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Someone call Toby Keith, we're bombing the Middle East again

John’s Journal

I write this like I’m talking to my friends at a bar. There are typos and occasional embellishments, but no lies. If you’re a lawyer, do not take this seriously… unless that helps.

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I took a Spirit Airlines red-eye from LAX to Baltimore recently. It was out of character. I haven’t flown in years and avoid it at all costs. 

We boarded at midnight and then sat on the tarmac for thirty minutes while the pilot explained, with calm authority, that a flap related to the shitters was being “taped down” for aerodynamics. Cue the sweating. 

Such things are expected from Spirit Airlines, a brand launched to match consumers on a budget with planes built on a budget. My seatmate said simply, “They’ll get you there, and that’s all you need to worry about.” “Will they?” I wanted to ask. He dug out a bag of pills, ate some, and then drooled on me all the way to Baltimore. No neck pillow. No nothing. A true Spirit traveler. 

Me on my Spirit Airlines budget red-eye

At 2 AM on Christmas morning, I was ready to press “book” on an Alaskan Airlines 737 Max out of LAX on January 4th. Then I recalled how the Boeing 737 Max had earned a reputation for nose-diving out of the sky, with two fatal crashes months apart in 2018 and 2019. 

No, thank you. I felt a little ridiculous, but I abandoned my Alaska Airlines cart and used an alternate flight tracker to find an airplane less notorious for smoking itself into the ground despite protestation by highly trained pilots. 

Turns out it was a good call. My Baltimore friends woke me from a jet-lagged slumber the next day with news that a large hole had blown out of the fuselage of an Alaskan Airlines 737 Max at 16,000 feet flying out of Portland. It wasn’t the exact plane I’d have been on, but close enough for a nervous flyer.

And sure, flying may be statistically one of the safer ways to travel, but what’s the appropriate tolerance for catastrophe in the sky? I’d say zero. Yet, incidents and near misses on the runway are at all-time highs. 

My flight was part of a larger (mostly) road trip around the country. Pittsburgh to Cleveland on a Greyhound bus. Cleveland to Oakland, California in a VW golf I dubbed the “Roller Skate.” Oakland to LA with the help of a rental car. The red eye to Baltimore. Finally, an assortment of friends carted me back to West Virginia on the scenic route. 

The journey reminded me of some depressing truths.

As a country, we have some good stuff going for us, but it’s hard to overlook that America is being stripped for parts everywhere you turn. There wasn’t a single roll of toilet paper or any hand soap to be found in the Greyhound bus infrastructure between two major cities. Legroom on flights seems to be under constant assault. The tray tables are the size of credit cards. The seats don’t recline. And sometimes, the friggin’ doors blow off midflight. 

Things are getting shittier as they become more expensive and less convenient. And we act like this is normal. Is this the innovation that free market hawks are talking about? It feels hollow when you realize there's no TP in the Cleveland bus terminal after it’s too late.

Welcome to public transit in America, dear citizens. Hope you packed baby wipes and buckled your seat belt on that 737 Max. 

“Place the little end into the big end and firmly tighten. Remain buckled lest you be violently sucked from the fuselage 16,000 feet over Portland in the event of plane failure due to Boeing stock buy-backs”

There’s a common denominator here: shareholder capitalism. The corporate playbook controlling everything in our lives that was written by dudes like Jack Welch. It’s why everything that sucks, sucks. 

The playbook is to bank the most profit in the shortest time, by any means necessary. Layoffs, union busting, misclassifying employees as independent contractors, cutting costs and corners, off-shoring jobs to countries with low wages and no environmental laws, using profits for stock buy-backs, and buying out competitors as aggressively as you buy off Congress. 

This is our religion. Money for shareholders at the expense of *everything* else. We’ve been at it since the 80s (well… the 1600’s, really).

The shareholder capitalism playbook has extended its domain across the entire globe, to the point that it’s the only thing we know. Above all, it cannot tolerate an interruption to the flow of commerce. Because that’s the money tap, and we go to ridiculous lengths to keep it running. 

Take Yemen. If you don’t know, Yemen controls water passages through the Red Sea that greatly reduce the shipping time for products to travel around the globe. Houthi fighters have been stopping ships, without killing anyone, to resist the erasure of millions of people in Gaza who are currently starving if they’re not actively being blown to pieces by bombs paid for with our tax dollars (and signed by our former Vice President).

But time is money for shareholder capitalism, and this passage is vital. So, we’re bombing Yemen (not the first time) to keep the commerce flowing. 

The White House made it nice and clear, “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.” 

Thanks to American military might, Jeff Bezos will continue to make 7.9 million dollars per hour by streamlining a river of cheap plastic crap into our homes anytime we press a button on our phones. When we’re done with the cheap plastic crap that arrived to us promptly on the wings of the military-industrial complex, we’ll throw it away. The best monument to this cycle is probably in Hamilton County Ohio, where the tallest geographical point is a pile of trash dubbed Rumpke Mountain. There’s even a bluegrass band named after it. 

And here we are again. American bombs falling on the Middle East. I can hear the Marine recruiters at the pull-up bar in my Appalachian high school lunchroom daring the football players to pull 10 clean. If you sign up, you’ll be able to buy a new Mustang. They’re making electric ones now, you know. What else are you gonna do in a town where “free trade” killed the mills? Dollar general? 

Maybe it’s a stretch to say that these are related, or crass to draw lines between ethnic cleansing and uncomfortable airline seats. But I can’t help but see a connection. And it’s hard to unsee how naked the emperor has become. 

What do you think? Tell me in the comments.

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OffJaWaggon Ya Heard?

My good buddies @off_jawaggon and Taylor with the Let Them Eat Toast podcast had me on their pod to talk about that old-fashioned rural populist union gospel. Take a listen and give a share would ya?

Life’s been a mess recently so this is a little delayed, but better late than never, eh?