Dear Dirty America

DAN RUDY
Portland, OregonAs I scrub bake mats in a sink filled with tepid bleachy water, hunched over and soaked to the elbows, I consider these words of George Orwell: “Kitchen work is bitch labor, a sort of slavery for the empty end of giving the consumer the brief illusion that they’re of an upper class.[i]”  Or something along those lines… Unlike myself, Orwell was a man of eloquence and a die-hard proponent of saving the English language as he knew it; a language (a candor, and a wit) that has since died with him in 1950.  Ginsburg may’ve written the eulogy, I’m not exactly sure.

            In any case he wasn’t a fan of kitchens, or food service, or ‘service’ as an industry.  To wit, shortly after his days in a Paris kitchen he left for England to live as a wandering vagrant (‘on the pike’, if you will).  He wasn’t a fan, and nor am I.  And as fellow kindred spirits currently occupying Wall Street sit-in to call attention on the grievous malapportionment of America’s unrivalled wealth, the newfound support of America’s unions gives me a grand idea.

            Let’s unionize.  I mean an equitable aggrandization of America’s 99%, where everybody gets their just desserts or everybody walks.  If 1% owns the lions share, they’ll be the only ones to really feel a general pinch.  Let the bastards make their own sandwiches, pump their own gas, fight their own wars.  Bail their own asses out of a sling; though I suppose they already had considering Washington is an incestuous beneficiary of Wall Street’s largesse.

            But a sort of national union.  Something where everybody chips into a bigger pot, where work conditions are upheld and even the littlest citizen is considered in the broadest of decisions.  A fair shake for the lot, with a pension plan and a health package, protected vacation time, holidays off, and a safety net for that occasional fall.  Solidarity, fellows!  While it might not be a just thing to strip that 1% or their wealth (however it may have been accumulated), we can at least ensure their hitherto unstoppable marauding comes to an end.

            Picture it, though!  Everybody finally getting to live the American Dream, in its most reasonably attainable form.  We could call the union something like the United States of America, a power unto itself that works for its citizens and not just its uppermost crust.  As the current body called the US-of-A does not.  Essentially, let’s make our government work for society.  We can damned well afford it, once the empty champagne bottles, corporate tax loopholes, and overly-spendy oil wars are tidied up.  I don’t believe government is really too big or expensive, so much as it is misguided in its ultimate ends.

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