Joey Camp is a 30 year old white guy, who lives in Georgia, and is primarily a line cook at Waffle House. Mr. Camp was the first person in Georgia known to have contracted the coronavirus. Due to his having been crashing on a friend's couch, and the friend having a young child, Mr. Camp had nowhere to go if he did not wish to infect anyone. So, Mr. Camp ended up in a state government-subsidized trailer, taken care of for free, and, while recuperating, was able to watch Star Wars films on his cellphone.
A little further background regarding Mr. Camp: Mr. Camp graduated high school in Georgia, joined the military and served in Afghanistan. He returned to the United States, served some time in the National Guard, and then worked as a trucker for awhile, before losing that job. Along the way, Mr. Camp married and divorced. Mr. Camp recently has had two part time jobs. One was at Waffle House, working his way up to line cook to earn $10.65 an hour, and the other job, a party driver, making a similar wage. He had his own apartment at one time, but was evicted, presumably too expensive for him to stay, and he ended up homeless for a spell, before ending up living with the friend with the child. Oh, and he has diabetes, which means he must pay for the insulin he needs to survive.
Now, Mr. Camp survived the virus, and he wants to tell his story. Mr. Camp wants us to know he stands firmly with the billionaires and Trump who say America needs to stop overreacting, and get back to work. If some old people die, it is better than killing the economy. As Mr Camp himself said to the Los Angeles Times reporter, “It’s not going to kill the vast majority of the population...People are hearing 3.4% mortality. They’re not hearing the 96.6% survival rate.”*
Mr. Camp has fully ingested that whatever has happened to him is simply his fault, or something that just happens. It is nobody else's fault. Mr. Camp is content and grateful to work for Waffle House part time, and not making a livable wage to even rent a place outside Atlanta in a fairly rural community. Mr. Camp knows his place, and has accepted his lot in life. Mr. Camp does not wonder, if he ever did wonder, how it is that Waffle House, which earns $1 billion year over year, cannot afford to pay him a decent full time wage. Mr. Camp has no belief there could ever be union of workers to demand better pay and conditions.
However, Mr. Camp is not without rage. As he told the reporter at the Daily Mail (UK), "A person who makes $50,000 or $60,000 a year just isn’t understanding what this (societal reaction to the virus) means." Mr. Camp can't even imagine someone making $75,000, or $125,000, or a million. Not where he lives, and don't you get any ideas, either, as the Los Angeles Times writer learned when talking to a 22 year old diner worker, who knew Mr. Camp, and who also struggles to survive. Mr. Camp considers himself a libertarian, but voted for Trump in 2016 and will do so again. He says he watches FoxNews and CNN on his cellphone because he owns no computer and has no high speed Internet available except on his cellphone. Again, he accepts his lot in life, and thinks you whiney snowflake libs in the suburbs, and on college campuses, should, too.
But Mr. Camp sounds hopeful he will survive economically now that he beat this virus. As he said to the Los Angeles Times reporter:
If things got really desperate and society collapsed, at least his roommate, Trey, has a couple of pistols, an AR-15 and a 12-gauge shotgun.
Mr. Camp even provided a Mad Max reference, where he says to the LA Times reporter:
“It’s like ‘Mad Max,’” he said as he drove down a four-lane highway, passing very few cars. “It’s kind of weird. It’s like everybody’s holding their breath, waiting for either society to collapse or society to get back to normal.”
But, don't worry. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, when he was suffering from the virus, how he was a Christian and his faith would get through it. And he did get through it, with free government health care, though he would likely tell us it was also thoughts and prayers.
In the context of defending superhero films, I have written about Mad Max: Fury Road (though I would bet Mr. Camp is more of the fan of the original film with Mel Gibson) that the film was less about feminist socialism, which comes later in the film and the end, and more about how fascism intertwines itself with religion, patriarchy, and feudalistic behaviors, but with capitalists at the helm. Those who have seen Mad Max: Fury Road know who Mr. Camp is, and it is not Max.
I tell this story about Mr. Camp because Mr. Camp personifies my frustration with nearly 40 years of Democratic Party politics, which has become more representing what Barbara Ehrenreich coined as the Professional-Managerial Class, while the Republicans push fascism, racism, xenophobia, and a frustrated cynicism on a significant number of working class people. Mr. Camp is not dumb. He does not believe an Obama, Biden, Bill or Hillary Clinton will ever look out for him, and he has a good reason to believe that. Mr. Camp thinks Trump has his back, though his watching CNN and FoxNews, and reading Trump tweets, doesn't enlighten him about Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Swamp Monster corporate lobbyists who fill the Trump administration, and who also own Congress. On the other hand, Mr. Camp has a message for progressives like me. As a libertarian, he also doesn't believe in that pie-in-the-sky-give-away-free-stuff Bernie Sanders line, either. Again, he has accepted his status as a part time line cook and party driver. He has accepted his lot as a divorcee living with a friend, sleeping on a couch.
Mr. Camp reminds me of the nightmare scene in It's A Wonderful Life, where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart playing him) tries to tell Ernie, the taxi driver, how he knows Ernie's wife and child, and Ernie, not knowing Bailey because the angel has given Bailey his wish to have never been born, says to Bailey, "You saw my wife? She left me six months ago. I ain't seen her since." Ernie is deeply unhappy with his life, but knows that is the way life is. Ernie is a realist, you see. However, in the timeline Bailey knew Ernie, we know Ernie is married, has a child, and is happy he was able to buy a home on his earnings, in large part because Bailey was like the super-mayor who ran the financial co-op (more than even a credit union). And in the extended nightmare scene, the viewer sees how so many residents accept "Pottersville," which Mr. Potter, the rich guy, essentially owns, and renamed, as the town was formerly known as Bedford Falls. A lot of the residents seem to admire, if not fear, Potter. He's rich and he lets them live, at least.
Mr. Camp does not believe in George Bailey's speech to the Building & Loan's Board about helping what Mr. Potter called the "rabble." Mr. Camp is "Tom" in the bank run scene, who wants his money back and up front right away, or else he is selling his co-op shares to Potter, as the Great Depression of the early 1930s deepens. "Tom" and Mr. Camp live moment to moment. Life is a burden and one lives by accepting that burden, never looking up, never looking forward. I continue to think Mr. Camp may be reminded of his youthful optimism, if he ever had it, if there was a political party that actually and consistently showed him solidarity and looked first and foremost for his economic interests. My hope in that direction may well be wrong at this point. However, I know, and I mean, I know, Mr. Camp will never vote for a corporate Democrat. And, contrary to people I meet inside the Democratic Party (more in CA than here in NM, I will say), I also know it is not enough to look to see if Mr. Camp is racist or a xenophobe. It is not enough to just leave Mr. Camp in the dust for thinking he doesn't like "homos" or thinking abortion is a big issue to vote for or against someone running for public office.
Right now, our nation is sliding towards second world economic status, and the language people use increasingly fits a pattern we would have called, in a different time, fascism. See here for Bertrand Russell's 1935 essay on the loss of reasoned debate as part of fascist "discourse," and this article showing how fascism oppresses the "other" but lets the "non-other" have a welfare state. This helps us understand why no "New Deal"/"democratic socialism" light went on in Mr. Camp's head after getting free government health care which saved his life.
It grieves me to say we are slowly sliding toward a society that resembles Mad Max: Fury Road. For me, my personal political radicalism is grounded in my being a parent who cares about young people, which includes Mr. Camp and other white youth, but most definitely includes African-American, Latino, Asian, and LGBTQ youth. My political radicalism is grounded in a belief that public policy and government can make a positive difference in people's lives. My political radicalism is grounded in a belief that when we do better for the economically vulnerable and the oppressed, we as a society do better. Mr. Camp and I would have a big argument, I'm sure, but he would likely say, You're a nobody like me, so why should I care what you say? And he would be correct again, at least in a time where money counts, and where nearly any otherwise good and caring guy my age can be #MeToo'ed at some point or another.**
But, let's leave behind profound films such as Wonderful Life and Mad Max: Fury Road, which are still fiction, and understand the basic point, which is lots of people live like Mr. Camp in America today. In fact, 44% of Americans working full time make just at or less than a living wage. If we don't believe in reforming government policies in a fundamental way to be able to make better lives for ourselves and others in our communities, then we are eventually going to be grabbing for our AR-15s, and hoping to get some glory in a Mad Max world. I know that dichotomy seems too extreme for those making, year over year, $75,000, or $250,000, or who are millionaire Democrats living in a big house in a wealthy suburb, and who lead a wonderful life overall. That is, however, part of the problem. We really do not understand Mr. Camp's life, and we do not see how Mr. Camp's bravado, Christian beliefs, and "I'll-tough-it-out" manliness hide his otherwise quiet desperation, and unhappiness, based upon alienation.
I have worried about this for most of my adult life, as I maneuvered through the upper middle professional-managerial class, watching, with horror and anger, the loss of our manufacturing base, the selfishness that became a political creed in libertarians, Reagan-Trump Republicans, and corporate Democrats, and which culminated in the ultimate "I've Got Mine" vs. "Get Off My Lawn," presidential election of 2016, which is what I called the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential race. Maybe Mr. Camp is to be written off for conversion this year. But, Mr. Camp speaks for a lot of people who live like serfs in a feudalist economy we still call "capitalist," within a political oligarchy we still call a "republic." We who are privileged to live in a stable economic environment owe Mr. Camp, and people like him, the duty to pull ourselves out of our ideological blinder that tells us all we need is a little tinkering with the economy, and how we just have to get rid of the vulgar guy sitting in the White House. We owe Mr. Camp, and others like him, even if he calls people like me "libtards." We owe him just the same. However, if we deny that duty or say, "Who's 'we'? 'We' don't owe him anything," then we are, as I have said, our own meteor. We are all in this together, and we ought to find the sentiment to believe in, and act to create, a government representative of our best values, and those consistent with our Founders' best values. And those values include a government which protects and develops infrastructure, helps people in the main and in need (which our Founders called "the general welfare"), and believes all people are created equal.
____________________
* Never mind that would mean about 10 million would die from this virus, an astronomical figure Mr. Camp was undoubtedly taught would be bad when a Communist dictator like Stalin killed, or let die from starvation and disease, seven million in Ukraine. But, hey buddy. You don't compare us to Stalin. This is America! We only killed millions of Native Americans over three centuries. As Stalin understood, and our fellow American conservatives and libertarians have ingested, A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.
** I am not sure what to make of the woman's sexual assault assertion against Biden which dropped this week, and remain amazed nobody has stepped forward in that manner against Bernie (yes, yes, I am aware of how Bernie's 2016 campaign had some leches). Also, here is an article from New York Magazine, from less than a year ago, where Biden's accuser describes the encounters she had with Biden as a staffer in the early 1990s as non-sexual, and goes into detail about a more typical Biden encounter than the one she now discusses. And let's remember, conservatives only care about these things when it involves "libs" or "Democrats," not someone running as a conservative. It is why Trump survived multiple assault and adultery claims against him.
** I am not sure what to make of the woman's sexual assault assertion against Biden which dropped this week, and remain amazed nobody has stepped forward in that manner against Bernie (yes, yes, I am aware of how Bernie's 2016 campaign had some leches). Also, here is an article from New York Magazine, from less than a year ago, where Biden's accuser describes the encounters she had with Biden as a staffer in the early 1990s as non-sexual, and goes into detail about a more typical Biden encounter than the one she now discusses. And let's remember, conservatives only care about these things when it involves "libs" or "Democrats," not someone running as a conservative. It is why Trump survived multiple assault and adultery claims against him.
