Sacrifices

{Now Playing: Marc Rebillet, "Essential Workers Anthem"}

You may have seen this meme floating around lately that says: “If this virus is so deadly why aren't we seeing 'essential workers' dying at an alarming rate?”. Obviously it's stupid and ignorant, essential workers are definitely dying right now. If those numbers seem lower than expected maybe the creator of this needs do some thinking about the factors that lead to death from COVID-19 and re-examine their expectations rather than questioning reality. But it got me thinking, because there is an interesting point buried in the nonsense: why aren't we hearing more about essential worker deaths? With all the reporting that's going on I'm certainly not seeing much on this topic. You can find the numbers if you want to but that's the point, you have to want to, you have to go digging for them. They're certainly not being plastered all over the internet and the front pages like everything else. This is not an accident. This is by design.

Because the truth is that this is not a new story, the sacrifice of the unimportant, it's just one that everyone is actually paying attention to for a change. But we have to turn away when it comes to the death toll because otherwise we have to face the unpleasant truth about the guiding principle of our entire nation: MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIFE. We have always been willing to trade away our lives and the lives of others in the name of profit and consumption (and I'm certainly not excluding myself from that “we”). You can hear this sentiment in the words of everyone who says “we need to re-open for the economy”, “what if the cure is worse than disease?”, “Trump did a good thing by downplaying the danger because it softened the blow to the stock market”. Well let me tell you something. It's bullshit, it always was, and it always will be. Because the only thing you're protecting with those arguments is the ability of the rich and powerful to stay rich and powerful while they screw you over just as they've done your whole life. Unless you're one of them of course, then the only thing you're protecting is yourself. They get the meal, we get the scraps. They get billions in bailouts, we get a check for $1,200. The truth is we can fix the economy after this if we need to. There's more than enough money floating around to do that, more than enough to lift up those who are wiped out by this crisis, but we don't WANT to do that, because that would mean telling a certain portion of our population what to do with their precious money, and that's not what unregulated capitalism is about. If the government dared to try and take even a relatively small amount from anyone, even the billionaires, we would scream “fascism”, no matter how worthy the cause. So instead of talking about that we talk about re-opening everything to save the economy, even though it will mean more deaths. But that's okay though, because money, right?

We appreciate everyone's appreciation, we really do, the outpouring of support has been as welcome as it has been surprising. None of us would have predicted it, because of the way we're usually treated, and it's nice to be recognized for a change. But it's important to remember that when you call us “heroes” you're also legitimizing the sacrifices we're making. We must never forget that these are sacrifices we didn't need to make. And the only reason we've been tasked with doing so is because the real "E" word for us is not "Essential"; it's "Expendable". This, like all things, will pass and when it does we will honor the dead (maybe we'll even get a nice memorial out of the deal) and we will pat the survivors on the back and thank them for their service and quietly try to go back to our normal lives. Because that's the only way we can keep this gravy train rolling, by greasing it's wheels with the blood of the nameless and the faceless. Money Over Lives. We should put that on our currency.

It would be nice if this was the moment we all started to realize that money isn't important, that it has no real value save what we choose to believe it does, and we could simply choose to stop believing. It would be nice if we finally decided to set ourselves free from our dependence on it and work towards a world where living happy and healthy, instead of making a ton of cash, was the mark of success. It would be nice to live in a world where everyone has what they need so they can focus on what's important to them. It would be nice but I'm not holding my breath.

J.S.C.
4-19-2020