1/29/16

Labor Exhaust of Southern History


The battle to get single line spacing between paragraphs is tough, so
The history of cheap labor in the American south I suppose still exists with the influx of illegal aliens, yet that has no meaningful comparison to the southern slavery tradition with class segregation. the north fought the south to defeat the creep of aristocracy that threatened whites too, yet the whites of the south tended to support the established power that owned most of the slaves as a kind of oligarchy that Socrates or Plato might have thought well of.
Today the southern comfort for the middle class of Texas seems to be a kind of mediocrity with some excellence of course wherein whites need only lift weights somewhat in youth to get a full paying job. people should not be afraid to be smart, or distance runners instead of being muscular as a graduate of a state penitentiary. Work is a virtue, yet the unexamined life and uncreativity making one defend and automobile-stick frame expansion culture at the cost of environment displacement is not.. The construction industry and expansion of new neighborhoods of virtual 400,000 row homes provides Dallas and points north a present and future, while the broadcast media seems like a kind of ad hoc clan support coordinating the balance of power that exists rather easily between the races.
Some unthinking white guys take for granted that one must be like them entirely economically speaking with no brain or change desired or required. Many Hispanics dropped out of school to work in the building trade having no faith in the advantages of higher education. Education for white guys is no great advantage unless it is very technically specialized.  Straight white males are a real American minority in the post-affirmative action era realignment and can be unemployed forever with a four-year degree and even graduate education. I hope to find work painting a house, or being sedentary in simple unchallenging post able to afford a bucket of the Colonel's spicy chicken now and then, when not trying to write something after work.
In times past slave labor was how one differentiated oneself as a wealthy individual. large homes had many slaves from the Egyptian and Roman era to the present. After mechanization made that obsolete much of society knew not how to adapt to the need for a new social egalitarianism accentuating the positive advantages of democracy stressing the pursuit of individual excellence and creativity rather than class supremacy. I think many Americans including those newly arrived to social empowerment have a hard time letting that go.
There was a fellow from Connecticut that moved to Sherman Texas before the civil war and sided with the rebels. He built himself a fine house, or perhaps cheap labor built it. Capt. Birge was unlucky not to have got a Colonel title before his name, yet what the heck.

The Birge mansion

No comments:

After the Space Odyssey (a poem)

  The blob do’ozed its way over the black lagoon battling zilla the brain that wouldn’t die a lost world was lost   An invasion of the carro...