Personal Responsibility

Republicans outwardly boast about being the party of "personal responsibility", constantly peddling the "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" myth that allows them to ignore inequality, suffering, and injustice happening around them. 56% of Evangelical Protestants identify as Republican, 37% of Catholics do the same. (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/party-affiliation/)

The reason I mention religious identifications is because I intend to argue that religious affiliation does the exact opposite of encouraging personal responsibility. Republicans and Christians alike spout this ethos, but in practice, both groups do all they can to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. They will, though, grind you down to make you "accept responsibility" for yours, particularly if you aren't in their club. 

Republican policy is, and has long been, about propping up certain groups (the rich) at the expense of others (the poor). This was witnessed most recently in the Senate's stubborn insistence to provide the smallest amount they could get away with politically in direct payments to individuals during a pandemic. The Republicans wanted to make sure any payments did not discourage people from seeking work serving their millionaire/billionaire corporate overlords. Again, during a pandemic. At the same time, Mitch McConnell insisted on protections from lawsuits for large corporations who do not enact sufficient safety protocols for their workers. Wall Street has been propped up multiple times during this infected and interminable year.  Of course, the responses from McConnell and his ilk (as well as their dedicated band of vocal 'Merican foot soldiers) to those who object to this blatantly unjust arrangement fall in one of two categories:

1) Accusations of socialist leanings or of being a "taker"

2) "If you don't like your job/city/country/situation, leave it!"

Solution no. 2 is, undoubtedly, a personal responsibility ethic. The problem is, of course, the worker is trapped due to dire conditions for job seekers and the lack of financial protection available to the average employed American. At times, it seems like McConnell and Co. will not be satisfied until Americans have exhausted any nest eggs they may have accumulated, assuming they were fortunate enough to be able to sock money away, and funneled it directly upward to the corporate overlords. They have long told us to save up for a rainy day, invest money, think long-term, and many (not enough) did so. Now the fortunate are slowly bleeding out. The less fortunate are already bloodless husks. It is no wonder people are fed up by lockdowns, many of them are literally fighting for their lives. That they have been asked to take "personal responsibility" and forego their livelihood while Congress takes a paid vacation is positively obscene. McConnell was sitting on a 4 trillion dollar relief bill back in June, passed by the Democratic House. Somehow, he has whittled that down to 980 billion dollars and erased any mention of direct payments to struggling Americans. So where is that money going? 

We took personal responsibility; we saved money. We stayed home for nearly a year to get this virus under control. Some of us continued to work, particularly the immigrants who grow our food, the nurses and doctors who keep us safe, and the drivers and servers who still had to venture out to keep stores open. Each of those groups were maligned by Republicans as "takers" or "liars" (doctors who insisted the pandemic was real, for example). They threw us a ONE-TIME payment of table scraps. Meanwhile, each and every one of them still get paychecks, and their foot soldiers continue to wage an imaginary war on socialists, snowflakes, and heathens. So fully indoctrinated is this troglodyte army that they think a brave stance is to defiantly enter Costco without a face covering. They give no thought at all to storming Washington DC and demanding a bit of equity. In fact, the mob believes that those who do storm the capital are the enemy, and deserve to be crushed by those very same overlords who  preside over their misery. Useful idiots, each and every one. They've been screaming about tyranny since Obama took office, but when civilians were gassed outside of the White House, they applauded. 

Speaking of full indoctrination (and useful idiots), we return to Christianity. As mentioned above, the venn diagram of Republicans and Christians has a large overlap. Evangelical Christians (if not Christianity) espouse many of the same "personal responsibility" tropes that we mentioned above, but there are also "culture war" ethics that the religious espouse regularly. That isn't to say the politicians do NOT espouse them, but I believe the culture war flow of grievances starts at Xtians and travels to politicians, who repeat it as a pander for votes. Billy Graham had been in control of the narrative longer than any president had been. These are things like the "War on Christmas", access to birth control, and opposition to marriage equality. 

Christians fight desperately against birth control availability. The Hobby Lobby health insurance fiasco is just one example. To me, choosing to access and use birth control is the epitome of personal responsibility. The reasons are obvious. To Evangelical Christianity, choice is antithesis to their core values. They cloak their opposition to abortion in an empowering term like "pro-life", but really they are opposed to choice. How can one take personal responsibility if they do not have a choice? It is nothing if not personally and socially responsible to choose not to reproduce if you cannot adequately care for another living being.

Christianity also has the added bonus of absolving its adherents from personal responsibility at the outset. Anything they do, no matter how heinous or damaging, is seen as insignificant because they can be forgiven by asking an invisible, omnipresent wizard in the sky. Any damage they do to the planet doesn't matter, because Jesus is coming to wipe it all out and start anew. Everything we see is temporary in the eyes of Christianity, so it has little value.  

It is the lack of religion that leads to true personal responsibility. I have a duty to protect the planet, because it is the only one we've got. There is no sparkling, Anglo-Saxon Barry Gibb look-alike coming to absolve me. I want my children to grow up in world where they can breathe clean air, drink wholesome water, and have the health coverage needed so that they can take can thrive. The more they thrive, the more able they will be to be independent, responsible, mindful adults. Personal responsibility is more than just looking out for yourself. Every person who chooses to steal from their neighbor in order to survive is making a choice to look out for themselves. Real personal responsibility is about doing what is best for everyone and understanding we are all intertwined. We need a world in which  people are not pressed upon to lie, cheat and steal. That does not happen by leaving people to fend for themselves or through "tough love". Making choices that hinder others only makes you another person's problem, roadblock, or burden. 

Bacon Pandemic Stream of Consciousness

I have to admit, I'm a bit skeptical about Tyson Foods' CEO John H. Tyson's claims that the "food supply chain is breaking" in America. That is not to say that I don't believe him when he states that meat production at his plants is down 25 percent, or that I'm unaware of the fallout of plant closures, however temporary, from Coronavirus. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of workers are laid off, and farmers are finding it difficult to sell their animals with one of America's largest corporate processors of bacon and chicken nuggets off the market for the time being. That is horrible, and steps should be taken to protect those workers from ruin (what those steps are is a subject for another time). It's just that, I have a hard time believing that Tyson Foods is acting out of a genuine concern for anything other than their own bottom line.  The language seems hyperbolic to me, and that's a claim from someone who has spent the last 50 days or so wandering around his own home, openly mocking at no one in particular, those who insist that this virus is a hoax. Hyperbole seems to be everywhere and nowhere these days.

As mentioned in the article above, workers at Tyson plants have complained about shoddy working conditions inside Tyson's plants, and that insufficient precaution was taken by the company to protect their workers from Covid-19. It is not hard to imagine how a meat-processing plant could become a harbor of germs, or that a giant corporation would take shortcuts with regards to worker safety to squeeze out a few million more pounds of processed pig corpses.

It certainly would be a PR disaster for Tyson if word got out that their own indifference/unpreparedness led to a Covid-19 breakout in a food processing plant that prepares enough food every day to feed 4 million people. It should be said that, of course, Tyson has incentives to keep their product as safe as possible, as dead customers cannot become repeat customers. Lawsuits are also highly inconvenient to any business model. Tyson also has incentive to cut corners wherever they think they can get away with it, including installing safety measures or protocols that extend to the workers themselves. A sick customer is a disaster, but a sick worker is a minor inconvenience. Workers can be replaced in the capitalistic system we've established in this country. Furthermore, those incentives for customer safety still might not be enough to resist the allure of a few extra dollars, as can be demonstrated by companies like BP Petroleum. After all, they had incentive NOT to poison the Gulf of Mexico.

Furthermore, why did Tyson Foods decide, after a CNN report about worker safety at the plant, to take out a paid, full-page ad in the New York Times (among others) decrying the breakdown of the food supply? It's almost like they were trying to send a message. We know which party, unfortunately, controls 2 of the 3 branches of government. We know that politicians tend to respond to donors, and we know that there is currently much debate about what should be in the next relief package and how it should be spent. We also know, thanks to opensecrets.org, which party Tyson Foods donated approximately $150,000 last election cycle. We also know that the party in charge tends to favor handouts to large corporations so the money will "trickle down".

What I am about to say next, I truly agonized over.

Will we really be worse off if there is 25% less meat on the market? I wish I could say that that equates to 25% fewer animals butchered for our enjoyment, but that sadly might not be the case. I wish I could say that it might lead to some wholesale cultural/lifestyle changes in our country, but I'm convinced that those are the kind of things that only people with the luxury of food security worry about. A meat shortage, as does a shortage of anything, affects those at the bottom of the economic ladder far worse. It might be easy for me to say, "fine, let's eat less meat, then. Sacrifices are necessary in this time!"

It might not be so easy for the poor and food-insecure to go without that box of chicken nuggets or that family pack of bacon that lasts two weeks.

Which leads me, sort of, to why I am skeptical about the full-page ad. This was not a news report, it was a press release, prepared in a boardroom and cultivated to convey a certain message. Perhaps this message was meant to cause a meat-buying frenzy, not unlike the one Charmin has benefited from (although, to be fair to Charmin, through no fault of their own)? Then again, given the circumstances of the world we're in today, it could totally be true, right? Maybe the fact that no one knows who the hell we can trust, or what the hell is real anymore is the issue here, and this whole thing is some kind of analogy for the utter lack of veracity and leadership we possess in this country?

Please, do not take this as anything but a musing, since we're all doing that, these days, also. Do not start believing things without evidence.

Peace out, lovely readers. Thank you.