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The American Dream, such as it is, used to be *two* dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.
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As the New Deal gave way to the post-war social safety net, Americans discovered two paths to social mobility: they could join a union, and they could buy a home. Joining a union meant that your wages would rise with productivity.
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Denise Prudhomme's bosses at Wells Fargo insisted that the in-person camaraderie of their offices warranted a mandatory return-to-office policy, but when she died at her desk in her Tempe, AZ office, no one noticed for four days.
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That was in August. Now, Wells Fargo United has published a statement on her death, one that vibrates with anger at the callously selective surveillance that Wells Fargo inflicts on its workforce:
In Canto 20 of *Inferno*, Dante confronts a pit where the sinners have had their heads twisted around backwards; they trudge, naked and weeping, through puddles of cooling tears.
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Terminal-stage capitalism owes its long senescence to its defensive mechanisms, and it's only by defeating these that we can put it out of its misery. "The Shield of Boringness" is one of the necrocapitalist's most effective defenses, so it behooves us to attack it head-on.
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The Shield of Boringness is Dana Claire's extremely useful term for anything so dull that you simply can't hold any conception of it in your mind for any length of time.
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In other words, the world we're living in is the best possible world, and the fact that you got contact burns from collapsing on the scorching sidewalk outside of the grocery store where you couldn't afford your weekly shopping is unfortunate, but unavoidable.
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*Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America* is @NickHanauer, @joanwalsh and @donaldrcohen12's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:
I found out about this book last fall when @ddayen reviewed it for the @TheProspect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter.
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