It's strange to think about how our perspectives are all so wildly skewed. Those who have enough are sitting comfortably in their homes for the most part, doing their nice computer driven work, emailing each other all day, every day, writing well written things (for the most part) about horrific situations. Those of us who struggle to make rent, car payments, etc., are still out in the open public, taking far more risks, and doing it out of necessity, not desire, for no more pay than we were making before the pandemic started. True, there are a bunch of irresponsible people who are out there in public just because they can't stand to be alone with themselves, and I definitely feel sorry for them, and for everyone they encounter. They're going to screw themselves and a lot of other people with their irresponsibility. This particular group is not my current concern. What I'm worried about right now is the disconnect between those who have, and those who struggle to have, and I mean liberals who think they have the poor's best interests at heart.
I have worked with the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich throughout my entire career in "construction". I have advised people who make more money in a day than I make in a year, and I have worked with people who ride the bus an hour a day to get to a job that barely pays them, even after years of service, and after sleeping all night in a house that has no climate control and leaks every time it rains. It's a huge divide I've witnessed, and it's also one I feel I've come to understand in a not-so-limited way.
The contrast in behavior among these different groups is incredibly stark. I have been "blessed" enough to have friend clients during the pandemic, gentlemen with families whom I trust, and that I know are going to make the right decisions when it comes to protecting themselves and their families. However, some of the contractors I've encountered on these construction jobs are truly swimming around at the bottom of the barrel. These are the guys that work to drink. They get paid daily, usually around minimum wage, usually in cash, regardless how long they've been doing whatever "trade" they've been working in for decades. This is true exploitation, and something with which those who are well off will rarely concern themselves, as long as the work they want done is getting done in a timely and efficient manner (never meticulously, for the record).
These bottom-of-the-barrel guys don't wear masks. These guys know they'll get Covid-19. It's not a matter of if to them, but when. Hell, I'm sure some of these guys probably have already had it and don't even know. After all, how does one differentiate a Covid-19 cough from the cough one has after having smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for twenty years? And that's the thing that the well-to-do don't understand. Why do blue collar guys like to get screwed up and make bad choices? Well, where's the hope? Where's the American Dream when you're being exploited by rich white folk (adding rich Hispanics to this list that makes up the "Conservative Exploitation Machine")? Oh, and by the way, the reasons so many Hispanics voted Republican this last election are because of abortion and because they want to work without restrictions to make as much money as possible.
So many well-off-enough liberals talk about how they worry about the poor, disenfranchised, and the working class. That's not at all true, or doesn't seem to be from this perspective. If you actually cared, you wouldn't mind paying skilled laborers for their skill, instead of trying to save every penny you have (aka exploitation of laborers) so that you can acquire more stuff. I know collectors of items from rare musical instruments to fine china and antiques, and I can tell you from firsthand personal experience, that they rarely ever touch any of these possessions, but they are investments, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with investments. That much, at least, I understand in a way.
But now I beg you to consider the life of a "typical" blue-collar worker, or at least the more responsible of us. We wake an hour or two before we have to be at work to make our own breakfast and lunch, because all the gods forbid we spend any money eating out for lunch. We work 9-10 hours or longer, including eating that lunch we packed, and that lunch may only be thirty minutes. If it's an hour long lunch, I guarantee there'll be a quick nap involved under the shade of a large tree or building. After a long day of work in the elements, whether that's 100 degree heat or freezing cold, we go back to our homes, sometimes commuting up to an hour to get there, make our own dinners, because all the gods forbid we spend our money on eating out, and by the time all of that is done, we may have just enough energy to sit on the couch for an hour or two before falling asleep and waking the next day to repeat it all again.
The more fortunate among us get to enjoy the weekends. For a long time I was able to go to the beach two and a half hours away nearly every Sunday, which was great, but a lot of blue collar workers are so beaten down that all they do is sit in front of the TV all weekend, many of them drinking themselves into a worse predicament than they were already in. See, I think what a lot of "office workers" don't realize is the toll the work takes on our bodies. Sure, many office workers may work out for an hour or two a day, but we work out all day, without many breaks. I can tell you for example, that a pickup truckload of crushed granite weighs over two thousand pounds. Now imagine one shovel full weighs around 8 pounds. So that means that there are around 250 repetitions involved in unloading that granite, and that doesn't include the work of moving it with a wheelbarrow or spreading it. I can unload a cubic yard of granite, move it, and spread it in under two hours. This is the reality of blue collar work. A whole lot of work for very little return.
As I've said, I'd been blessed to have great clients who paid me well because they're friends and because they know I've been doing this work my entire adult life. The real problem is with the exploited. For the record, in my opinion, and from real-life personal experience, it's the same ridiculous conservatives who chant "Build the Wall," who are hiring illegal day laborers and paying them almost nothing to do work those same conservatives are getting paid thousands a day to do. It's absolutely abhorrent and ridiculous. However, that's the reason those same illegal laborers hardly care about wearing masks. Why should they? They think if they're strong enough, they'll survive to be exploited another day.
Hope is a thing that can shine incredibly brightly. It can also be tarnished by greed and exploitation, shoved far, far away from the eyes of a prole. What needs to change is the ways in which the middle class and company owners see the work being done by laborers. Most of us are living to serve your desires, not to fulfill our own. The luckier ones are able to move up ladders of supervision, as I had done. The unlucky ones drink themselves into a hopeless stupor nearly every night of their lives. Of course it's a question of personal choices, but it's also a question of nature vs nurture. Do you think any of these people have ever been nurtured?
So when you drive by in your Lexus or Mercedes while posting to social media about buying American, enclosed within your tinted windows, AC blowing your hair back, and you notice a guy on the road beside you in a twenty year old car with his windows down, sweat freely flowing from his hairline, remember that he probably can't afford to have his AC repaired, much less afford a cursed car payment. He's doing the best he can to get through this pandemic, easily exploited by some greedy heavyweight consumer, just thankful to have work, maybe hoping that he doesn't get the bloody virus, knowing full well that he's one of the "essential" who has to keep himself at risk, regardless that he won't get paid any extra for it, for your glory and his meager and humble pocketbook.
