On its face, who’d object to a “right-to-work” law?
By that token, and divorced from its substance, who wouldn’t be “pro-life”? Who quibbles with the assertion that “all lives matter,” or that markets should be “free”?
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was getting people to look at unionized workers and say, “Why do they still have X?” instead of “Why don’t I have X?”
Strange brand of freedom, this right to work until I die. Thanks Republicans!
The silver tongue serpents of the wealthy minority - heavily vested in maintaining a disproportionately large share of control - have an addiction to crafting misleading labels and logic and jargon .
Here’s some truly perverse propaganda aimed at throwing shade at the concept of “democracy”
They may have become " more sophisticated in their messaging " but the messages are still bullshit. Youngkin used “sophisticated messaging” to ride nonexistent CRT into the Governor’s mansion then Virginia got the rest of him. The GOP relied on SCOTUS to use “sophisticated messaging” ( originalism ) to portray the Constitution and our Founders wanting Guns guns guns, money money money and the loss of reproductive freedom. The Iraq War was the result of grand scale “sophisticated messaging”.
And it was all bullshit.
The idea was to bust Unions for the Donor Class and to reduce a source of Democratic funding. It was done by “you don’t have this because that guy has that”…and it worked.
That’s not a “but”, rather an “and” or even “because”. As ChatGPT is showing us, it’s a lot easier to construct smooth narratives if you’re not constrained by facts or logic.
I live in Texas and I’ve always thought of this nomenclature as Orwellian. In my mind, I always rename it “the right to get fired at any time for any reason”. Which is really obvious when you read the employment contracts/agreements here that repeatedly remind you of that fact.
I remember the days of Reuther and Meany…individuals who spoke directly with presidents.
See also “debt ceiling.” I’m not sure of the origin of that term, but what if that issue was cast as simply needing to pay our bills?
They are not good at branding. They have a lock tight grip on the fundamentals of this country and have done since the first radicalized Christians got here.
They have a tax-free entity on practically every corner in the country that uniformly drives the voters to act against their best interests and vote Republican. These entities also supported slavery and provided the moral imperative to maintain it for hundreds of years.
Astroturf. It’s what’s for dinner.
It wasn’t NAFTA that killed jobs in the Rust Belts. It was unions and environmental protection laws.
It’s wasn’t de-regulation of log exports and over-harvesting that killed timber jobs in the Pacific Northwest. It was Spotted Owls.
The January 6th kerfuffle wasn’t an act of domestic terrorism. It’s was a fiendish plot by a cabal of black people, George Soros and baby-eating leftist lizard people to make an innocent group of America-loving tourists look bad.
The greatest existential threat to our democracy isn’t creeping fascism. It’s Drag Queens.
Entrenched power is as old as the human race. When people have the opportunity to control and modify it, they must act.
2016 was the worst year to be lax with this opportunity…and, yet, we attained a reprieve in the fact of the Biden Presidency in 2020.
This is IT for ordinary people.
Great piece, @kate . I hadn’t known how long the history of the terms has. So much of that conservative doublespeak seems to come out of Nixon, Reagan and the Lee Atwater types. Wild to see how far back these sort of linguistic tactics go.
The thing is, what is actually needed is a nationwide ban on these kinds of laws.
Corporations don’t like unions, if you hadn’t noticed, and they have a strong preference for moving their manufacturing facilities to anti-union states. I am in complete support of repealing the so-called ‘right to work’ bill here in Michigan, but I’m afraid that companies in Michigan are going to be very vocal about their displeasure with the repeal. They will use this to try to push this state back into the red column.
There is a funny-as-hell South Park episode on ChatGPT in the school.
Cartman says at least twice (might be three times), “…just like women ruined slavery.”
Mrs Dr Strad pulled up ChatGPT and asked it, “How did women ruin slavery?” It came back chiding her for trying to blame women for an awful thing when they were also victims as well as slave holders. The whole paragraph was really pretty funny, in a computer-telling-you-you-ought-to-be-woke kind of way.
The Decades Of Successful Marketing Behind ‘Right-To-Work’ Laws
Coupled with the 40+ year campaign to actively dumb down Americans, the 24 hour news cycle, and the internet it was the perfect storm.
I remember when pro stars used to have to work in the off-season. Collective bargaining changed that.
For some reason there no connection between this and collective bargaining as a social practice in the United States.
Great piece, @kate
Seconded.
The right’s ability to brand their fascism and lies as “freedom” and “choices” is nothing short of Orwellian. And it fucking works.