Talking to the working class. Even the nuts.
Talking to the working class. Even the nuts.
Plus the midterms are Tuesday (duh), and a guest appearance from historically accurate Jesus.
Words from John
The midterms are on Tuesday.
First things first. Google your sample ballot, print it out like an old person (old people, carry on as normal), then google everything on your ballot and figure out how you’ll vote, make a plan, and do it as if a right-wing authoritarian movement is inches away from turning your country into ethno-nationalist kleptocracy!
Yay!
Next things next. Guilt trip your entire family and friends into doing the same thing. But only if they’re not committed dues-paying members of the aforementioned barbarians.
Ok! Now pray to historically accurate Jesus.
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A working-class revolution means the whole working class.
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Video Transcript:
The comment that I’m responding to: "in my opinion, a lot of right-wingers are two pivots away from anti-capitalist thought.”
Maybe you're like me and you want a working-class revolution. But what that means is including all members of the working class, no matter how they voted. And that goes better than you would think.
I live in a congressional district, bear with me, that went from voting union working-class Democrat to MAGA country harder and faster than any other district in the country. I work in a dive bar here. It’s great. All those people drink at my bar.
I talk politics, and I don't hide that I’m on the labor left. I use shared working-class values to relate. It also helps to have a sexy ass mullet and almost a mustache.
And almost always, when you're doing that, there's this inch-thick crust of the most intense bullshit one could imagine. All of it was installed and manufactured by Fox News. But when you punch through that crust was shared working-class values, the politics under it, are scrambled and highly suggestible. Under there, it's like a molten core of rage at the life that billionaires and Wall Street have forced all of us to lead.
That rage is the same rage that Fox News harnessed and directed at all the usual scapegoats. And it's working brilliantly. The working class is totally divided as billionaires pile up all of our money.
But when you harness that same rage at the actual villains, yes.
How to destroy public education and be super shady about it
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Video Transcript:
If I wanted to destroy public education, say in Pennsylvania, I know exactly how I do it.
First, I'd cut half the staff. And not just teachers, I'd go further - bus drivers, nurses, cooks, support staff. Cutting half of the staff would be axing 118,000 jobs. Just get rid of them! Make the schools do everything they're doing for our kids right now, but with half of the staff. It'd be funny to see them try!
And that's a double whammy because it would lead to doubling the kids per staff member. Double the class sizes, cram them into half the buses, line them up outside the nurse's office, you get the point.
Second, I'd slash the money by $13 billion. That's a 33% cut. And you see that's strategic because people love public education. You can't just end it all. You have to be sneaky about it. Make them do it all with half of the staff and a third of the money. That way they bleed out.
Then, the political war. My favorite part! I already set the schools up to fail. Then I'd blame the failure that I caused on public education itself, which sets me up perfectly to suggest private schools (run by my political allies) as an alternative!
That way a *huge*, *very lucrative* amount of our tax dollars go to private operators instead of public schools. Kind of like that scandal they pulled in Ohio. And, I don't know. Maybe I get a kickback from those operators for my reelection campaign. I scratch their back, they scratch mine, you know what I mean?
It's a pretty diabolical plan, right? I wish I could claim credit for it. But everything I said in this video is Senator Doug Mastriano's plan to destroy Pennsylvania's public schools and serve the rich donors who are funding his campaign for governor.
So let them know how you feel about that plan on Election Day, November 8, because I think Senator Mastriano deserves a wake-up call and that our kids deserve excellent public schools.
Pushing back on the boss. It’s easier with a union.
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Video Transcript:
@saraisthreads: If that looks like the work of two people right? Right? And I'm one
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh: You cannot talk to your boss that way. It's a good way to get yourself fired in the real world.
Me: You can talk to your boss however you want if you have a union, and that's how it should be.
They are not a king. They don't own you. They're not better than you. They're not even creating the value. Workers are doing that, and bosses are just coordinating. Bosses owe their job to you and it's silly that they can fire you for any reason.
So if you bring up a problem as one person, yes, you can get fired. But if you do it as a group of workers, without whom the company cannot run, that is real power. And that's how to get the stuff that you want.
Your work is making other people rich
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Video Transcript:
Comment I’m responding to: “you get a wage for doing your job.”
I do! And my labor pays the owner’s wage. Let me show you what I'm talking about.
This is the cost and value produced for your shift. Just one of them. So ignore this and focus down here.
In this example, my wages for one shift are $160. My benefits - Medicare, Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, all that stuff, are $40 for this shift. Then there's all the overhead. Everything I use in my job to create value, the buildings, the tools, all of it per shift is $300 in this example.
So add all of that up, and you have a total of $500 per shift that the employer is paying. But the stuff I produce for that shift sells for $800. The difference, the profit, if you take everything else out, is $300. The only reason that profit is there is that my labor transformed raw materials into the profit that I don't keep. The employer keeps.
This is much less relevant for the small bar where I work. I am talking about Fortune 500 companies. America's largest employers. The owners of those companies are shareholders, and the biggest shareholders do none of the work. They don't set foot in these companies. They may be doing work cleaning their yacht (except they definitely are not cleaning their yachts), but their wealth and their income are growing exponentially because they own all of these companies that they have nothing at all to do with.
They're just taking the value that people who work at those companies - you - are creating, and they're paying you a tiny fraction of that to keep going.
You deserve the fruits of your labor, which is why we need unions. You can go and ask for it as one person and get fired, but they can't fire all of you.
Clapping back at people who don’t think labor creates wealth
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About this:
This video would be a royal painindeeazz to transcribe, so please click away if you’d like to see a real-time rebuttal to a guy who kicked off his critique with “what you seem to be missing, pal.” Spoiler alert, it went downhill from there.