The blue collar theme here at the C-blog is not a popular one. Of course, I don't care. I became popular by being unpopular. The reason the blue collar stuff goes over so badly is because of the sickness of our present society. This sickness can be summed up in one statement. Work is for suckers.
People don't want to work. When you have an entire nation with that mentality, it cannot go well for that country. This is where the United States is today. I hear it, and I feel it everyday. I get it every time somebody tells me to slow down while I am doing my job. I see it when some mechanic half asses his fucking job. I get it when my work ethic is criticized by a guy with no work ethic. There is no love for the working man in our society. If you work for a living, you are considered an imbecile unfortunate enough to get out of working.
I see a lot of people trying to escape work. You have retirees who can run marathons and climb mountains but can't hold down a job during their 30 year vacation they get to take at the expense of those who are working. You have people milking their unemployment checks as they labor mightily to avoid getting hired. You have college students and grads racking up student loan debt that is now larger than credit card debt and even auto loan debt. Essentially, they are enjoying a reprieve from adult responsibility that will condemn them to a life of indentured servitude. And why do they do this? Because they think that a high paying bullshit job awaits them at the end of their amazing college experience. And where are these jobs? That's simple. These are government jobs. These are middle management jobs. These are financial service jobs. These are jobs working in college administration collecting all that student loan money.
Europe is further down the road than the USA. You have France with their 35 hour workweek. There is Greece which has run out of other people's money. Then, there is Germany where some glowing ember of the work ethic remains alive, but it leads those people to conclude correctly that they need to get the fuck out of the EU.
I do not subscribe to the labor theory of value, but I do believe that wealth is the product of work and deferred consumption. Anyone who got rich without working either stole it or got it out of pure dumb luck. I hear the refrain about working smarter not harder, but I can't help but notice that the people who utter that trite bullshit neither work harder nor smarter. They just don't fucking work. "Working smarter" is merely a euphemism for getting out of work by gaming the system or fucking someone over.
You can't get something for nothing. That may be a shocker to a lot of people. But we have an entire nation dedicated to that notion. And who are the people who reject this bullshit? These are the working people. These are the ones like me who go in and punch a clock each day and do the dirty work that keeps this country going. These are the people who drive our trucks, fix our toilets, manufacture our appliances, pave our roads, build our houses, cook our meals, and on and on. They learned a long time ago that work is the price for living, and they just do it. And what does everyone else do? They shit all over these people. It is fucking amazing to behold.
For awhile, I thought the denigration of working people would cease as people woke up and saw the bullshit. I thought there might be new appreciation for the working person. There isn't. It hasn't stopped, and it isn't going to stop. It has always been this way. Status and honor are given to thieves while derision is heaped on the honest and the hard working.
If you're going to be blue collar, you learn to live with being underappreciated. You learn to care about your work, but you also learn to not give a shit what people think about you. At the end of the day, it feels good to not owe five and six figures in student loan debt. It feels good to be able to pay your bills. It feels good knowing that your work makes the world a better place. And it feels really good knowing that you are the salt of the earth while everyone around you is a piece of shit.
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