I grew up in a Union household. Local #28, Sheetmetal workers and roofers. Entering the business at the ripe old age of sixteen during the summer months, I got my card by the time I was 18, and the first year out of high school I hit the ladders. This was in New Jersey in late sixties, fortunately (or so I thought at the time) I lived through it all. Union man all the way, I remember seeing this guy who used to come to the job sites all the time. He had a Cadillac, I remember. My uncle Eddie – the guy who got me into the Union in the first place – drove a station wagon. That doesn’t mean much, except for the fact that the guy in the Cadillac – the guy who represented me with the big companies that wanted me to work for free and would but for his protection and the protection of scary thick guys – always wore really nice clothes. My uncle never wore nice clothes but for the nights he used to go visit his girlfriend. Then he dressed in expensive clothes. Not at work, though. Roofing was dirty stuff. Hot, dirty, and dangerous. I have the scars to prove it.
There are other things I remember from back then. Those union days in the sixties and early 1970’s in New Jersey.
There were no black guys in the union. That’s something I remember. I had black friends. I had grown up in public housing, you see. I don’t know exactly what that meant, because by the time I was maybe seven we had moved into a house my aunt Florence and Uncle Eddie had rented. They were proud of that house. Proud of being out of housing. Proud. I remember how very proud my Uncle Eddie was. Of himself, of me, and of this country. He was a pure union guy, Uncle Eddie, and democrat until the day he died.
Black guys who roofed were what were called “Scabs”. You could be a black “scab” or a white scab, mind you. Working on a roof, and tossing that mop with that molten tar on it – tar that could literally take the skin off down to the white bone if it hit you hot – without a union card made you the equivalent of a healing open sore. A scab. Again, there were scabs of all colors. All you had to do was roof without a union card to be called and defined as a scab. But black guys could work only on scab crews.
Now I attend meetings called “9/12” meetings. I get their newsletters, and I think of myself as a member of a poorly-defined but to-me-at-least very, very real and very meaningful political party of sorts called The Tea Party.
Guess what? I’m on a scab crew all of a sudden. And love it. I talked to a good friend of mine today. A guy I have a lot of respect for for a lot of good reasons. He said something about the tea party and I asked him if he had ever been to a meeting. “No”.
He might as well have been one of those old guys I remember driving around with on my way to a union job site. Passing by a crew of beautiful black men, shining in the sun, sweating while they tossed those mops, he said “look at the [n]rs. F-ing scabs”
Thank God I am awake now. Thank God I know the truth. Those unions weren’t protecting anybody but that guy in that Cadillac. I have seen a “War on Poverty” play out in my life. I have seen a “War on Drugs” play out in my life. Failures. I see Solyndra. I am accused of a “war on women” and a “war on gays” and a “War on the working class” and a “war on anything counter to the words and thoughts of loser and money-sucker Karl Marx”.
Get over it. The scabs are taking over. Gays, get over it. Don’t let a word tear this beautiful nation further apart. Black people, get over it. Nobody hates you or oppresses you for being black. To the contrary. A lot of people will throw free money at you just because you are. Women, get over it. You are not treated unfairly.
Mr President, Get over it. Most of all, get over yourself. We know you grew up in Indonesia for the most part, and raised by Marxists. You told us yourself in your book that you were “attracted to the marxists”. We know Mr. President.
You were too little, too early. Perhaps Marxist thought – the nanny state, unions-are-good and all-else bad thought will someday rule the roost, so to speak.
But not tonight. And certainly not in November. We’re over you, Mr. President. We are over progressive, politically-correct, smarter-than-thou arrogant thought. It is destroying not only America, but threatens civilization itself. Go back to college. They need you there..
Good article. Keep up the writing. We need competent writers to counter the hoards of Democratic hacks who blog incessently about how great it is to steal money from those that work for it to give to everyone who doesn't want to work.
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