I was reminded of some article I wanted to write for a year or two now.
And it is more of a pet peeve and it goes back to the young buck who tried to fire me in my old job because he had a mandate to get rid of me, a whistleblower of sorts to HR about sexual harassment to myself among others and because I was over 50 and the benefits budget for healthcare apparently more so tiered to more and higher actuary figures, high premium tiers for old people.
That said, the young buck was raised in upstate Westchester county type country and gleaning facts here and there, the bottom line is that Jack was educated from 1st grade to college degree in private Catholic education.
Nothing wrong with that. But I have noticed this lately of a lot of politicians on the right DO NOT have what I consider traditional Christian values even though the religions checked for them next to a preference or a poll finding box is marked as that of "Christian" and or "Catholic".
Jack the supervisor made a comment to me one day, eating lunch at my desk about the smell. I explained to him that I was eating a tin of sardines in mustard which I did not think smelled. If you want me to eat sweet smelling food, don't ask me to work and to eat in on my lunch hour. Besides it was in the drawer with some crackers in a small tin and I had no money to buy the five dollar baloney sandwich in the company's Manhattan cafeteria, the cheapest item on the menu btw. I would usually go to this nearby fast food Chinese joint Kip's and get a Won Ton soup for a buck and a quarter and eat it outside in a small cubby hole urban park next door summer and winter. Oh the glory of Manhattan wages frozen since Reagan!
Aside from the ascetics of the thing, his look when I announced it was canned fish, I will remember the strange look on his face, to the day I die. One of disgust and of his pseudo-Patrician nose up in the air. How third world of you Mike?
A few more words of poor communication, more from his Catholic college educated side, than from my many self-helped book and college Psych courses labeled as or related to human communication.
I finally asked if he had ever eaten sardines or canned fish. And again the disgusted look like I was the one covered in shit and he did not approve of my presence. This all in a face to face, my desk top across to a workstation where he was opening Fed EX packages containing certified checks and stock certificates. This is an area a lot of companies cash "The Cage" where raw cash or negotiables like bearer bonds are kept behind locked doors w/o windows. The "Cage" tag no doubt goes back to 19th century banks, and brokerage houses where such a secured area was usually behind metal bars and locked doors. Of course in the old days, such places also handled gold bars etc. ...
This is where my own life experience kinda went back to being a kid of five and accompanying my father to the supermarket and seeing cans of Underwood Brand sardines in mustard sauce in wrapped cellophane wrappers and the likely price too was like a dime. Ancient American History.
The thought that his kid never had sardines, fish in a can, "Yuk" he said and or gestured in body language was something sad. Something I had shared with my dad was not something this kid shared with his dad. I was ignorant and his son/dad experience of taking Jack out on the golf course at the country club and caddying for dad in the same way he no doubt ever went shopping in a supermarket with anybody other than mom or the illegal nanny.
Anyway to get to a point where I realize how old and useless this millennial thinks of me and in the line of the new Wharton Global Spreadsheet that reduces humanity to negative assets on that global spreadsheet in corporate American and corporate "Global" earth.
That something as simple to me as a can of sardines and crackers reminds me of the lack to (of) empathy the ruling class have in dealing with a work force, my old job in fact now outsourced to India, disappearing from the landscape and making dysfunction everywhere, both coasts and flyover country in between, of people educated in private little Catholic colleges in upstate New York and charging tuition little different than Harvard.
The gate/wall around the gated community extends to the gate around the country club next door and extends to the White Burb Catholic Educated minds of the people who have never eaten fish in cans such as sardines?
I always thought that it was po' people food like sardines, fish, that Jesus multiplied for the mixed crowds, mostly poor, in the desert?
This as an awful long prelude to a point in the news where the White Suburban Catholic Educated (Values) WSCEV Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, an asshole from South Carolina, where else but from where the Civil War started, -
John Michael "Mick" Mulvaney thought that it was compassionate to chop "Meals on Wheels" from the Trump mean spirited GOP budget. And also how an after school snack for po' kids was also not cost efficient on the Wharton Global Humanity Destroying Spreadsheet. Mulvaney - 1st grade through Georgetown University - Catholic educated and with good Catholic "Values".
Compassion is in the eyes of the beholder. No doubt the guards at Auschwitz thought that they were being compassionate to the Jew getting off the cattle cars from the central cities of Europe.
Good German Christian and Catholic Values practiced then and greatly unappreciated now as well with "Mick" Mulvaney's Compassionate Catholic Values Budget.
