Real Talk: The Illusion of Freedom and the Power of the Strike

Listen, some real talk here: I posted an image earlier calling for three-day strikes until Trump is removed from office. People seemed to get a little upset in the comments, pointing out—completely fairly—that most people in America can’t afford to just take three days off work.

The Healthcare Trap

Americans don’t get mandatory PTO like other countries do. (Y’all do know that in civilized countries they get a mandatory amount of paid time off per year and it’s often like a month, right?) Most Americans rely on their employer for the laughably sad healthcare they get.

To those who think your insurance is great: Go to a doctor who’s not in your HMO network and tell me how great it is. I pay the equivalent of $57 a month, and when I had a heart attack, they took me to the best cardiac hospital in the country. They said, “Yeah, we’re in charge of your heart care now,” and I didn’t have to beg an insurance adjuster for it.

I get it. I’m American; I spent most of my life there. I know. But you need to decide: Are you more afraid of losing your job and your insurance, or fascism? I see people talk bullshit about “armed resistance”—motherfucker, do you think you’ll be able to do that on the weekends (subject to availability) and keep your insurance? Are you high?

Why We Advocacy for Unions and Universal Healthcare

They’ve got you right where they want you. Why in the name of fuck do you think I kept saying that universal healthcare wasn’t just a nice thing to hope for, but a necessity? Why do you think we keep telling y’all to unionize? Not just now, but forever?

But people just wanted to keep their heads down and not rock the boat. Everybody thinks if they do that, they’ll be allowed to escape the maze eventually. Every American thinks they’re gonna get rich one day if they follow the rules.

But if your rule brought you here, as the man says, what was the point of your rule?

The Myth of American Sovereignty

You are powerless against tyranny. Fuck guns and armed uprising and all that macho fantasy bullshit—you can’t even call into work for three days, man. That’s why Americans get to beg whoever their party decides to make their candidate:

• “Pwease, sir or madam, might we have some democwacy?”
• “Might I pweeeeeease be awwowed to have soveweignty over my own body and mawwy the person I wuv?”

It’s why you are roped into accepting whoever is the least worst choice. They know better than you do that the only power you have is in the voting booth—and it’s like one of those Disneyland rides that use every trick in the book to make it look like you’re in a spaceship instead of on rails that only ever go one place.

A Prediction on the “Democratic” Leadership

If it does ever look like Americans are actually gonna take the risk for their democracy and do a massive general strike, the majority of the Democrats—certainly their leadership—will be just as opposed to it as the Republicans are.

• “Don’t throw away our economy,” they’ll say.
• “Don’t behave like spoiled children.” As though the system deserves your labor and consumption. As though you owe some abstract notion of “the economy” instead of it existing entirely and solely to provide you with what you need. And if what you need is freedom from tyranny, and the economy won’t give you that, you don’t owe it a single fucking thing except to present your peasant ass so they can kiss it.

The Capitalism Lottery

Americans have never demanded power for the citizenry the way Europeans have, because we’ve always believed that buying into capitalism will reward us if we’re “good enough.” How much evidence do you fucking need to realize that’s not true?

How long are you gonna take weird outlier examples of dudes who started in the trailer park and got out—people who beat million-to-one odds—as proof that the system works? That’s like thinking the lottery is a reasonable way to earn a living.

The Wisdom of Frederick Douglass

How long are you gonna not demand the one right you should have: the right to put down your tools and say, “I’m not contributing to this anymore until I have these basic rights and needs met”?

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them… The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

You know what radical said that? Frederick Douglass. If you don’t know who that is, find out.

The Reality of “Freedom”

How long will you endure? How long will you live in fear that losing your job means losing your life because you’ve allowed these sons of bitches to tie your health to your time card?

I won’t set foot in that fucking country again unless I have enough money to pay for my own insane, exorbitant healthcare costs. It’s funny how Americans quiver in fear at “soshulist taxes” and then sell themselves into indentured servitude for the privilege of paying even more for objectively worse healthcare.

If my fellow Americans are so fuckin’ free, do what every Frenchman has the right to do: have a general strike.

• Not violence.
• Not blocking doors.
• Just don’t go to work for three days.

Are you free to do that? Or will it kill you or someone in your family because you’ll lose your insurance? You ain’t free of shit. You are some capitalist’s bitch.

The Economic Rebellion

They give you freedom of speech so long as it doesn’t interfere with their bottom line. They give you freedom to own guns that you buy from them. As the journalist AJ Liebling once wrote: “Freedom of the press belongs to anyone who can afford to own one.”

How much do they need to take from you before you’re willing to sacrifice anything but a couple of hours on a weekend?

• When they increase your co-pays again?
• How many claims do they gotta deny?
• How many bombs do they need to drop in your name?

Ask yourself: What will it take for you to think three days is worth the tradeoff? Figure that out and then shut the fuck up until things get that bad, because the only real rebellion left is economic. They’ve got politics all sewn up.

The only weapons available to you are your hands and your wallet. Until you are ready to empty them both, you will remain powerless. You cannot shame the shameless. You can only stop feeding their machine.

When you’re ready to put down your hammer and walk the fuck away, then we can talk strategies and tactics.