The morning woke as the sky turned a deep, dark blue. I stared at the fading stars and thought about the week prior. Montanans were getting fired, livelihoods stolen. Nearly 5,000 public lands employees in the West got fired without good cause.
Voters chose the same guy to lead us who previously held the worst job record since the Great Depression. He subsequently put the richest man ever on a firing streak, stripping workers of their paychecks, livelihoods, and careers. Gazillionaires rule America they seemed to be yelling throughout the pages of corporate media as hungry brobots cheered online.
Workers are anxious. Unsettled. Worried. Why are they so mad as us? I don’t know. Maybe they need your paychecks for their tax break. Maybe it was simply how you voted. Maybe it’s AI.
Thirty years ago, multiple Flathead homes and businesses displayed fluorescent yellow signs that read “This family supported by timber dollars.” Plenty of workers had lost their jobs and the pain was real as a community stood in solidarity with job losses and economic distress. It’s a terrible shock to a family when bread winners are out of work. The pain is real and visible.
I went down to the Montana Tap House on Wednesday and listened to PJ talk about how 360 Forest Service employees had been fired in the state. He mentioned that some of the so called “fat” was his $16.16 an hour job, that took years to acquire. His health insurance is set to expire.
No paycheck, no insurance for PJ and his fellow workers. No-job-for-you is like a bad Seinfeld sitcom. I could have sworn Montana Republicans who run the state promised more jobs just months ago. More jobs, more jobs, more jobs hollered the TVs.
I saw the striking photograph of a young Forest Service employee holding a sign that read, “They laid off my entire crew.” The image struck a chord, reminded me how Montana once stood with forest workers, in a not-so-distant past. Something changed, it was no longer about jobs.
Sixty Forest Service employees were reportedly fired in Libby, a town in Northwest Montana known for big job losses in the recent past. It hurts, the pain is real for families. Fired. Healthcare done. Sickness be damned.
From the radio, sitting on the kitchen counter, Donna Summer sang a song about a hard-working blue-collar woman who is exhausted, “She works hard for the money. So hard for it, honey. She works hard for the money. So, you better treat her right.”
The gazillionaires running America are firing workers because they can, for vengeance, or tax cuts, or to own the libs or who actually knows why. Maybe ask AI. But one thing seems apparent, chaos and pain is the goal. The more hurt the better, social media brobots scream.
Brian, a fired park ranger, wrote a letter in the local paper that read in part, “I am a father, a loving husband, and a dedicated civil servant. I am an oath of office to defend and protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. I am a work evaluation that reads ‘exceeds expectations.’ I am the ‘fat on the bone.’ I am being trimmed as a consequence of the popular vote. I am a United States flag raiser and folder. I am my son’s ‘Junior Ranger’ idol.”
Words and imagery remain, their jobs gone. The pain remains. You’d cry, worry, were your spouse fired. How will you pay your rent, mortgage, find food, keep health insurance or make car payments? I don’t know.
The political class running Montana says nothing as their legislative authority is daily ripped from under their Capitol seats. They smirk with inefficiency and retort that there’s plenty of jobs out there, somewhere in the promised land. Then pass draconian bills through Congress to further slash budgets for anyone but their friends.
Last month, some fired employees hung a giant upside-down American flag on the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. It rocked social media, got many likes, ticked off the brobots. Yet parks remain underfunded and understaffed says every former park manager in the history of America.
It’s no longer far-fetched that the gazillionaire Republicans running things are simply looking to privatize our infrastructure and public lands much like they did with the Crazy Mountains of Montana where nearly 4,000 public acres recently got privatized.
On the farm, we’re seeding onions and wait for the ground to shake its winter slumber to plant the thousands of sprigs into the cold turned earth. Last year as I knelt planting the long rows of alliums, I recalled the dozens of private jets flying overhead, in and out of the Flathead on a warm April day.
A wealthy friend taught me that for the really-rich, everything is free. A memory that intermittently loops like borrowed time. He told me about the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year a private jet cost. I recall gasping – to our mutual embarrassment, as we bantered on.
How can Montana Republicans like Ryan Zinke and Steve Daines believe that $16.16 work is fat? Why so bloody silent? Many in-person townhalls planned? Maybe they also believed the jobs lie. I’m more likely to get answers working the onion patch come spring.