The past few years, I think, have been enlightening to much of America, particularly the young, but also some older folks like me who may have been aware of things slithering beneath the surface and wondered if they were really there. Well, they are. They no longer slither beneath the surface, or if they do, we’re now standing at the aquarium window with a full view of the panoply of monsters within. Some of this enlightenment has come in the form of powerful people openly admitting, often with actions but occasionally in plain words, viewpoints that a decade ago they would have been reluctant to so boldly espouse. Some has come in the form of other people finally calling bullshit on them. Some has come in the form of brave people—like the many women in the Harvey Weinstein or Fox News or Jeffrey Epstein cases—naming their truth and refusing to stand down, while others offer alliance or support and all of us come face to face with how pervasive the problem really is. Some has come from the ability of the internet to circumvent mainstream news, which often ends badly, but has also enabled the un-erasure of the Black experience, whether in fatal encounters with law enforcement or the perils of going about one’s daily life.
It occurred to me that the old (is it old enough to call it old, or am I just old?) rhetoric of “makers and takers” had it all wrong. I mean, in its original form it was disgusting and deserved to die, enough that I’m in some ways reluctant to bring it up at all.
But what I’ve seen, plainly and openly and out loud in the past few years, is that the old system was built to enable the real takers: people who took what they wanted, whatever they wanted, from a woman, from the planet, from the poor or young or otherwise powerless. People who faced no limits to their taking, no consequences for it, and who liked it that way and took pains to ensure that it stayed that way. People who rigged the system in their favor. People who howl against regulations, equal rights, social assistance, anything that might empower the powerless or restrict their ability to endlessly, ruthlessly take.
The entire Republican party seems to be built on this platform. It seems that even those Republicans who aren’t included in the old “makers” category—the rural working-class, for example—are still enthralled by taking, by the dominance embodied by that kind of control. How tempting it is, after all: to have the power to exploit a woman simply because one is a man; a black person because one is white; an immigrant because one is a generation or two in; an animal because one is human; the earth because one is an animal.
These ideas can, and always have been, sugar-coated. When they aren’t, they’re revolting. And recently the sugar has been coming off.
What did the “makers” supposedly make? Decisions? Money?
Meanwhile, there are people who make microwaves and houses and software, lesson plans and phone calls, store displays and sales; people who repair phone lines and cars and plumbing; people who build communities and families. And most of these people, in at least one aspect of their lives, are being exploited. We—some of us more slowly than others—are starting to figure this out.
Young people in particular, young enough to not remember how the old sugar-coating worked, are not amused.
They’ll be voting for a long time.