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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30034 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Trump is associating himself with working at McDonald’s, not with it as a cornerstone of the American diet. One in eight Americans have worked at McDonald’s- statistically, Trump is showing that he’s not too good for an incredibly common American experience.

Now obviously it’s a campaign stunt. But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

Has Trump ever had an "Everyman" image? As far as I can recall, Trump has always represented a billionaire business tycoon. Maybe he acts the same way an average person would act if they won the lottery (gold plated toilets, supermodel wives, etc.) but I don't think he was ever a true "Everyman" in the same way Homer Simpson is.

He's definitely done the 'Boss swaps jobs with a worker' schtick before with good results.

The video of this was freely available until recently, but I've been trying to search for it in Youtube and it seemed to have been memory holed until I found it through external search engines.

Edit: Clip was from Oprah's show in 2011.

Trump has always had a bit of a plebian sense of wealth. The expression a decade ago was that Trump lived like how poor people thought the rich lived, as opposed to how the rich actually lived. In that sense, he's the 'what the Everyman would see himself doing if he had Trump's wealth.'

Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

The following is a transcript of a conversation I had with a friend which I think is relevant. I have recreated it as closely as possible.

clo: Work is shit. Humans can become accustomed to completely terrible conditions. Thrive in them, even. So why do people hate work? Why are there so many grifters, liars, cheats, when honest work seems, genuinely, easier? Because work is shit. People would rather debase themselves on Onlyfans or spend 18 hours editing some shitty yt video than work.

hv: arguably, it is working for a living. there's a streamer a mate watches, mainly does Resident Evil successful. chatter asks what it's like and how to get started themselves. his answer: "it's a job". he wakes up, has breakfast, maybe exercises, then plays Resident Evil for 12 hours, takes holidays, gets breaks, he's not in a cubicle, but yeah. that's work. I'd put money on guessing that most grifts are pretty fuckin' hard work too. people like to gloss over exactly how much effort and work things take because, yeah, it's ugly.

clo: Yeah but have you thought about why they did that. Over working. That's the question

hv: they are working, though

clo: not my question

hv: or are you drawing a line between working for themselves or someone else?

clo: Why did the guy choose to play RE for money, over say, getting a job? I refuse to believe there aren't jobs that pay more, especially now? Why would someone work for Rooster Teeth over like, I don't know, taking a minimum hours job in db admin.

hv: well in all these comparisons it sems to boil down to "working for yourself" or "working for someone else, who pays you"

clo: I've worked all through coof. I've had (counting) six jobs, and the whole thing reminds me, depressingly, of the replacement debate. People aren't honest because the honest answer is bad. They can say it's money or qualifications, and those are definitely factors. But I think it comes down to this: people hate work because modern workplaces are fucking dogshit for self respect. It's not the pay, it's not even the working conditions, it's the fact that you have to swallow your balls and watch as shit rolls over you from on top. that's literally it

hv: we agree on this, shit rolls downhill. why would anyone want to start climbing?

clo: I think this is all. And I wish it could be solved. Certain people do climb in this system and that's also why, you built a system that self selects for cowards and psychopaths. People say it's money, I don't think so. I've witnessed people turn down money to stay low. I've personally worked at two companies that were known for underpaying employees but treated their employees like human beings. They never had trouble retaining. In fact, people left and then came back. This is why someone would rather try and make pennies streaming Fortnite, than even take a mcjob for a couple months, because you'd have to swallow your pride for a half fucking second and just bend over and take it. You will be reminded of it every second of every day. And if you forget, the job won't let you forget. It's like being a prison bitch. Everyone knows. You know.

hv: yeeeeeah I think this is what got galvanized working at the last two places

clo: So that's why people are checking out. The depressing fucking thing is, working from home changed that. It gave people back a modicum of self respect

hv: AND THEY IMMEDIATELY TRIED TO TAKE IT AWAY LMFAO, YES

clo: it resulted in a flood of people quitting. In some case they don't come back even for 50% more salary, I've seen the numbers. So yeah, kids want to grow up to be a streamer. Being a streamer is pretty much objectively shit unless you are the 0.01%

hv: "content creator"

clo: You have zero job security and are dependent on algorithms and how much Twitch feels like losing. But people would rather do that than be a prison bitch, because you would know you were a prison bitch. People don't respond well to being told what to do. And to have your material existence and quality of life being used as blackmail against you to make you do as you're told - which, let's face it, is exactly what work feels like even though it's not what it actually is in a lot of cases, well... In the rumored words of Churchill, badly paraphrased, you already know you're a whore. The rest of it is haggling about the price. Wallstreetbets openly advertises how horrible it is to your financial well being, but people continue to yeet their life savings into it at warp speed. Why is that? It's because if they win, they're nobody's bitch

hv: Fuck You Money

clo: Now are you capable of finding your own path to money? Or are you a bitch?

hv: this plays into why people are finding it harder to get into relationships, doesn't it

clo: A relationship is work. We know it's not work for some people. We know because we see it and they tell us how great it is (or are lying). So why are we working for it? Fuck this!

The arrogance: the email server.

For a second I forgot about the specific Hillary context and reacted to this with, "What's wrong with Exchange admins!?"

There is a lot to this. Upvoted and AAQC'd, but I wanted to put one of the resident motteizean blue collar workers on record as saying- I see this attitude every day. You want to know why working class voters of all races, especially white ones, are turning against the DNC? Because their politicians come off as our hired bosses- managers, not owner-men, and especially as the HR people and managers of whatever the fuck who get left to deliver bad news when the actual bosses don't want to-, and the GOP pols come off as people who worked to build their own businesses.

Of course this is a false impression, and of course I have my own disagreements with democrat policies. But politics is vibes based.

Why is it a false impression though?

People who build their own business are more likely to be Republican than the PMC. It's not the whole story, obviously, but nothing is.

Nothing will turn a person Republican faster than owning their own business and seeing the heaping pile of shit that the government throws at you every chance they get.

It's a false impression because there are very few politicians of either description. Democrats running for office have mostly been in government service since they finished college and republicans running for office may have had careers beforehand, but usually as like, investment bankers and the like- few started businesses.

The pipeline to Congress favors types capable of setting their own hours. Most employers aren’t going to tolerate you disappearing for a couple of months because the state legislature is in session.

And state legislature pay is not great, so either you’re independently wealthy and don’t care, need to keep grinding while being in office, or you’re a scrub and the pay is an upgrade.

I once saw a lady who earnestly said she needed the money when she came before a local party endorsements committee for some small local office. And the pay was around $30,000.

or you’re a scrub and the pay is an upgrade.

Was Truman the only scrub POTUS?

Note that Trump is already heavily associated with having McDonald's as a cornerstone of the American diet.

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