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This is what people are not talking about on Labor Day 2016. (For a related blog, see https://clarespark.com/2015/07/11/jobs-jobs-and-less-jobs/.)
- The notion that there was once an international Labor Day, celebrated on May 1, not the first Monday in September.
- The coalescence of the words “hard” and “work” (hardwork), also known as “the dignity of labor.”
- The disappearance of “the labor movement.”
- The Democrat Party as the party of Big Government and tamed unionized Big Labor.
- Worker health and safety.
- Anything having to do with “class” as an objective category to be looked at as either an expression of repressive class domination or as a more fluid category allowing penetration by the upwardly mobile ex-worker.
- Women’s work in the home as hard, skilled, often exhausting labor. (Gender differences are objective, not socially constructed).
- “Race” as a socially constructed category; i.e., apart from obvious physical differences between groups, the (racist) notion that mental and moral characteristics are inherited and predictable. This all-encompassing notion of “race” wipes away attention to different material (social) conditions that shape opportunities for advancement.
- Psychological warfare on behalf of social relationships over the dissenting individual.
- The idea that togetherness (or my neologism, “groupiness”) is the natural condition of humanity, which is ostensibly “unity;” (i.e., only bad politicians are divisive).
But they are talking about
ABC News photo
- The presidential campaign of 2016, especially recent poll numbers and debate prep, and the fecklessness of Trump.
- (Waning?) NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand up during the (now sacred?) national anthem as an expression of free speech, hence constitutionally protected.
- Colin K’s pig-police socks.
- The black “community.”
- Apple’s upcoming release of the latest I-phone, watch, and play stations.
The Clare Spark Blog 