What Wannabe Cosplayer-in-Chief Doesn’t Grab
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Trump cosplayed this weekend before his Nazi love fest in Madison Square Garden, using a photo of himself in his McDonald’s costume in a social media post:
Funny how he depicts Biden in real presidential attire, as if Trump’s unconscious recognizes he is not presidential while Biden is.
(Trump also claimed unearned credit for repairing ice cream equipment resolved wholly without his participation in any way.)
He cosplayed once again today, pretending to drive a truck:
It’s still just dress up, though.
Trump is playing around, including using his image like a child would have used a paper doll decades ago. Pop Mr. Trump in a McDonald’s drive-thru, add his nemesis Mr. Biden with an ice cream because Mr. Biden likes ice cream, get it? What a good job, Donnie. What will you do with a photo of you “driving” a truck?
Meanwhile, reality grinds on, chewing up real lives and crushing real futures.
Trump’s responses to reality remain as flat and shallow as his playtime.
~ ~ ~
I had a moment recently, before Trump indulged in his McDonald’s cosplay fixation. I was triggered deeply as I packed up to leave my classroom; I made it to my car where I managed to fend off a PTSD panic attack.
Yes, I’m back in school. I’m pursuing another degree as part of a personal goal. I’m on campus in class several times a week. It’s a little awkward at times being older than the rest of the students, half of which are freshmen, not to mention being older than the instructors.
At my age the experience is also a solid kick in the head. Two months into class I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten so much about my own experience beginning college. My fellow students bring it all back.
I had forgotten how goddamned poor I was then. Some weeks I just barely scraped by living on dimes obtained by scavenging soft drink cans and turning them it for the deposit money. Thank goodness Michigan has had a bottle deposit law for decades or it would have been even worse.
A classmate reminded me unintentionally of the experience when they mentioned they would have to see if they could afford the necessary supplies for our next class segment after they got their next paycheck.
In contrast, as soon as I had received an email that I was approved for this class I’d ordered everything I needed all at once. I order double of a few items, didn’t even give the cost a second thought.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1978 when I was starving student I’d have had to ask for extra hours at work or find a way to defer a payment in order to purchase something required for a class.
Eventually I had to leave school because I couldn’t afford tuition and fees. In the big picture it all worked out – I landed jobs with companies that paid my tuition – but my late teens and early twenties were really grim. The Reagan years I’d rather not recall at all, thank you.
It was incredibly difficult to make ends meet on 20-36 hours a week at minimum wage jobs. I was fortunate I never had to work in fast food though I’d applied for my share of those jobs. I dreaded the possibility I’d not only get shitty hours I couldn’t count on from week to week, but I might come home smelling like catsup-mustard-onions-pickles with a coating of fryer grease.
A close friend who worked for a major fast food chain couldn’t get the odor out of their hair and skin; it embedded itself in any synthetic fabric. They smelled like a Wendy’s burger for as long as they worked there. Kamala Harris knows what this is like, the feeling of being branded by a necessary but short-term low-wage job.
Cosplayers don’t have to deal with that reality.
Because I worked in retail for a decade, my uniform was business professional with nylons and heels. No apron or hairnet required but 4 to 8 hours on your feet in 2-3 inch heels isn’t fun. It screws with your feet and posture for years afterward.
(Heel spurs, Donnie? Hah. What a pussy.)
Doing stock work in this kind of attire is also distinctly unpleasant, humping bulky and heavy inventory from boxes in the back room to the front of the store to hang on rods you may have just finished waxing, also part of the job while wearing a smile for customers.
I dreaded the stock work because I might ruin a pair of pantyhose. They’d cost me a couple hours’ pay to replace before my next shift. Don’t snap off a heel or break a shoe strap because that’s a week’s pay to repair and more to replace.
Gods help me if the vehicle I relied on – not mine as I couldn’t afford payments, plates, insurance – needed repairs, the cost of which I’d have to help absorb.
If you’re cosplaying you don’t have to worry about little financial set backs like these.
Thankfully I was healthy then. I also didn’t have to worry about my family or daycare at the time.
Unfortunately my classmate not only has to count pennies to afford the next class segment, but their remaining parent is suffering from a life-threatening illness. You know where much of the household’s income is going – right into Big Pharma’s pockets.
That detail isn’t included in the cosplay kit.
Cosplaying a minimum wage worker’s job is simply not the same as actually doing their job, not the same as living their life.
It’s so fucking hard in reality that I “forgot” about it decades later, blocking the unpleasantness of hardship. I also know that it’s considerably more difficult now than it was back then. Health care alone is a nightmare, even with Affordable Care Act coverage.
~ ~ ~
Math is also not part of the cosplayer’s kit.
In reality, the math is inescapable.
There’s no escaping the fact the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and it’s been that since 2009. Minimum tipped wage is $2.13 per hour provided base wage and tips total $7.25 per hour.
States’ minimum wage may be more, but 21 states’ minimum wages are also $7.25 per hour.
Doesn’t matter if individual state’s cost of living index is higher or lower than the average.
Which means the expenses have steadily outstripped wages for years.
Minimum wage jobs are rarely full-time because employers who need cheap labor also don’t want to pay unemployment. The most part-time workers can expect is 36 hours a week and probably not regularly to avoid the appearance of full-time work.
Most will average 20-36 hours a week.
Which means gross pay is somewhere between $145 and $261 a week, or $7540 to $13572 a year.
Now take those numbers and analyze them using NerdWallet’s average monthly expenses by category:
The average expenditures among all consumer units totaled $77,280 annually. That’s up 5.9% from 2022.
Average monthly expenses for housing:
Average expenses for housing totaled $25,436 annually. That works out to $2,120 per month.Average monthly expenses for transportation:
$13,174 annually. That works out to $1,098 per month.Average monthly expenses for food:
$9,985 annually. That works out to $832 per month.Average monthly expenses for personal insurance and pensions:
$9,556 annually. That works out to $796 per month.Average monthly expenses for entertainment:
$3,635 annually. That works out to $302 per month.
Average. Monthly. Expenses. There’s no way a single person working 20-36 hours a week for federal minimum wage comes close to covering half of these expenses, even if insurance, pensions, and entertainment are completely removed from the calculations.
BLS Employment Cost Index for July 31, 2024 indicates wages have increased, but whose wages and where?
… Wages and salaries increased 4.2 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2024 and increased 4.6 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2023. Benefit costs increased 3.8 percent over the year and increased 4.2 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2023. …
Chances are good these increases still don’t make a dent anywhere in the U.S. when benefits also increased and corporations continue to gouge consumers on top of it to make record profits.
Cosplayer TFG may actually know a little bit about this but from the perspective of a landlord and an employer. He’s cheated renters in his lifetime violating the Fair Housing Act and hired undocumented workers repeatedly because he won’t pay a living or legally-mandated wage to documented workers.
No cosplay required – the guy who’s familiar with this bit of economics wears a blue suit and red tie when he’s not wearing a white golf shirt and khaki golf slacks.
He wants to do this kind of cheating on housing and wages all the time to every American.
No costume required to be an asshole.
~ ~ ~
Let me be more direct: Cosplayer TFG has avoided answering questions about increasing the minimum wage, failing to respect working Americans by offering a bullshit response:
Trump held a campaign photo op Sunday at a McDonald’s in swing-state Pennsylvania, where he was asked about raising the minimum wage.
“Well, I think this. These people work hard. They’re great,” the Republican nominee responded.
The vice president pounced on the remark, criticizing Trump on Monday by saying that she “absolutely” believed in raising the minimum wage to ensure that “hardworking Americans, whether they’re working at McDonald’s or anywhere else, should have at least the ability to be able to take care of their family.”
No wonder he hid behind his McDonald’s costume or climbed into another truck cab.
~ ~ ~
I wish I could assure my classmate that there’s an end to this hardship in sight soon, that there will be elected officials who will work as hard as they do to ensure they get the opportunities they need and a lifeline when necessary.
But that’s on all of you who have yet to vote and aren’t in my class this term.
We aren’t going back. Do something and make this better. Vote for someone who understands what it’s going to take and is willing to do it. Vote for the candidates down ticket who’ll help her deliver.
Vote for somebody who isn’t going to cosplay at working while being a fascist slacker in reality.
Can’t recommend enough going back to school. Take two classes, entry level, in an area of study new to you — one class on campus, one class remote.
Holy shit. The experience has changed a LOT even in the last five years.
For the record, I fucking hate Microsoft Outlook Office for Enterprise. And I detest whatever digital learning platform I have to use (to be named at a later date). They’re wretchedly not intuitive to use and I have used a myriad number of online platforms.
I can’t imagine starting a new part-time minimum wage job in addition to this mess.
Oh, and Marcy’s probably right about this as she generally is.
I guess that really does make Trump the paper dolly being played with like a prop.
I obviously take the point that reliance on stunts is intended to conceal the weakness of Trump as the heart of the campaign
But this stunt might nevertheless be a dangerous message.
Stunts evoke an emotional connection, conveying “a message” of which the rationale is usually ambiguous or incoherent, but the point is always “I am a man of the People, your retribution, let’s own the libs some more, how dare they call you garbage”
This particular stunt may make his base more energised to fight back after the floating garbage island has hit the election chances badly in some areas.And surely in purely electoral terms, the wound to the prospects of the Pro-Trump votes from Puerto Rican communities and wider Latino communities is greater than whatever may be gained by energy generated in a fight back after Biden’s flub.
But this stunt is also a way of doubling down on the true purpose of the original Hinchcliffe “joke” — that Trump the garbage disposal man will get rid of the real trash people, with the base more inclined than ever to be vocally spiteful about who ought to be treated as garbage and tossed away, and more inclined that ever, fuelled by a sense of righteous indignation to take whatever steps are necessary to ‘get the win for Trump’. And the stunt makes the spite memorable and fun. This dark joy is no joke.
It’s absolutely essential that these stunts are called out as such and loudly, that the attempted appeal to his racist base is mocked. Trump was an ineffectual leader during his term in office, treating the presidency like a stage on which he performed for wealthy sponsors, leaders of hostile nations, and his grift’s marks. He shouldn’t get another chance to pretend to lead to the nation’s detriment.
None of his bullshit playacting in costume helps working Americans get any closer to making ends meet.
Who’s *really* taking out the trash, Donald? It’s not you with your white shirts and soft little hands.
Rayne
October 31, 2024 at 5:07 am
Oh I absolutely agree that mockery is the correct, indeed essential and necessary response. Any temptation to pass over his cos playing as ‘Trump being Trump’ should be resisted
Rayne & SteveBev
Let’s hope this gets some traction: MSNBC’s Nichole Wallace interviews actress Rosie Perez and Victor Martinez, owner of Spanish language radio station La Mega. About 5 minutes in, Martinez says he’s normally from PA, but he’s calling from a car in Florida where he’s working to GOTV of Puerto Ricans in Florida to respond at the voting booths.
‘They picked on the wrong people’: Rosie Perez reacts to Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally
Whose idea was it, though, for Trump to climb feebly into the cab – in full view of rolling cameras – after missing the handle several times?
I have rewatched that video several times.
He was focused on the door, takes a step back, gets his legs tangled, almost falls, and then reaches for the door handle and misses. Lack of spatial awareness? Bad near vision?
I also noticed that he had two men come to his aid and then stand by him as he struggled into the truck.
Cosplaying a garbage truck driver isn’t as easy as it looks. Whoever is coming up with these stunts needs to take into account that they are dealing with a 78 year old who is overweight and out of shape.
It will be interesting to see if the news media edits out the near fall and missing of the door handle.
I was surprised Trump was even able to haul his lard ass up into the passenger seat (10:1 he doesn’t know how to drive any vehicle), but what I really wanted to see was how he got back out, which takes a lot more coordination.
I bet they had to drive to a private area, force the driver to sign an NDA, then lower Trump down in a sling.
Trump is bad at doors. He might never have gotten off the Access Hollywood bus if Billy Bush hadn’t told him how to open that one’s door from the inside, a detail I missed in 2016.
I think it’s worth noting that he’s been cosplaying as “Donald Trump” for years. It’s an elaborate costume, the makeup, the precariously styled hair, and the absurd outfit, and he won’t let the public see him as he really is without it. He’s terrified of such a revelation.
Your post weighs in with the thunder of a drop forge, in a moment giving clear dimension and form to the heretofore amorphous pile of msm goo.
I also went back to my alma mater for a class – it was captivating not only because for once I was equal to the challenge of the material being taught, but to note that my classmates were young enough to be my grandchildren, the same age as my wife and I when we got engaged. (That was then.) Like old times, I was the smartass at the back of the room only this time I pulled the grade to have earned the privilege.
What did you learn from your classmates?
Mine have been more valuable than the curriculum.
Please forgive if I Miss-spelled my name. Autofill has vanished again.
I teach Math as an adjunct and am finishing up a second Masters to expand the list of classes I can teach.
I love teaching and I always learn something new from the students when I teach.
The students in my classes have challenges. Some mental, perhaps autistic, perhaps bipolar, definite test anxiety. Others coming in from a full time job, driving around an hour plus family life. One had all their tires slashed by a stalker. Another had the lone family car totaled with both parents inside.
I am lucky if I have 75% attendance at times.
Good luck with the classes. It always gives me pause when I often get mistaken for the instructor.
FYI Wayne State cuts tuition by 75% if you are over 60. Made the second Masters somewhat affordable.
I haven’t used Outlook in almost 25 years, but I still hate it with a passion.
And whenever you are ready to discuss online learning platforms, I am here for it. I have 2 neurodivergent kids (shit, young adults now). We gave up on the local school for the oldest and did online schools for high school. 2 schools, 3 different learning curriculum platforms and I have THOUGHTS. With my youngest, it was the math curriculums used by 2 different math teachers. The math teacher they had for their math class their senior year managed to restore my kid’s confidence in themselves. I still get verklempt thinking about it. That man got an extra goodies in his year end thank you gift.
Unless Donald was driving that lorry along the M25, he’s in the wrong seat. If it’s his garbage truck, he should be the cargo in the back.
A lot of trash trucks have right-hand drive. Not all, but the ones that are side-loaders, picking up cans from the curbs, are. Rear-loaders like that one? I don’t know. (The city where I lived when I worked at the landfill didn’t have rear-loaders, just front and side. And the commercial haulers were front-loaders, too. Same in L.A.)
DSNY (New York’s Strongest) has rear-loaders that drive on both sides. You drive on the side you’re picking up. Saves you running around the front of the cab getting out and getting back in. In NYC it’s a two person job.
Doesn’t matter, it’s cosplay. When have you seen a trash collector in a white button-down long-sleeved dress shirt? He just slapped on the vest, jumped into the cab, and presto, his costume play is complete.
and according to several videos i saw via Mastodon,nearly busted his fat ass twice trying to gt in…
Poor Donnie. If only a 40-foot dry van or a garbage truck was as low to the ground as a golf cart.
As I noted in a comment above, he didn’t “jump”, he struggled to get into the truck. And he almost fell when his legs tangled as he approached the door and then missed the door handle twice.
And you are right, the orange reflective vest over a dress shirt and red tie isn’t very good cosplay.
did anyone else have a *visercal* reaction to how clean and shiny his high-vis vest was??? I worked at my local landfill on and off for years, and now work as a stagehand/grip, with a side gig in construction labour, and I’ve NEVER seen a high-vis vest that shiny!! Literally it jumped out at me immediately how fake it looks!
Reminds me of a story about how my ex was working on a job site years ago when he was a carpenter’s apprentice, for a company that didn’t give a shit about safety, and when someone got hurt (they nail-gunned themselves in the stomach while at the top of a ladder because the foreman had removed the safetys from the nail-guns because it was much faster, and the guy hit himself and then fell off the ladder leaned against the 2nd floor of the house, leaving my ex stuck in the attic of the house trying to flag down help) and the boss realized the ambulance/occupational health authorities were rushing there and went and pulled out ten BRAND-SPANKING NEW high-vis vests and hard hats out of his truck and ran around the site giving them out to everyone!! He did it *just* in time before they showed up. Suffice to say they were NOT impressed, but couldn’t do anything about it that day. They knew enough though to come back a few weeks later once everyone stopped wearing them again though, and gave the company a big fine (they escaped the fine over the nailgun, claimed it was broken).
SO that’s what I thought of *right away* seeing Trump wearing this brand new shiny vest – the people who *actually wear* them every day know they NEVER look that clean unless it’s your first day or (most often) you’re a slacker and/or up to no good!!
Reply to NerdyCanuck
October 31, 2024 at 8:43 pm
My high-vis vests look nowhere near as squeaky clean and shiny bright as Cosplaying TFG’s and I only use mine for walking my kids’ dogs at night.
The difference is actually using the damned vest.
I was a tad annoyed at the Guardian’s recent push to get people to talk about their “relationship” with the now 40(?) year old Excel. I never knew people had relationships with software. Seemed like a subsidized infomercial for a company that can afford to pay for its own advertising.
The thing is, as an accountant with 30 years of experience, I have a very deep relationship with Excel. It is probably my favorite, most versatile piece of software, and I could tell plenty of stories about it. (Just don’t make me use the Mac version.)
I mostly use LibreOffice now, but I have MS Office still. (O2007’s Excel isn’t happy with Win10.)
ETA: (The first time I met Excel was in 1989. On a Mac.)
I started with Lotus 1,2,3.
I have used so many versions over the years.Excel 2003 was a great one, well integrated with VB6. You could do most anything. I avoided Word like the plague. I preferred WordPerfect, even WordStar. Much easier to correct formatting mistakes.
Shout out for Word Perfect 5.x, when you were able to do all formatting from the keyboard without skipping a beat.
As a software developer, I’ve seen a lot of customers & clients, both “technical” and otherwise, insist on using Excel for everything.
Getting the capability specifications for large household appliances in Excel spreadsheets was probably the most egregious, especially since they couldn’t consistently fill in the damn data. A simple text file would’ve worked fine, but… nonono, it was what they used internally and so I had to use it too. “When all you have is a hammer”, etc. etc.
A golden-oldie on the dangers of Excel in the wrong hands:
Economists, an Excel error, and the misguided push for austerity (from 2013)
https://theconversation.com/economists-an-excel-error-and-the-misguided-push-for-austerity-13584
Of course, being a Harvard economists means never having to say you’re sorry. Or having to retract the paper.
I don’t actually have to use Excel. It’s the awful enterprise Outlook (integrated with Office) which is wretched.
I’ve used both Outlook and Office on the desktop and neither seem to be as bad as the online enterprise crap. As if I don’t have enough to do slogging through 9-lb textbooks.
Excel and Outlook are both abominations before God. Mathematica and Matlab are great, but the new kids say Python.
Otherwise, it looks like it was the OK Corral combined with Custer’s last stand for these wrongway joes. “It’s easier for them to go around massacring villagers in the center of Mali,” said Alexander Thurston, an expert on the Sahel region who teaches at the University of Cincinnati. “It’s much harder for them to fight pretty tough people in the desert.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/world/africa/russia-wagner-mercenaries-mali.html
Mali in big trouble, just like Moldova and Georgia, but it has ten times their pops. On pins and needles for Tuesday. Thinking Kamala gets the W, but it’s a v dicey situation and the whole wide world depends on her W and how anyone could get through next week without drinking is a miracle mystery to me (miss you bmaz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sltq9MuL4sA
I posted earlier today on my Threads and Facebook feeds because I received my text from CA that the San Diego Registrar of voters had both received and processed my ballot (dropped it in the box on Monday).
I’ve given to various campaigns where I can, because we need to take Congress also. We can’t keep having people like Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik, and others in the majority in the House, and the Senate is in jeopardy every day Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley don’t follow their actuarial tables.
I have a limited web footprint, but where I’ve seen it lately on friends’ feeds, if someone posts disrespectful comments (like Trump Derangement Syndrome) or worse, Russian propaganda (like Biden crime family), I block them and report them both. I hate liars.
Longer term, we need to get rid of the distinction between non-profit and profit corporations. If you are an organization for tax reporting purposes, you owe Gross Income Tax. It doesn’t matter where you are based or who you are. Call it a Market Access Tax, or a Market Transaction Tax. If you are making money in America, you owe taxes on that, GROSS. I don’t care if it is contribution to a church or a PAC or any other organization, money shuffled to a fake corporation (like any of the fakes Donny used), a political compaign – you owe taxes on your gross earnings. I don’t care (no one really does) about your fake cost structures where you fake like you don’t have any money. Fuck you, pay taxes on what you make here.
Wish we could make all of those “non-profit” hospital mega-companies start to pay their fair taxes.
Loopholes (always loopholes) allowed these huge businesses to say they are “non-profit” if they serve a few impoverished customers (and I know – very few.) Still, the top C-suite people pull down 6-7 digit salaries (and lots of bennies.)
“Now take those numbers and analyze them using”
$800 a month for food for ONE PERSON? WTF are they eating?
Average, PJ. We don’t know the state (like Hawaii or Alaska), we don’t know what’s considered “food” — is that ALL grocery expenses including paper goods? Does it include takeout for people who don’t know how to cook or don’t have facilities to do so?
Rent at an average $1300 per month — a number I’ve seen recently elsewhere, need to find the source — makes the rest of this exercise unnecessary because there’s almost nothing left.
$1300 a month for rent is not much more than I’m paying, and that’s nearly all of my SS check. I’m lucky I have savings.
It’s less than my youngest is paying.
And then there’s the cost of moving — first month, a full month for deposit, fees to exit the last place, fees to start the new place, and I’m sure I’m missing another expense. Oh, truck rental and whatever the cost of labor may be; if one is lucky it’s only pizza and beer for helpful friends.
from friends and family in NC that rent, it’s accurate…
New England – minimum 1,500/month, average probably 2,000. And there is no housing stock.
It’s one thing to be a 20-30 year-old looking to share a house or a room. Quite different when you’re older – special needs, difficulties with multiple floors.
People in this country here complain (Canada), whine like ..never mind.
Jaysus they’ve no idea how much worse it could be. $7.25 an hour? No one, student or otherwise would work for that wage here. I doubt illegals would lol
I mean it wasn’t that long ago that I worked for $5.90 an hour at my first job (in Alberta)… that was in roughly 2003? And once I moved to BC I made about $8 an hour for quite a few years, before the NDP got in 6 years ago and started raising the minimum wage rapidly (copying Notley’s move to a $15 min wage in Ab). So we have those progressive governments to thank for raising it so much in the last ten years!
But I agree, with how the costs are now where I live (which are similar to Washington state or northern California from what I can tell), making that low a wage would be insanity! I was so sad to see the Dems drop the ball on that once they got in, it was such a lost opportunity to help so many people.
Democrats haven’t had adequate numbers in Congress — can’t count Manchin and Sinema, for example.
Oh yeah, I know that. I know they would have passed it if they could have, and that those two rich assholes screwed it up. Wasn’t blaming the dems for it, just saying that I remember how disappointed people were as it was a big campaign promise, and thus sad to see it fail so quickly.
My bad, it was $10.25 when I moved to BC, whoops. And hovered around that until the BC-NDP got in in 2017 and increased the rate and tied it to inflation. And it was $9.40 when I left Alberta in 2012.
But my point still stands that I was making roughly that same amount (just a little more) as recently as 6 years ago. Just to say I remember how bad that was basically, like it’s still a recent memory for lots of people I guess.
For anyone interested:
https://minwage-salairemin.service.canada.ca/en/since1965.html
I would go further. TFG learned the power of kayfab cosplaying as a wrestler on TV. Go to a professional wrestling match. The audience is trumps audience. The MAGA movement is just kayfab. Hulk Hogan played his character for the MSG rally. A character he has played for decades. Wrestlers cut themselves regularly to ad color to the match. It makes the crowd go crazy. If you have ever seen this happen, the similarities are striking to TFGs campaign.
Discussed before:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/21/donald-j-trump-cosplayer/
He’s running to kayfabe the presidency but he can only manage cosplay. Neither are acceptable in a presidential candidate and the White House.
Bread and circuses.
Red meat for the mob.
“Sooner or later pain becomes too great for fear and when the people’s fear has gone the regime will have to go.”
Hire a clown, get a circus.
If I understand correctly the makeup of Trump’s diehard base, it’s the local ownership class: landscaping services, car dealerships, real-estate offices, franchise platforms for national chains, small construction or contracting firms, dry cleaners, restaurateurs—the very people likely to depend on minimum-wage workers, and most likely as well to loathe any govt regulation that forces them to pay their labor force decently or even fairly. And the most likely, perhaps, to resonate with Donnie’s dress-up, seeing it as the expression of contempt for those jobs that it is (“See? Any jamoke can do this job!”).
I too went back to college, in my case a good 30 years after having suffered then-significant vicissitudes of college life that now seem positively privileged next to what the youngs go through today. I could write a long, stuffy paragraph about how relatively easy it was to find survival jobs back then, compared to now. I don’t know how today’s young people DO it, and I admire your getting to know your classmates, Rayne—I know enough just by observation to realize what they’re up against, and how much a decent hourly wage AND student loan forgiveness could foam their runway, so to speak, and perhaps put ‘becoming a decent human being’ ahead of eking out bare survival.
You’d think the ownership class which relies on cheap labor wouldn’t be such dicks about immigrants.
True enough, but I suspect that, to the extent they “think” about such things at all, they imagine their deported immigrant labor would be replaced by comparatively smart, well educated young people driven to desperation by the coming Trump financial depression, one that owners *somehow* would remain prosperous in.
I suspect that many of the locals engage in a form of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. They don’t want to know the status of the workers. If they hire them, they accept Social Security cards without looking too closely. Or they deal with contractors who vouch for the workers.
Patrick Wyman wrote a good article in the Atlantic in 2021 agreeing with your analysis, Dimmsdale. He calls them the “American Gentry.”
I think you’re both spot on.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-american-gentry-wyman-elites/620151/
And this an analysis meshes with certain contemporaneous analyses from the left (eg Trotsky, Gramsci) of the class interests and composition represented by the German and Italian fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930’s (labelled petty bourgeois in Marxist class terminology) distinguishing the dictatorship in Spain led by Primo de Rivera as non-fascist, but not the Francoist Nationalist power grab which leant heavily on Falangism and thus was a form of fascism.
Rayne, I’ve spent my entire career in higher education
(my UG experience was very similar to yours). I can say from experience that your professors probably did a little happy dance inside when they saw you in their class. Nothing beats teaching students with a serious purpose. Also, I have never heard a faculty member praise any of the technology we’re required to use. For me, personally, it has added more hassle to the job that I didn’t need.
In the old days, nobody was fired for buying IBM.
These days, nobody is fired for buying Box, Workday or Slate,
even though they are horrible.
Rayne, thank you for this post, and especially for the first section. It is so perfect, in so many ways.
I am recently retired. I don’t know if I’ll go back to school – I was thinking about it before I read your story – but now I’m thinking about it more seriously.
But your description of life at part-time minimum wage is one of the most important things people who AREN’T currently living that life need to be thinking about.
I don’t know how we prepare for a more challenging future without thinking about the people we need to get us there, which includes thinking about what their needs are to become adequately educated and trained.
We also haven’t reckoned with the ongoing COVID pandemic. It has caused society-wide cognitive deficits and massive numbers of disabilities. (I am sure it’s also part of the MAGA crowd’s increased volatility.)
Amen to your comment ^^^, but actually I came back to correct my comment. I meant to thank you for the SECOND section of your post, which was so impactful that I had forgotten the description of Trump cosplaying in the first section by the time I finished the second section.
One anecdotal data point about Covid related cognitive deficits:
Working as a postal clerk in a red county in California (so, not much mask wearing by the public) I got Covid in January 2021 (before vaccines were available). It shut down my brain: no dreams at night, no random thoughts, nothing. Worse was one very real deficit that has lasted a long time – I lost the ability to solve Sudoku puzzles. Pre-Covid I could finish a hard one in about ten minutes. After Covid, I would just stare at the page and not be able to find a single number. It slowly got better, but it took most of 2021 before I was halfway good at solving the puzzles, and I am still not as good as I was in 2020.
Strangely, my ability to solve crossword puzzles was unaffected.
It’s so flukey what COVID does to individuals’ brains.
My oldest lost their sense of smell for 6 months; it came back gradually — and they’d been vaccinated. I hate to think what could have happened if they hadn’t been vaccinated.
I swear it’s had a huge impact on many drivers. The number of near misses I’ve experienced is freakish. People who just plain don’t see other cars on the road until almost too late. I’d blame distracted driving but I’ve had several experiences where the person is looking my way and pulled out in front of me, in broad daylight and I have driving lights and turn signal on. Just so goofy.
OT but interesting (I think):
Had to go the ER for a TIA this week (good outcome).
At triage, they ask name, age, and current president.
I just gasped when they got to president — and answered, “It’s got to be HARRIS”
It was such a startling moment! p.s. the chart noted, “A+O x 3” though.
Well, why would they bother to ask your situation when you’re clearly on top of it? LOL
As a veteran of waitressing the third shift at Elias Brothers Big Boy, coming home with my brown polyester uniform dress covered in sticky, red goo every night of the (dreaded) strawberry festival month and smelling like half the stuff on the menu, I empathize with you, Rayne.
On the weekends I worked all night at Big Boy and then did the morning shift at a greasy spoon that served breakfast for a buck, so lines out the door and never a break. Had to bus your own tables and take abuse from the owners if an extra egg showed up under the light (it was you who messed up an order, not them, of course)
Both of these for $2/hr. And paying a buck for breakfast didn’t loosen up a good tip either; just gave people license to feel good about giving you a big 50% tip when they left you two quarters.
No free food at either place, but I could always get the cook at Big Boy to make me breakfast on the sly if I flirted with him (I had no shame back then). He was a good cook, too.