Arbeit Macht Frei – Work Makes Free – thus the Nazis added grievous insult to grievous injury with the sign that hung over the entrance to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

I confess I use that expression with some reluctance, since some resent the comparison of any evil with the Holocaust. I understand it’s a very emotional issue for some, but I don’t accept that nothing compares to that evil. Genghis Khan, Stalin, Pol Pot – sad to say, there have been many holocausts on this planet, including the holocaust perpetrated on blacks and Indians in “exceptional” America. 

In any case, this isn’t a post about genocide, at least not in the strictest sense. No, this is about the delusion that work will make you free. Sorry, to crush your dreams, young people, but for most of you, it won’t. In fact over the last three decades, the workplace has become more and more a plantation of sorts, a place where a form of economic slavery is practiced. Freedom, in the sense of economic freedom at least, has become far less likely for you than it was for your grandparents.

That’s a statistical fact, but let’s skip the statistics – those are too often the last refuge of rightwingnut losers intent on proving that down is up and black is white. No, let me instead resort to what used to have some credence in this world – that is, the voice of experience. But alas, that voice seems to have fallen on deaf ears these days.

• • •

Nearly half a century ago – God how it pains me to say that -- I dropped out of college after my freshmen year at Michigan State, and I began my real education in the world of wage slaves, working in the foundry – a place as close to hell as I ever hope to be. If you’ve seen the opening sequences of The Deerhunter, you have some idea what I’m talking about.

Before I go further, let me anticipate the usual specious comments from the Libertarian trolls in the OS neighborhood, who are sure to argue that it was my “choice” that doomed me to my “fate”. Sorry, guys, but this isn’t about me – or you and your infantile political “philosophy”. Save it for Ayn Rand when you meet her and Alan Greenspan in Hell.

No, this is about Jams Grins, and yes, I’m using his real name because I’m pretty sure he’s no longer with us, and I’m even more certain he wouldn’t be able to read this in any case. How do I know that? Because Jams Grins is how he used to spell his name on his timecard. Jams? That’s James to the rest of us. Grins? I have no idea how his last name was spelled, but he pronounced it like “grinds”.

While the trolls are quite right that I had the potential to escape Hell, and in fact I eventually did, that was not the case with James. No, James had reached the high point of his “career”. There would be no upward mobility for James, no matter how hard he worked, he would be exactly what he was – a foundry rat – for the rest of his life. If he was lucky.

That didn’t keep James from dreaming, of course, and on many occasions, he would cast a woeful sigh and say “I wish I’d a listened to my momma, I might be a doctor or a lawyer now.” And whenever James moaned his foolish wish, I would think, “No, James, you would not be – you bought a losing ticket in the genetic lottery.”

That’s not to say a few fortunate souls can’t rise above their raisin’, as they say in these parts. But the math is irrefutable: Not everyone can be above average. We can all aspire, but only a blessed few can achieve at the highest levels.

And that’s as it should be according to the denizens of the Libertarian jungle, where the Law of the Tooth and the Claw is the only law, and economic Darwinism is welcomed and social ills are celebrated rather than ameliorated. As far as they’re concerned, the genetic losers should die off, and the sooner the better.

That same lack of compassion is the dominant characteristic of the even lesser lights who populate the Tea Party – or as I like to refer to them, Teapartians. That’s Teapartians – as in Martians, because most of these people strike me as aliens from another planet.

But they're not – they're from next door and across the street – and there’s lots and lots of them. Oh, and they tend to reproduce prolifically, too. As long as that's the case, I don't hold out much hope – audacious or otherwise – for the long-term prospects of this nation. 

Despite the hard evidence of the last thirty-years – three decades spent circling the drain thanks to Supply-Side, Voodoo, Trickled-On Economics – Teapartians continue to swallow the Kool-Aid. I suspect that’s because deep down they know they have no chance of winning against the elite. They have to get their kicks dumping on those struggling with them to gain a foot on the slippery bottom rung of the ladder of success.

• • • 

What they don’t seem to understand is that those they put in power – and those who bribe those they put in power – have smashed the middle rungs of the ladder, and upward mobility has become as distant a dream for dull-witted, ordinary white folks as it was for my friend James.

What’s undeniably true is that things have gotten much tougher in America for people like James. But what’s also true is that things have gotten much tougher for all of us – save for the very rich.

Despite that new harsh reality, Teapartians maintain the illusion that they are somehow “exceptional”, and that hard work – and capitalism – will eventually set them free from economic slavery. But alas, their illusions are no more than a bastardized version of the sign that hung above the entrance at Auschwitz:  Arbeit Macht Frei.

©2011 Tom Cordle