Kind of Interesting

At one point, there was an unspoken agreement with the worker; if you did a good job, you'd be with us for life. There was much talk of the company man, and many places had whole towns devoted to keeping their employees happy.

This wasn't done out of the good will of business or anything, of course; it was just companies giving into the obligatory societal pressure, and of course such loyalty-specific tools as the company scrip could be used as a tool to keep the workers in line. Still, it was often thought that when you got into a "good" job, that's where you'd stay until retirement. And even in retirement, they'd take care of you.

That dissolved in the 1960s and 70s, and eventually broke in the 1980s when Reagan came to power and companies started saying, "Wait - why should I have to keep all these people on board when I have costs to keep down and stocks to inflate?" And so "the layoff" became a standard term, and the remaining placeholders of the idea that companies owed you something finally broke loose altogether, where the employees became just another disposable resource. Now, anyone who hopes to work for a company for life is considered naive and foolish - you're going to switch jobs a lot before you reach that finish line, and you'd better build your own pension!

What I find fascinating, however, is how the Republicans have spun it. They're clever that way. It wouldn't be too hard to argue that businesses owe something to their workers - that people who did a good job didn't deserve to be jettisoned the instant they proved to be superfluous, and that the strain and stress of continually being in and out of work has proven to lower people's life expectancies. That layoffs have a very human cost, especially in these days of non-socialized health care, when a job loss and a major illness can literally kill your loved ones. That layoffs don't consistently improve company performance in the long run, and often harm it. That people who are hired on have value, and shouldn't be treated like cogs.

The Republicans made the counter-argument that businesses need flexibility, and having a temporary job for a year is better than having none at all, isn't it? (Even if, as noted, layoffs are often just a temporary boost to satiate stockholders and serve little to no purpose in making a business run more efficiently.) And so, quite effectively, they managed to position the health of business as being more important than the health of people, as they routinely do.

But what amazes me is this next step:

The few remaining people who do have a reasonable expectation of life-long employment have now been framed as useless leeches, living fat off the land. They're overpaid! They get better benefits! How dare they live better than we do - especially on our dime? And so the Republicans, having successfully reduced the overall standard of living for workers, are now successfully playing the envy card to get the people they've reduced to get mad at the public servants who have actually managed to maintain a better salary and working conditions.

Those greedy, greedy teachers! I remember, growing up, looking at my teachers with their diamond necklaces and their sparkling-new Ferraris, thinking, "That's the high life. If you wanna get rich, be a teacher." Or, you know, the high-rollin' life of a cop, with their mansions and dining out at Sardi's every night! Clearly, they're now thinking they're so special for wanting the ability to negotiate for better terms from us! The taxpayer! How dare they?

Idiots will, of course, point out that unions get greedy and lazy, but those same idiots will forget to point out that the biggest bastion of the greedy in America - you know, those bankers and financiers who we can't tax, because they earned their dough the right way - pretty much cratered our economy with their greed and laziness, which is far more damage done than any set of dysfunctional teachers. Greed and laziness is an across-the-board symptom of neither the unionized nor the nonunionized, but of humanity whenever we get into a good position. If y'all were equally mad at the tax breaks we're giving to rich folks' vacation homes, I'd take you seriously, but I don't see nearly that outrage on Fox news. (Cue Jon Stewart's rather well-done takedowns.)

(And not that I'd disagree that there needs to be a better way of firing incompetent teachers and cops, who now take entirely too long to get flushed out, but there needs to be some prevention process - otherwise, the local politician can just fire anyone who disagrees with him, leaving a stable of zealots on his side.)

But that's why I can't ever really hate the Republicans. No matter how scummy or sleazy they are, there's a part of me that always secretly admires someone who's stunningly good at something. And the Republicans' tactics here of "First, remove the idea that businesses owe anything beyond a paycheck to their long-term employees. Next, play upon everyone's terror of losing their job and their health care to make them angry at the few people who still have it better than they do."

They're so audacious in their plans, that I can't help but envy a well-played card... Even as I wish the Democrats would be that aggressive.

One of My Favorite Comments Lately

kuangning, on my previous entry, mentioning something that I'd damn near forgotten:

"When I was coming of age, not all that long ago, it was understood (and everyone knew it was the right way, because Republicans told us so...) that when you went into a public service career like teaching or police work, your wages were going to be lower than if you had stayed in the private sector. The trade-off was your job security and pensions.

"Public sector wages did not somehow skyrocket: their trend is upward, but only moderately so. What happened is that the private sector had the bottom fall out. And now, having had their higher wages for as long as they could, people are letting themselves be convinced that it's all dirty tricks on the part of the people who took their lower wages in exchange for job security and pensions. Which, as a one-time mother of small children, seems perfectly natural and familiar to me, but is also behaviour that ought to be corrected when it happens. Johnny Private had his whole chocolate lolly with sprinkles until it fell; Jimmy Public made do with half his lemon ice and kept half in the freezer for later. Johnny's not entitled to the other half of Jimmy's."

Really, It's Not About That

Gini and I caught a re-run of The X-Files "Squeeze" - the first appearance of hyper-creepy liver-eater Eugene Victor Tooms. And you know, what people remember about that episode is the villain - who, let's face it, has that crazy face and psychopath's dead-eyed glare that makes it memorable.

But looking at it now, what makes it work is the tension. If you just dropped Eugene into a police procedural, he'd be creepy - but what makes the episode really pull its weight is the clever way it forces Scully to choose between Mulder and the FBI. Because sure, the stakes are high when you're trying to track a mutant - but the episode makes it deeply personal, because Scully likes Mulder, but the FBI thinks that Mulder is a nut. And when the shit starts hitting the fan, she has to choose between her career and justice - she'd be better off letting the killer go, because it's so crazy-sounding and that's what the hot-shot set of up-and-coming agents want to hear. But as the evidence mounts and Scully realizes that Mulder might actually be right, there are serious consequences.

It's brilliant. And yes, this formula will be worn into the ground later on, but in the early seasons, the way the threats were so utterly personal - not just to their physical nature or their sanity, but to their careers and the lives of other people - made the X-Files some brilliant, brilliant stuff.

Anyone can drop a scary monster into a show. What takes work is building the tension so that the monster isn't the only danger. And damn if they didn't.