politics as usual

Sometimes I get to wondering about the issue of politics. And not identity politics, but real politics. Politics of class struggle and workers’ rights — the things that documentaries are made of! Events causing other events, with people throwing their support thither and yon based on the outcomes of those events and based on speeches people give about those events. I get to thinking, then, about how important it is to organize if we want to effect change.

Let’s say, for example, that I work on an assembly line, manufacturing — I don’t know: paper. I work in a paper mill, OK?  Most days, my concerns center around the quality of the paper we are putting out, and how I can cut the corners off the paper in an exactly symmetrical way. Or maybe I work in another part of the paper mill, the distribution center. There we are most worried about how we can ship our paper to the space station in a timely fashion, and how to stabilize the eight-sided paper inside the boxes. Should we use rectangular boxes, hoping that the four main sides of the paper will hold it in place inside the box? Or should we use eight-sided boxes? Seems like the eight-sided boxes waste a lot of space.

I have a lot to think about at the paper mill. And it doesn’t help that everyone is so suspicious and on-edge these days, what with the occupation and all. My biggest worry used to be whether the management had put spies in our midst to inform them about union organizing. But now I have to worry about cylons, too? Which of my trusted paper-packers, which of my factory foremen are sleeper agents? It is too much to bear sometimes.