#no one gets healthcare. for the worker to attack immigrants because their employer might pay them even Less under the table | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mejomonster · 6 days ago

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There's a podcast I found on youtube called Behind the Bastards that goes into the history of awful people in history. Listened to the Thomas Jefferson episodes recently and. Wow rich people always have been shit (as a group)

Jefferson admired the roman 'farmers' who were land owners who had slaves work their land. He and his peers were virginia landowners who also had slaves farm for them. The ideal he read about and admired were "hard working self sufficient farmers" but this image is not of a man hunting and farming himself or with his family, but a man living in comfort with slaves to do the work and provide the comfort.

Now the big trend among conservatives is tradwifes and the image men are sold about it - a woman cleaning their home, farming for them, providing for them and obeying them. Which on the small scale is to like appease poor men and poor women - to give poor men this illusion that they could have a stay at home wife and afford for her to not work eventually (and also serve him), to give poor women (that they could afford to not work for money one day and serve a man who loves them for being the 'right' kind of woman). The people who are actually achieving this lifestyle are rich men (and women who end up working since... if you're an influencer that's your job, so it's all an illusion since the lifestyle could not be achieved without money coming in).

It's just a symptom of a bigger pattern. Conservative circles push this lifestyle as idealized to the masses (a man being served by someone for free, able to control them absolutely). If the masses aspire to that, hope for that, then the masses will continue to think they'll be billionaires one day who WILL have that and DESERVE to have that. And instead of fighting the billionaires, they'll think that is the goal to be admired as a sign of success.

Meanwhile our whole world, our current world, is at the mercy of some very very rich fucks. Who are attempting to sap what wealth everyone else has, and take it for themselves. These billionaires live in comfort! Far more comfort than slave owners of centuries past! These billionaires have so much money, they can buy any service they want, land, websites, politicians. And yet its never 'enough' money to these bastards. They need to buy more property to rent to the masses, and drive rent prices up by using housing as assets. They need healthcare gutted because god forbid the masses pay less for healthcare - they SHOULD pay 100,0000 to live after an accident! God forbid the masses own property, and therefore have a little wealth and security for their family - if they're less housing stable, they'll quit shitty jobs less. You can abuse them more! God forbid the majority of humans have food, water, shelter, healthcare. Got to raise the price of all groceries, because you can! Because you need to get ALL the money the masses manage to make, and funnel it to yourself. Billionaires are just like those illusions of "self sufficient farmers" who own slaves and rely on slaves to both provide necessities and luxuries.

Billionaires really spew the bullshit they're self sufficient, then don't pay their employees living wages. Billionaires have nothing to offer without the efforts of their employees, and the money those employees earned for them (or the rent they charged etc). They certainly aren't self sufficient, they're also not a single benefit to society. They dream of a world where everyone serves them, provides for them, and gives them always MORE. In many ways the world probably already is this, all of us buy something that eventually contributes to a billionaire, or work for one (or for a company that serves one), or pay taxes to a government that coddles a billionaire, buy groceries. But billionaires always want MORE. More more more. They're destructive in their existence. In what they choose to do, which is take from others to give themselves more, to give themselves SO much they can't even use it all. They'd still be rich enough to buy a politician off, to buy an island or a website, if they paid their employees a living wage and charged reasonable prices. Once you have enough money you simply cannot spend it all in your lifetime, in your grandchildrens lifetimes, even if you buy absolutely everything you ever want. They don't have to seek to take from others endlessly, to continue existing with the lifestyle they do. But they still seek to take more and more and more. In the process they hurt most people, and hurt the world we live in as a whole. And they don't care, even though it would not hurt them at all and would not take a single tangible benefit they receive, to stop being Such destructive presences in the world.

#rant #its just like.... so jeffersons argument for why he didnt emancipate his slaves was he had debts to pay #and debt was inheritable back then. (kind of sounds like trumps massive debts when he ran for pres but that was all his own debt)#well one of jeffersons friends offered to give him money when he died to 1 pay off debts 2 free all his slaves #and jefferson refused. even though he was provided the means to pay his debt! the reason he said he didnt want to give up slaves #and billionaires are kind of like that. they have SO much fucking wealth they do not have to give up a single comfort or desire to simply..#stop being so goddamn destructive... but they refuse to stop being destructive. there's no Need for them to be the way they are. they WANT #to be this way.#jefferson wanted to be that way. tell himself he's self sufficient and own people who had to do what he said and provide for him #he (and MANY people in debt at the time) could have worked to eliminate inherited debt #an issue which likely affected the many poor people - not just the people with land.#i dont know if rich people just fucking brainwash themselves #the way they try to brainwash the poor: into this idea that having wealth means youre 'self sufficient' and 'the best'#and so pursuit of ever MORE wealth is the only way to prove you're worthy of existing #and to lose wealth or simply pursue less than a peer makes you a LOSER failure worthless.#so billionaires cant just 'stop destroying' because they'd still have enough to buy anything. but their worth would be LESS than a peer #and they're horrified by that number being LESS.#and that idea also aspires to push poor people to attack each other: for the small business owner to pay poverty wages and do part time so #no one gets healthcare. for the worker to attack immigrants because their employer might pay them even Less under the table #for the worker to get 2 or 3 jobs even though its killing them and making them ill because to have more money is to be 'better'

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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5 Ways The War On Drugs Has Always Been Racist As Hell

Sometimes drugs can ruin lives, and sometimes they’re simply a fun Friday night. It’s a complicated subject, and we’re not going to take a side. We will, however, point out that a lot of so-called anti-drug efforts which authorities have put together over the years have mostly been excuses to harass minorities. We’re talking about how …

White Employers Got Black Employees To Use Cocaine, Then Panicked About It

Cocaine used to be just another food additive which could be found in everything from children’s pain medication to pop. You’d think its 1914 ban would’ve come down to “Holy shit, we’re putting cocaine in everything, what the hell were we thinking? It must have been all the … oh.” But while people were aware of the dangers of cocaine abuse among middle- and upper-class white Americans, that’s not why it was banned. Instead, lawmakers were driven by the early 20th century equivalent of a racist chain email from your grandpa. There were stories of black Americans supposedly abusing cocaine, gaining superhuman strength, and using that strength to attack white men and sexually assault white women.

Wiki Commons Using up precious cocaine earmarked for white children.

If you’re wondering what happened to the “black people gain drug-based superpowers and use them to commit crime” chapter of your history book, then obvious spoiler alert: It wasn’t really happening. What was happening was that cocaine use among black laborers was widespread. Its recreational use was tolerated, and sometimes white employers were explicitly giving it to their workers, in both cases because they believed it would make the employees work harder. We, uh … we used to be pretty dumb when it came to drugs.

Somehow, the “let’s give our workers coke” strategy backfired, as ridiculous stories began to spread. In 1914, The New York Times ran an article claiming that “most of the attacks upon white women of the South are the direct result of the ‘cocaine-crazed’ Negro brain” and “Negro cocaine fiends are now a known Southern menace.” While “Negro Cocaine Fiends” would be a great ironic album title, there was, shockingly, no evidence of crazed black people running wild.

While widespread use of cocaine probably wasn’t great for anyone’s disposition, “news” reports claimed that cocaine made black men hallucinate taunts and abuse, as well as gain incredible accuracy with guns and immunity to bullet wounds which would stop or kill a sober man. Holy shit! Why wasn’t cocaine being used in secret supersoldier projects? Oh, right, because it was all bullshit. But the 1914 ban was passed anyway thanks to those myths, and not out of fact-based concerns about the health risks of cocaine. (Because white people could handle their coke, goddammit!)

If you want a silver lining, the ban largely put a stop to lynchings of black men based on the “We think he’s high on coke, so he probably raped someone or whatever” clause. It also, uh, fueled nasty, often lethal stereotypes about impoverished minorities and drugs for decades to come, but that’s something, right?

Banning Alcohol From Native American Reservations Has Its Roots In A Myth That They’re Genetically Unable To Handle Booze

Yeah, there’s a running trend of white people thinking other people react differently to intoxicating substances. You may have heard the still-prevalent idea that the genes of Native Americans make them biologically prone to alcohol abuse. Supposedly, when Europeans introduced Natives to alcohol, their bodies didn’t know how to handle it and a tremendous cultural struggle with alcoholism ensued. No sir, it wasn’t the depression and trauma of watching their friends and family die while their culture and lifestyle were extinguished which contributed to alcohol abuse — it was biology! Not whitey’s fault, so deal with it.

William Faden “After all, they did trade Manhattan for four six-packs.”

It is true that Native Americans experience problems with alcohol … at a rate equal to white people. But thanks to stereotypes, we tend to view alcoholism among Natives as a moral failing endemic to their culture, while an alcoholic white guy is some dude with a problem who doesn’t reflect on other white people. Natives do experience more alcohol-related health problems than whites, but that’s because as a group, they have inferior access to healthcare, healthy food, etc. — a problem which is a subject for a future wacky comedy article.

For governing whites, prohibition laws on Native reservations were seen as a quick and easy way to address alcoholism. Natives can’t handle their booze, so cut them off and punish those who try to keep drinking. But Natives tended to see prohibition as white people trying to force a solution on them … to address a problem which they also forced on them. It’s like if someone smashed your car window and then took away your driver’s license because they said you were a bad driver for letting your window get smashed.

But even if the root causes are horrible stereotypes, prohibition is still meant to help, right? It’s certainly an improvement from the days when laws against selling booze to Natives were lifted so settlers could turn a tidy profit from alcohol abuse. But “meant” is the keyword there. If you treat Native American alcohol abuse as a unique and more desperate problem than it is among other people, you create brand-new problems. Stereotypes about Natives and alcoholism can make them too embarrassed to seek medical treatment, and it can also lead to Natives who have never touched a drink in their lives getting rejected from jobs. Hey, do you think those kind of bullshit economic punishments might contribute to alcohol abuse?

Also, a total ban on alcohol leads to people getting arrested for possession of a single beer, even though the stigma of having a criminal record is going to do someone more harm than one can of Bud Light. In one especially depressing incident, one cousin stabbed another to death over a bottle of beer, which A) might not have happened if beer wasn’t illegal, and B) is a clear sign that prohibition isn’t working. Could the truly atrocious living conditions on many reservations be contributing to incidents like that? Nah, they probably just can’t handle their firewater, right?

America’s War Against Opium Was Fueled By The Fear Of Race-Mixing

Another trend in antique drug laws is a baseless belief that minorities were stealing away white women and enabling the heinous crime of race-mixing (and implicitly, the equally heinous crime of white women not having sex with racist white dudes, even though they were totally nice guys who had their best interests at heart). Exhibit #317-B is San Francisco circa 1875, when Chinese immigrants, mostly railroad and mine workers, liked to unwind after a long day on the job by smoking opium. Hey, we’ve all been there.

The Bancroft Library “Mondays, right?”

White locals accused the Chinese of taking jobs from them during a rough economic downturn (technically true, but they were performing dangerous labor for shit pay, which is the kind of job that white locals tend to turn down or not even be offered). That complaint somehow morphed into accusations that opium dens were “girl traps.” The Chinese supposedly lured white women and teens into their dens with opium-laced candy and other treats until they were addicted and willing to have sex for more, which maybe says more about the people dreaming up such accusations than anything else.

So San Francisco outlawed opium smoking in 1875. But this was a nationwide belief. In New York City in 1883, a local worrywart set up surveillance teams to keep an eye on suspected opium dens which were supposedly corrupting white women. Tellingly, this surveillance was done by people from other neighborhoods, as most local whites didn’t have an issue with their Chinese neighbors. But they called the police whenever they suspected a stranger’s vagina was in peril, and a series of raids uncovered … a 19-year-old woman. Singular. Who didn’t appear to be an addicted sex slave. Claims that girls as young as ten were escaping before the police showed up were unproven, probably because they were super-duper made up.

But troublesome “facts” didn’t stop people from declaring that “hundreds of American girls” were becoming “associates and then slaves of the Mongolian” (old-timey racists weren’t big on demographic accuracy). So by 1909, Congress had made opium smoking, and only smoking, illegal nationwide. Drinking and injecting tinctures — how white Americans liked their medicinal and recreational opium — was still totally cool for a while, presumably as long as you pinky swore not to seduce dozens of sex slaves with the contents of your medicine cabinet.

Alcohol Prohibition Was An Anti-Immigrant And Anti-Black Panic

Prohibition and the events leading up to it had all sorts of complex causes. But one of those causes was a bunch of tedious people getting together to complain about immigrants — specifically the still-viewed-as-extremely-anti-American Germans and Irish and their love of beer. Because when history is at its worst, the masses are swayed to the side of the people complaining about beer instead of enjoying it.

In 1855 Chicago, the mayor and his followers were concerned about the influence of foreigners who took jobs and pledged spiritual allegiance to one of the most dastardly villains in history: the Pope. Gasp! They were especially distrusting of Irish and German immigrants, who liked to hit the pub on Sunday, their one day off. The Chicago Tribune called Irish Catholics “depraved, worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the community.” We’re assuming that “sot” was a harsh burn back then.

So Chicago dusted off an old law which required taverns to be closed on Sunday … but only enforced it in immigrant communities. Chicago also sextupled the price of an annual liquor license to $300 (about 7,800 modern dollars) to try to drive immigrant bars out of business. 200 tavern owners were brought up on charges, and when the first one went to trial, there were massive protests, because you don’t fuck with a 19th century working man’s booze. One protester was killed, the mayor’s political career tanked, and the laws were eventually repealed, but it wasn’t the end of anti-letting-immigrants-drink sentiment.

The Prohibition movement was in full swing during World War I, and as you hopefully remember from history class, Germany was on team Not America. So Prohibitionist propaganda linked beer and brewing with Germany, and therefore treason. Prohibitionists also connected drinking with the Irish and other immigrants, with one congressman calling foreign drinkers the “degenerate vote” which “overwhelmed the liberties of free people” and were a “menace to our institutions.” Irish Americans were accused of being unpatriotic if they opposed Prohibition or the war, which silenced dissent.

Meanwhile, in the South, “colored only” saloons were declared “centers of vice, schools of iniquity, and hot-beds of crime.” Prohibitionists dressed the movement up as concern for those poor black people who were spending all their money and “[feeding] their animalism,” but they also accused black saloons of threatening the safety of white women and children. Because who knew what those dastardly blacks were planning when whites couldn’t keep an eye on them?

Again, Prohibition was complicated, but to some proponents, taking away one of the joys of minorities while making them less scary to the sort of people who wring their hands a lot was a big plus. One Southern Prohibitionist even argued that getting rid of saloons could prevent a race war and keep black Americans from rampaging through the streets, because ready access to alcohol was obviously the only reason black Southerners might get mad at white Southerners.

Numerous Government Officials Have Confirmed That Laws Against Drugs Are Based On Race

So far we’ve only given you historical examples, but you know what they say about history repeating itself to screw over minorities. Here, for example, is a 2015 interview with a former DEA agent who says they were told not to target drug sellers and users in rich areas, even though drugs are as prevalent there as anywhere else. The reasoning was that rich (read: mostly white) people have connections to lawyers, politicians, and judges who could make life a living hell for the DEA, while people in poorer areas (read: generally nonwhite people) wouldn’t be able to fight back.

You can find comments like that throughout American history. In the ’30s, Harry Anslinger, one of the big shots behind cannabis laws, said, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” and, “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” It’s admittedly kind of refreshing to hear someone be openly racist instead of trying to dress it up as being “for their own good,” although it sounds like Mrs. Anslinger probably had an unsatisfying marriage.

Ironic, considering her husband was named “Anslinger.”

Now let’s skip through time to a 2016 article on a 1994 talk with John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top advisors and a Watergate jailbird. He told Harper’s, “The Nixon White House had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” He then presumably twirled his mustache and demanded one billion dollars, or else he would melt the ice caps.

The Nixon administration’s official line was that they were responding to a heroin epidemic and an uptick in the smoking of jazz cigarettes, as we believe the cool kids still call weed. And to be fair, several of Ehrlichman’s children and colleagues called bullshit on his statements, suggesting he either never said them or was being sarcastic (the writer who talked to Ehrilchman thinks he was serious and trying to atone). Nixon did establish drug education and addiction treatment programs, but also signed off on no-knock searches and is on record as referring to black Americans as “little Negro bastards” who “live like a bunch of dogs.” Again, drugs are complicated. You’re welcome to draw your own conclusions.

But while you’re reaching those conclusions, keep in mind that the drug war is incarcerating African American men at a rate about four times worse than black South Africans were during apartheid. Oh, and thanks to drug laws, there are more black men in the prison system than there were black men enslaved in 1850. So … maybe a change in strategy is in order here.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

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