A little perspective on this whole, scary, Trumpster era we find ourselves in: I have studied American history for a minute and have come to the following hypotheses about White Americans’ ideas and beliefs about their own, very short history in the Americas. I’ll only focus on the issue of slavery — as it seems with Fuhrer Drumpf’s employee picks really do want us to revert back to landowner and slave standards. Disclaimer: I am an American Mutt — half indigenous peoples (Alaska Native), half Euro-mix. Here goes:
It should be noted that the first peoples that the FOB (fresh off the boat) Europeans (heretofore referred to as FOBs) tried to enslave were the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Only a few problems arose from this arrangement: 1) those indigenous peoples didn’t take kindly to being made slaves in their own lands 2) those same indigenous peoples knew how to survive from their lands after they escaped the rather atrocious conditions the FOBs kept them in 3) a number of indigenous peoples would escape, get “captured” and then resold to the FOBs for a tidy profit for other indigenous peoples. It took the FOBs a bit to catch on, but once they did, those FOBs had no sense of humor about it all . . . so, being rather lazy and not-particularly-creative types, the FOBs began importing other FOBs to serve essentially the same functions as the indigenous peoples did as the indigenous chattel slaves.
But, those indentured servants and slaves of the FOB stock began running away to join the savage “Indians” because those “Indians” had a relatively egalitarian, highly socialized and sane approach to governance and a healthy appreciation for the fact that human rights applied to all humans. So, the FOBs who owned the slaves and/or indentured servants had to come up with incredibly inhuman and inhumane laws that established and safeguarded the inherent right of the FOBs and their descendants' racial superiority and ownership of everything in the Americas. Which brought them to another problem . . . namely, who else could the FOBs treat like complete crap and still get free work done? I mean, the savages already showed immense prowess at escaping and surviving. Then, their FOB replacements had to be somehow elevated a bit above those savages, and if they ran away, they could most likely blend in well enough to get very far away . . . their work also had to be valued more than the savages’ work . . .
Good thing those intrepid FOBs had 'discovered’ Africa and figured out a great way to both depopulate that continent and monetize off of slavery! So, Africans were imported as a commodity to the New World to do the work that the savage indigenous peoples kept running away from and the FOB indentured servants were not “made” to do. And, with the laws in place to protect against FOBs “mixing” with the savages, they could be easily extended to include these new non-White slaves!
But, AKBear, you say, why on Earth are you bringing this up? Well, because we are moving into an era where we are being led by people who see other people as not being people. “Um, what,” you say? Slavery never really went away in this country. It just got a new veneer of acceptability, updated to new generations’ moral and ethic standards and was served up to the American populace for social acceptance.
Trump’s pick for Dept of Labor is a guy who regularly flouts labor regulations, rules and laws. You really think anybody else in Trump’s Cabinet cares about the regular working person? You really think that those types can set aside their economic-elitist take on the world where they are the rightful rulers and the rest of us are their serfs? You really think the new president’s going to have your best interests in mind as his ilk go hammer and tongs after the protections, rights and laws that kept you, the regular working person, safe as you went about doing your job?
It is up to us, those regular workers, to stand together in solidarity, across labor sectors and across socio-economic boundaries. It is up to us to resist the rolling back of our protections, rules, laws and regulations. It is up to us to keep moving forward. It is up to us to remind those in our government that they work for us.
This is a country of the people, by the people and for the people (A. Lincoln). We are all equal citizens, we all have the same rights and we will not let some elitists tell us differently.