One of them was a John Bircher to boot. These guys were often big on the 1st and 2nd amendments to the US constitution, the right to free speech, and the right to bear arms. They often talked tough about “going up in to the mountains with their shit” or if the government tries to take “their shit” away they’ll “have to come in to the mountains to get me” silly stuff if there ever was.
What used to get at me was that they didn’t really need protection from the first amendment because they were always too afraid to speak up at all when it came to fighting the boss. They talked about the right to bear arms and all that stuff because that too is very tough sounding but no threat to the boss whatsoever; I should add that I am a legal gun owner and support the right to bear arms, that’s not the issue with me. They were often some of the laziest workers as well though. What got me about them was that their position was to deny to others, everything they already had.
These types who were normally white guys but not always, sometimes they just thought they were, attacked socialized medicine, Unions and the benefits that were crippling US business, everything they already had. They were particularly fond of bashing immigrants and poor people. One of them that comes to mind was a particularly lazy individual who like many of them, was very impressed with Oliver North, the guy who spent a fair bit of his time throwing Vietnamese peasants out of airplanes no doubt.
Another always championed US capitalism as opposed to those Germans and Swede’s and their communist societies. I told one of them once that he had a “communist” job working in the US public sector. We worked for a public utility with the best wages, benefits and retirement practically in the entire country.
“It must be damn hard for you working here” I once said to him.
“How comes” he replied.”
“Well, you don’t have an American job, this here is a Swedish type job, one of those “communist” jobs.” I responded sarcastically intending to get his goat, "You’d be much happier at McDonalds, in the good old vibrant private sector." I always liked to use the term “communist job” as it was the most despised term in their lexicon other than “hard work”.
What made me think about these characters was reading Obama’s speech at a service on Memorial Day. It made me sick reading it:
“That’s what we memorialize today" Obama says, "That spirit that says, send me, no matter the mission. Send me, no matter the risk. Send me, no matter how great the sacrifice I am called to make. The patriots we memorialize today sacrificed not only all they had but all they would ever know. They gave of themselves until they had nothing more to give. It’s natural, when we lose someone we care about, to ask why it had to be them. Why my son, why my sister, why my friend, why not me?” (My added emphasis)
What utter nonsense. Not that there aren’t some misguided individuals that don’t question and simply enjoy the opportunity to mow down a few people. And there are some that are genuinely fooled by the massive propaganda about freedom and fighting to bring democracy to a dark, dark world. But what we have here is an economic draft. Bush was a draft dodger; his daughters didn’t go either. And what does it say about rich folks that they don’t get their kids in to the fray. No, the rich have other options. During the first Gulf War not one member of the US Congress had a son or daughter on the front line if my memory serves me rightly.
This babble coming from the mouth of Obama isn’t the first time I’ve read such nonsense, a nonsense that implies workers are more patriotic then them which is why workers “volunteer" to fight and die and why they honor those that do on certain days and then screw them the rest of the time, especially when they return from combat and need help.
One of the right wingers at work, a lazy assed supporter of the John Birch Society philosophy which is a racist anti-worker philosophy as these two always go together, used to get on my nerves a lot. But there was a bit of a discussion going on at the lunch table one day about the high percentage of minorities in combat. I think this was more so during the first gulf war.
Then, as if a gift from heaven, the thug Caspar Weinberger set down a few words in a Wall Street Journal editorial * about the draft and this question of high minority participation. Weinberger was a former Bechtel CEO and lawyer turned politician who built up the weapons of mass destruction in the US military as secretary of defense under the B movie actor cum president, Ronald Reagan.
It was a gem of a piece as Weinberger was arguing that the reason for higher participation in the armed services by people of color was that they were more patriotic than white folks. I loved it and distributed it around work, particularly in view of certain patriotic Rush Limbaugh types adding a few written and verbal comments of my own.
Weinberger was responding to John Conyers and Charles Wrangel who were arguing for a draft because they felt that the burden of defending the country “is resting too heavily on the shoulders of the blacks and minorities.” They included “the poor” which is how they generally include white workers, because they generally stick us in with the white bosses. White middle class leftists and liberals do the same. They feel so guilty about their class privilege and the benefits that accrue to them, particularly as white males, that they prove their non racist credentials by attacking white workers. In actuality, their class position leads them to be contemptuous of all workers but there is nothing they fear more than being accused of racism. The main thing is that any description but working class will do.
Weinberger responds “The congressmen never mentioned that the burden of defending the country is resting on the shoulders, white, black, brown, etc., of those who want that "burden," and whose volunteering gives it to them.”
It’s the same explanation that they give for low wages. Workers earning the minimum wage are more “willing” to work for lower pay. Immigrant workers are more “willing”, Bangladeshi women are “more willing”. There cannot be coercion and violence at play as we live in a free and democratic society. Workers volunteering to go spend a couple years in the sands of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan “want” the burden that such a sacrifice entails. They "want" to be away from their wives and children and families and “want” to risk leaving their children without a parent for the good of the cause. It has nothing to do with the limited choices on offer.
And Weinberger, who opposes the draft, adds that the higher percentage of blacks and Latino’s in the military at the time, "demonstrates that there is a higher degree of patriotism among black and Hispanic youths of draft age than among whites of draft age. That should be a matter of praise and gratification.”
The proportion of people in the military doesn’t matter, Weinberger argues because, “however "proportional," our military is what it is because it is made up of people who want to be there.” Weinberger was adamant in his struggle to “allow patriotic young blacks and Hispanics to volunteer”. What a nice man wanting to give young men of color such opportunity.
By the time I got to the end of the piece I was near tears so moving is this Bechtel CEO’s literary style. His reminiscence of a chat with Reagan took the cake: “Once, early in 1982, President Reagan and I reviewed a force of young American soldiers newly enrolled. Afterwards he said to me, "You know, Cap, I would infinitely rather look each of these young people in the eye and know that each wants to be here."
I had a field day with Caspar’s editorial making sure any Rush Limbaugh loving, patriotic right winger, (I should emphasize these were not numerous in my workplace) had a chance to read one of their heroic political figures explaining to the world that white guys were less patriotic than blacks and Latinos. Old Caspar made my day.
People like Weinberger would oppose the draft because if we had a draft and given the unpopularity of US capitalism’s predatory excursions abroad among the US population, we’d see much more open opposition. The burden of defending the interests of US corporations around the world, the shattered families, dead or disfigured sons and daughters is falling on the shoulders of a small minority of US families.
Weinberger as secretary of defense and a former Bechtel CEO was in a unique position. After he profited from his country’s bombing of a third world nation in to antiquity, he could do quite well helping his buddies at Bechtel, one of the world’s largest engineering contractors, profit from re-building it.
Isn’t freedom swell.
* Dodgy Drafters: Caspar Weinberger, Wall Street Journal 1-10-03
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