current policy in many states. While most programs through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, or welfare) give families more money if they have more children, 16 states cap the assistance and don't give any extra money for new children if someone in the household is already receiving aid." And all that policy does is put a greater strain on a family already dependent on assistance to survive. It doesn't deter additional births (especially since access to abortion is increasingly limited for women in poverty).
Secondly, I love (as always) how this is all about telling women to "stop having kids." As if women with partners get pregnant on their own. And I also love (as always) how assistance is misrepresented as giving "her more money." An increase in assistance after the birth of another child is money for that child, not for "her."
Finally: Yes, Rand Paul, yes indeed there are "all kinds of ways to stop having kids." One of them is access to abortion. Maybe you should try supporting that, you shithead.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
FuckWinter continues to fuck with everyone.
[Content Note: Gun violence] Welp: "During President Obama's State of the Union address in which he vowed to take action on—among other things—the pervasiveness of gun violence, there was yet another shooting on a school campus. Police were called to the campus of Tennessee State University shortly after 9:00pm, where an unidentified individual was found having been shot in the leg. The university has not yet released any information on either the suspect or the victim."
[CN: Misogyny; sexual harassment] An pseudonymous female games industry veteran gives an interview to Kotaku's Rachel Edidin about having been sexually harassed by a reporter seeking information on a fiercely guarded game in development: "When we finally talk, I'm struck immediately by how much Mercier feels obliged to qualify. Without asking, I learn how she dresses for work and professional events; how she acts in professional contexts; the image she strives to project; her boundaries for friends and friendly acquaintances and colleagues. She also tells me, unprompted the exact scope of her previous contact with and relationship to Josh Mattingly leading up to the conversation where he told her repeatedly and explicitly what he'd like to do to her vagina. She's seen the comments on Mattingly's apology post, and she's acutely aware that, in the court of public opinion, it's she, not necessarily Mattingly, who is on trial. ...When I point out the irony—that, of the two participants in the conversation, Mercier was the one worried that her behavior might burn a professional bridge—she laughs ruefully."
[CN: Rape culture] Indian politician Asha Mirje, a Nationalist Congress party (NCP) leader in western Maharashtra state, engages in some gross victim-blaming: "Did Nirbhaya really have to go and watch a movie at 11 in the night with her friend? ...Rapes take place also because of a woman's clothes, her behaviour and her presence at inappropriate places." Yeahno.
Do you want to find out more about income inequality near you? Check out this chart at ProPublica. (Although if you live in a very small county, information may not be available.)
[CN: Gun violence] A cable provider in South Africa will launch a 24-hour dedicated channel for the trial of Oscar Pistorius, which begins in March. Well, all the commentary around that case has been super responsible, so I'm sure filling 24 hours a day with gossip and theorizing will be terrific for everyone.
Breaking News: Human Beings Not Designed for Space Travel.
Budweiser, your beer stinks, but this ad is AMAZING.
Hard Work
[Content Note: Kyriarchal oppressions.]
I grew up, and still live, in Northwest Indiana, in the shadow of a decimated steel industry where the most common occupation of my childhood friends' fathers was "laid off." It is a place where, when I was laid off in 2005, I was greeted at the local unemployment office by a man who told me: "If you're not a nurse or truck driver, you're probably going to have a hard time finding work again."
Jobs with good salaries and benefits are scarce, unless you are willing to do a two-hour (by car) or three-hour (by train) round-trip commute to and from Chicago every day. Even longer if you work somewhere other than downtown, near the train station. Whether you go by rail or pay for gas and parking, it is expensive to get to your job.
Jobs have been an issue here for as long as I've been alive.
Good jobs. We need good jobs. We need stable jobs that pay a livable wage.
It's not unlike a lot of the rest of the country in that way. Good jobs. Good jobs that pay. Good jobs we can get to, and stay in.
Given the opportunity, people longing for these good jobs will work hard. Working hard is not the issue; it never is, despite the narratives of moochers and takers and people who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives.
$10.10 isn't enough to make a job a good job.
And a job, even with a truly livable wage, is not a good job, if it doesn't come with protections against unequal pay and discrimination.
What makes a job a good job is more than the wage. A good job is a job that's reasonably accessible. A job that comes with the protected right to organize. A job that offers healthcare benefits. A job that offers paid leave—for vacations, for emergencies, for births and deaths. A job where taking that leave isn't held against employees. A job that provides for a good work-life balance. A job where every department is fully staffed. A job where any of the items needed to do that job are paid for by the employer. A job where federal overtime rules are not treated as a suggestion. A job where one is treated with dignity, and never exploited.
This is the bare minimum for what makes a job a good job, for the most privileged workers.
What makes a job a good job for someone from a marginalized population is more yet than a good wage and all of these basics. A good job is a job that pays equal pay for equal work. A job where there is no discrimination on the basis of one's identity. A job where it's safe to disclose all aspects of one's identity. A job which accommodates disabilities, in every way. A job that provides space for nursing parents. A job where the expectation to "get along" is placed always and only on bullies and harassers, and never on the people being bullied or harassed. A job where it is safe to report bullying and harassment and discrimination.
Neither of these constitutes a comprehensive list.
These protections, these things that make a job a good job, are things that the government must legislate and that employers must be willing to put into practice in a meaningful way, because it is decent, not just because it is required.
That takes hard work. To convince people to legislate and implement these protections, and then to legislate and implement them.
And that is the hard work for which there is very little will in this country.
But, by all means, let us continue talking of moochers and takers and welfare queens. And let us continue pretending that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 is enough.
It's just so much easier that way.
[Related Reading: Justice for All.]
$10.10
[Content Note: Class warfare; worker exploitation.]
Here is the White House's fact sheet on President Obama's executive order that will raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contract workers. It's titled: "Opportunity for All—Rewarding Hard Work." And there is an awful lot about why raising the minimum wage for workers who work on federal contracts is good for business, but not a lot about how giving people a livable wage (I'll come back to that) is just a decent thing to do.
I admit my bias here, but all the references to "hard work" read to me less like an acknowledgment of the hard work people are already doing, and more an admonishment to people to keep working harder.
As for the contention that $10.10 is a livable wage that will keep people (and families) out of poverty, well: Right now, someone working 40 hours a week at the minimum wage, without overtime or bonuses, makes $15,080 before taxes. At the maximum increase ($10.10), someone will make $21,008. The current federal poverty level for a family of four is $23,550.
Work hard, everyone!
Capitalism is garbage in a whole lotta ways—but one of the worst is that it is built on the damnable lie that everyone earns what they deserve. And there are far too many high-earning people in the US who believe that they work harder behind a desk than every single person who works a behind a counter. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.
Let me repeat myself: I don't feel inclined to get into a whole Marxist discussion about the means of production here, but what these insufferable, vainglorious, classist captains of self-aggrandizing bullshit seem never to grasp, or possibly just acknowledge, is that if you want to live in a capitalist society that gives you the opportunity to get nasty rich, then we can't all be wealthy. And if you want to be the kind of person who doesn't pump your own gas, or make your own sandwiches, or clean your own house, or manicure your own fingernails, or drain your own dog's anal glands, or build your own car elevator, then there are going to have to be people who fill all those jobs.
And most of those professional, hard-working people will put in at least 40 hours a week, or more, and even still, many of them won't be given healthcare benefits, and many of them won't earn enough money to feed a family, and many of them won't be able to save as much as they'll need for their retirement.
People who honorably dedicate their time, energy, and talents to jobs that might not pay well are indeed entitled to something—to not work their whole lives only to find themselves poverty-stricken, or hungry, or homeless after one small (or not small) financial crisis. And if we're not going to ensure that every job comes with a livable wage, access to affordable healthcare, and retirement benefits, then we've got to provide a robust and well-funded social safety net.
I don't think that's asking for much, in exchange for a lifetime of providing service to their chosen vocation.
Though I grant it's certainly easier to scream BOOTSTRAPS! and carelessly assert that people who don't have everything they need just aren't trying hard enough.
Funny how the Grand Advocates of Hard Work are always the ones making the easy arguments.
The working poor in the US—and all of the people who navigate a tenuous existence in the middle class, from which they could be unceremoniously exiled after a brush with unemployment or a health crisis—are not working any less hard than their wealthy counterparts (in fact, many of us work a lot harder, but had the silly idea to pursue a vocation not as highly valued as making privileged people and corporations wealthy), and we not are not fools, and we do not "deserve" to have twenty-four times less wealth and its attendant security and opportunity.
This cavernous disparity is the result of wanton avarice, of cruel greed, of a void of empathy and a colossally short-sighted contempt toward the notion of culture, toward the idea that we are all in this thing together.
All of us—even the people who won't get our backs, the bullies who attack us just to feel less put upon themselves, the self-loathing enablers who harbor foolish dreams of being invited to the table of privilege one day, the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age who stand astride the bodies of those condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of social Darwinism, bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net, and declaring "The government never gave me anything!" as they deposit seven-figure bonuses made possible by a taxpayer-funded bailout.
Or a government contract, for which they only have to pay workers $10.10 an hour.
We're all in the same leaky, creaky, unreliable boat. And knowing that means understanding even the most voracious self-interest is best served by egalitarianism: A fortune is worth nothing at the bottom of the ocean, less than a single penny carried safely to shore.
So, yeah, it's a smart idea to pay people a (genuinely) livable wage. But it's also the decent thing to do. Because people are already working hard.
Frankly, any implication that people aren't working hard enough is shameful, either a mendacious deflection of accountability onto workers, or an absurd cluelessness born of cavernous detachment from the realities of working people's lives.
In order to maximize profits, corporations have ubiquitously adopted the practice of not filling jobs when people leave and simply redistributing their work among remaining staff, who aren't compensated for the additional duties. The extra cash goes in the coffers while skeleton crews juggle the same workload once balanced among a larger staff.
With the constant threat of losing their jobs in a shitty economy hanging over the heads of workers, they'll work harder, longer, do more for less, just to retain their jobs. And lots of unscrupulous employers are exploiting this to the fullest, running their businesses chronically understaffed by people who don't dare complain lest they lose the terrible jobs they desperately hate and face the even worse fate of unemployment.
"The Great Speedup" is a despicable practice, largely ignored in discussions of both workers' rights and workers' compensation.
Employment is down, wages are down, but efficiency and profits are up. Yet still employers are not being criticized—not for exploiting workers, not for using a bad economy and endemic unemployment to maximize profits, not for being deliberately stingy with job creation because it's actually in their financial interest to overload existing employees in a market that favors employers.
Instead, our President warmly invites these same companies to make the choice to do right by their employers in his State of the Union. And workers are expected to work even harder.
For $10.10 an hour.
So the President Gave a Speech Last Night...
AMERICA.
President Obama gave his 2014 State of the Union address last night. C-SPAN has video of the address here. (As well as video of Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers' rebuttal here.) The New York Times has a complete transcript of the President's address here.
A couple of brief observations:
1. The speech was peppered with lots of ideas about how corporations can make workers' lives better. President Obama urged companies to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 on their own. There was also a lot of rhetoric about hard work and opportunity. Very little of it felt, to me, like it reflected the reality for millions of US workers, whose companies are actively and openly trying to deny them benefits, overtime, safety on the job—anything to save money and maximize profits. People are working hard. Good jobs with a livable wage are vanishing, and people are working harder and harder to make ends meet. Their employers are often the enemy of their security. All of it just felt really out of touch.
2. The President gave short shrift (two sentences) to the prevention of gun violence. Welp.
3. The President did not address federal employment protections for LGBTQI workers at all. Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, said in a statement after the address: "We are...pleased that the President is using his pen like he said he would to move things forward: in this instance by signing an executive order to increase the minimum wage for federal contract workers. However, he must go further and sign an executive order that bans discrimination against the same contract workers who are LGBT. The irony is that some LGBT federal contract workers will get a pay raise but they could still be fired for who they are and who they love. The longer the President waits the more damage LGBT people will face."
4. Ahead of the speech, the White House was telling media that women's issues would be a central piece of the speech. (At CNN, for example: "Obama to put women's issues 'front and center' in address.") And the President did address the pay gap, though he failed to acknowledge the pay gap is even bigger for women of color. He offered a great line for a perfect viral soundbite—"It is time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a Mad Men episode."—and got a lot of applause for his call to give women equal pay for equal work, but once again he failed to mention reproductive rights access, and how crucial it is for women to be able to control their reproduction in order to meet educational and employment goals and achieve financial security.
5. [Content Note: War; injury; disablism] The longest sustained applause of the evening came when President Obama introduced Army Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, a soldier who was seriously injured in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb on his tenth deployment. Ten deployments. Ten fucking deployments. President Obama told Remsburg's story:
[O]n his 10th deployment, Cory was nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb in Afghanistan. His comrades found him in a canal, face down, underwater, shrapnel in his brain.Thunderous applause. Tears. And then the President used Remsburg as a symbol of inspiration:
For months, he lay in a coma. And the next time I met him, in the hospital, he couldn't speak; he could barely move. Over the years, he's endured dozens of surgeries and procedures, hours of grueling rehab every day.
Even now, Cory is still blind in one eye. He still struggles on his left side. But slowly, steadily, with the support of caregivers like his dad Craig, and the community around him, Cory has grown stronger. Day by day, he's learned to speak again and stand again and walk again, and he's working toward the day when he can serve his country again.
"My recovery has not been easy," he says. "Nothing in life that's worth anything is easy."
Cory is here tonight. And like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg never gives up, and he does not quit.
My fellow Americans — my fellow Americans, men and women like Cory remind us that America has never come easy. Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy... The America we want for our kids — a rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us — none of it is easy. But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us, the way Cory summoned what is best in him, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow, I know it's within our reach.Setting aside the grossness of the "Person with a Disability as Inspiration" trope, which has a long history in State of the Union addresses, and the cynical appropriation of the personal story of a member of the military, which also has a long history in State of the Union addresses, I'm not sure I see Remsburg symbolizing the same things the President does.
When invited to look at him as a symbol, I didn't see a man who reminds me that "the American Dream" isn't easy. What I saw is a man who, like so many other men and women, offered their service, and potentially their lives, to protect their country, but was instead sent to a war of choice. Ten times. What I see is a man who has a struggle he didn't have before, because of corporate interests masquerading as national security, because of lies, because powerful people who tell pretty patriotic stories about "the American Dream" convince brave (and/or desperate) young men and women to go fight wars that make those powerful people very, very rich.
That doesn't take anything away from Remsburg's courage and loyalty and service. Ten fucking deployments. That guy is hard as nails.
He went to his job, and he worked hard, and he gave everything short of his life to his work. And his employer, the US government, worked him right through until they couldn't work him anymore. And that story seems less symbolic of how nothing comes easy, as much as it does indicative of how brutally hard it is for US workers, while it's so very easy for the people who make decisions about their lives.
