I caught a video on YouTube by a guy monologuing about how horrible working in an Amazon warehouse is. I then noticed how many more there are by other commentators, with tens of thousands of views. Even Joe Rogan (a.k.a Bro Brogan) has a YouTube clip with Krystal Ball that’s about the mistreatment of Amazon workers. This clip in particular has over 3.5 million views. That especially got me thinking about how many warehouse, delivery, and general service-sector workers are simultaneously right-wing and depressed by their work. I’ve read “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” “The Reactionary Mind,” and some other material on conservative ideology, but I still wonder why feeling alienated at work does not more often lead to a reversal and radicalization of erstwhile MAGAs and right-wing guys. I assume it’s all individualized and they don’t care about workmates. So, despite feeling dehumanized at work, do they merely tell themselves it’s a temporary stage until their BitCoin, NFTs, or other crypto investments pay out? Are they limited from hating bosses and landlords for the simple reason that soon enough they will be one, or both?
Only the libs are fine with plugging in their ears and thinking that things are mostly fine right now. Chuds hate their bosses and landlords, they usually can admit that things are fundamentally
in the world right now. The essence of reactionary ideology is recognizing that yet mistakenly attributing it to the social progress of the last x years. The world really sucks, but it’s because we let women vote; it’s because we let the coloreds into our kids’ schools; it’s because we let the gays marry; it’s because we let the etc. etc. They find a general problem, a systemic problem, but blame it on something in particular, and fetishize a mythologized past that they seek to return to when they imagine that the problem wasn’t present.