The Happiness Thieves

As I write, it’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve seen anybody at work wearing a mask to prevent COVID spread. It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve seen anybody even pretending to wear one: no chin warmers, no neck guards, no forehead shields. I was the first in my company to voluntarily start wearing a mask, before it was made mandatory. Last week, I became the last to quit wearing one, stuffing it into my pocket in resignation.

COVID has come amid an avalanche of news items, every one of which could’ve been prevented if important people treated others as equals. Protests against excessive police power continue, even if national media have stopped covering it. The remains of missing soldier and misconduct whistleblower Vanessa Guillen have been positively identified. China, whose extreme population density is perfect for breeding disease, is seeing outbreaks of swine flu and bubonic plague.

I say this happens because important people hold others in low regard, but they don’t do it alone. The extremes of authority, coupled with basic disdain for our common humanity, which we see demonstrated in leaders like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, are only possible because citizens keep supporting them. This relationship between people and power is cyclical; as each becomes more demonstratively bigoted and violent, it encourages the other.

Watching my fellow workers refuse to take the most basic precautions to prevent spread of a virulent disease, while also mouthing old racist slogans and Fox News one-liners about the inherent goodness of police, and continuing to wear hand-painted Trump 2020 banners on their hard hats, I can’t help wondering what’s going on. Is my industry really dominated by this kind of hatred toward others? And are they really representative of society as a whole?

A century ago, construction workers, alongside meatpackers and miners, were the backbone of the progressive movement. Workers like my colleagues banded together to fight injustice and defend a baseline standard of human dignity. This attitude persists in the belief I hear, from my co-workers, that if you want paid, you need to do a decent day’s work. Because contribution should be rewarded, though it often isn’t.

But, as economist Gar Alperovitz writes, Americans are notorious for kicking down the ladder we just ascended. My mostly White co-workers are deathly terrified that Black or Hispanic workers will receive the same protections they do, and they’d rather dismantle all safeguards than see others receive them, too. In America (and, somewhat, Britain), the workers most likely to require collective protection, are most likely to oppose state intervention in economics.

It’s like they’re afraid happiness is a finite resource. They seemingly believe that, if others do well and wax prosperous, it must come at the expense of their happiness. This attitude is certainly encouraged by right-wing media, including the talk radio that many subcontractors listen to all day. The fear of immigrants, of urban Black men, of lawlessness, all shares the same theme: they’re coming to steal your happiness.

Barraged by this message for years, my co-workers have internalized it. They see immigrants and asylum-seekers, not as dreamers coming to partake in the abundance of liberty we’ve created, but as chislers, coming to steal their jobs. They see government poverty protections, not as safeguards of basic dignity in history’s wealthiest nation, but as somebody wanting paid for doing nothing. Somebody is constantly trying to steal from you.

Importantly, that theft isn’t monetary. They’re okay with the upward drift of wealth, embodied by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, and they repeatedly vote for candidates who promise to cut taxes on the obscenely rich. They believe, in keeping with standard Libertarian politics, that money isn’t a fixed quantity; if someone’s slice of the pie is oversized, that means the pie is getting bigger. So we needn’t protect baseline wages or stop the rich from hoarding.

No, they aren’t worried about anybody stealing their money; they worry that somebody’s stealing their happiness. That’s why they favor punitive policing and harsh sentences… on others. I’ve watched co-workers complain about getting stung for DUI, even while admitting the bust was legitimate, then swing, without irony, into insisting we need to bust crack dealers without trial, in the best Rodrigo Duterte style.

I see so many contributing factors that I have no simple solutions. Racism, economic insecurity, fear of change, even simple boredom. And the toxic sewer of COVID America gives it opportunities to boil; wearing masks becomes a visible symbol of happiness theft. I fear to say, things aren’t going to get better soon. Unless something stops the perceived happiness theft, conditions are likely to get worse.