From The South? Your Local Government is Trying to Kill You
By: Sharonda Harris-Marshall
Tags: Politics, Covid-19, Poverty, Culture War, Government

I was warned. We were all warned. We didn’t think the scenario from Jaws would happen in real life. Why would a mayor keep a beach open with a killer shark prowling the shoreline? And yet, here we are: arguing whether or not to open beaches and other public spaces back up because “the economy.”

Who exactly is doing this? Is it the Republicans or the Democrats? Yes. Although there is one political ideology that does it far more than the others…

This isn’t the Bronze Age. The economy doesn’t need a human sacrifice. There’s no need to force people to go back to work because your local or state government has made you feel guilty about utilizing a safety net you paid for. Do you think it’s a handout? Or do you only associate that word with certain people?

States deciding to lift shelter-in-place or reopen will get a lot of people killed. The states know. That’s the point.

Of course, the state and local governments aren’t going to flat out tell you they want to kill people, but they have already determined who is worthy of living and it’s exactly who’d you expect. Southern states, in particular, have been putting policies in place to make certain people more miserable for decades. They prefer not to kill you. They are hoping you will leave instead so whoever is left won’t challenge the status quo. If you happen to die instead, that just means you’re no longer sucking on the government teat. They don’t care either way because you won’t be their problem anymore.

It doesn’t matter if your family has lived in this town for decades. If you don’t like the way things are, you can just leave. Want a better job than just the two factories, McDonald’s, and Wal-Mart? Instead of begging for $15 an hour you should just move to a town with better jobs. Why do you deserve $15 an hour? You work a job “anybody can do.” You should’ve left home. Oh, you don’t own a car and you would have to pull your kids out of school to move? Well, you shouldn’t have kids then. You clearly can’t provide for them. What’s that? You had a life-alternating accident at work? Well, you should have had a better job and I bet you’ll be holding your hand out for Workers Comp. Wait, you want Medicaid now, too? Do you really need that leg? You have two of them. Oh, now you can’t work. Well, if we keep giving you money because you claim you can’t work, you’ll never learn to do anything for yourself! You have to prove you can’t work with one leg.

Southern states are good at getting residents to sign off on their own demise. All they have to do is to convince you that there is someone else out there who is using up all those local resources while telling hardworking salt-of-the-earth people like yourself aren’t getting a fair shake. They will convince you that you deserve help while others don’t. Add a dash of astroturfing to the mix and you got yourself a group of people shouting demands that counter their personal safety and livelihood as concerned citizens.

That’s why you may have your racist uncle share memes of alleged block parties in black neighborhoods that may or may not be during shelter-in-place or your boomer aunt talking about young people not following the rules and not staying home, but at the same time your aunt and uncle believe they should continue their weekly dinner at Applebee’s and this shelter-in-place just “holds the economy back.” Because to your aunt and uncle, they are the more important people and their need for half-priced, lukewarm apps supersedes anyone else’s needs such as healthcare or rent. Those other people should be punished for existing. In your aunt and uncle’s mind, the so-called rule-breakers need to be handled like children while law-abiding citizens like themselves need to be rewarded for tolerating the rule-breakers. To your aunt and uncle, the world is zero-sum. There’s only room for the “real Americans.”

If you get enough people like your aunt and uncle, then you have a local government. A local government made of people who think they are more important than those they deem leeches. In their mind, there is a natural hierarchy of all human beings. Poor people are poor due to their own choices, but also they are supposed to stay poor. In another life and another country, these people would be monarchists. But because this is America, you can pretend to be your own king instead, ego and all.

So why do Southern states want to “reopen”? Because it’s always been about money and a culture war. They will say they are following Donald Trump on this one, but it’s painfully obvious Trump is that clueless boss at work who steals everyone else’s ideas to make himself look good. Reopening was the Southern leaders’ plan all along.

Why reopen? They can claim to be too broke to operate, an excuse they used before having a giant fight about it. They can claim the people wanted it, even though those people have been shamed into killing themselves over a meager paycheck. You know it’s a meager paycheck because you will hear governors and senators complain that the COVID-19 unemployment payment will discourage people from working, even though that was the plan all along. They want you to keep working while hating those other states for their high taxes, even though you pay a higher portion of your paycheck to taxes than Mister Hippie McStrawman from North Hollywood, California. After all, he runs a weed dispensary. You’re a store manager at Dollar General.

If you were working, you may have been killed by that tornado, but Lindsey Graham doesn’t want to you get used to not working your shift.

Your Southern leaders want you to want small government. Why? Because it’s easier to hide an oligarchy when you pretend fewer people running things means freedom. Why do those people over there need a city council member anyway? They don’t vote. Oh, they do? Are you sure? That seems like a lot of votes out of that district. Why do they care about voting all of a sudden? No, they can’t be voting against us. It’s gotta be dead people or some other voter fraud. Yeah, that’s it.

Your “God-appointed leaders” drone on and on about sanity of life, but will gladly cheer the death of the rule-breakers. People who are shot by police must have deserved it for selling loose cigarettes or not having a front plate or for being a resident in a wrongly identified house. Who cares if prisoners have decent food? If they are in prison, they don’t deserve to eat unrotten food. If you point out that many of them follow a religion where many of its core characters from Joseph to Daniel to Jesus to Paul were prisoners at some point, they will shrug off their own involvement as God’s Will. Don’t further question the logic. Giving up the fantasy of shooting looters during martial law is asking too much of them. As long as they don’t own a copy of The Turner Diaries, no one will think their desire to be Rambo during hurricane aftermath weird or pathological.

But what if you are dying of cancer, possibly because your local government allowed some fossil fuel company to frack near your house and dump its wastewater into your drinking water supply? Or because of some offshore drill started to leak, affecting the fish and seafood you eat? What about that sulfur smell you can’t quite find the source of? Well, that’s still your fault. You should have just moved. Plus, you’re too fat anyway. Don’t blame the fact the only grocery store in the area sells wilted vegetables and salt meat. You can clearly walk the five miles to the store across that interstate the city greenlit that split your neighborhood right down the middle.

Your local and state government prefers to not kill you, but too many of you notice that the most down-ballot elections in the United States are virtually unopposed and that can go bad for the people in charge. So they want you to believe you agree with them. Instead of spending this time with your family and waiting out such a pandemic, they want you to believe you would prefer to spend that time working. Not remotely of course, but somewhere where other people watch you working because otherwise you are easily discouraged from working. Poor people love to be micromanaged because one day they can be the micromanager. Working remotely is for trust-fund babies visiting Bali and tech bros in blue states. Why don’t you work a trade instead? Just don’t unionize. And don’t expect us to help you pay for trade school.

What are you waiting for? Here’s a sign that’ll get you on Fox News. Tell the lamestream media that quarantine should be mandatory for certain people, but not you. You’re a patriot.