LM Otero/AP Photo
A masked shopper looks over meat products at a grocery store in Dallas, April 29, 2020.
You probably remember King Canute. He’s the sovereign who commanded the tide to recede. It didn’t work.
King Donald is trying to command the virus to recede, and it is working about as well. His latest command is for meatpacking plants to reopen, to prevent shortages of pork, beef, and poultry.
As union packinghouse workers have been partly replaced by a non-union, low-wage workforce, safety conditions have deteriorated along with wages. Workers in disgusting conditions evoking Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle work literally cheek by jowl. Not surprising, the packinghouses are second only to prisons as COVID hot spots. Several have closed for indefinite periods.
Trump can (perhaps) command the plants to open under the Defense Production Act, but he can’t command sick workers to report for duty. Nor can he command healthy ones to risk their lives for the sake of burgers and pork chops.
The ploy may also backfire politically, since these sweatshops tend to be located in swing states where citizens are justifiably anxious about renewed outbreaks of the virus. So Trump’s gambit could backfire in several respects.
First, it will scare off voters. Second, it will remind citizens of the value of unions.
Third, the story of incipient meat shortages is a reminder of the evils of concentrated agribusiness. If more small-scale production still existed, there would be fewer massive virus incubators, a greater diversity of supply, as well as a more vital farm-to-table sector (which may yet be renewed.) Not to mention less consumption of environmentally unsustainable meat.
Score it Mother Nature, 1; Trump, 0. It’s an ill virus that blows no good.
