Being constantly gaslit about "back to normal" is both infuriating and getting more people killed. On the plus side, all my socdem friends are ripe for radicalization now that they're blatantly being shoveled into the economy for fuel. Been doing a lot of "Have I told you the tragedy of Blair Mountain?"
It's not a story the US Education system would tell you.
A hundred years ago, when coal and oil were still black gold, Virginia was El Dorado. Much of the land was occupied by company towns, and the mine and railroad barons who owned them were aptly named. These towns were their fiefdoms, and they ruled with gilded iron fists. The work was long, brutal and dangerous. Worker's protections were nonexistent. They were paid in scrip, worthless company money that could only be spent at company stores.
Sometimes a miner would be caught with real money, and beaten. This would be carried out by the private security companies hired by the boss to break strikes and enforce "order." The only time they didn't hire these private goon squads was when they owned the local sherrif. In one such case, a psychotic railroad magnate and his pet sherriff's department put a gatling gun on a train and did a drive by on a camp of striking miners and their families. They made two runs. The judge in the case was replaced mid-trial, and the magnate was exonerated. The court transcript is...interesting.
Things escalated from there.
Eventually, one particularly zealous sherrif and his 2,000 private thugs, with the support of a hired airplane dropping surplus WW1 bombs, both frag and gas, broke the strike, but not before federal troops were called in and martial law declared. To this day, it's the biggest labor uprising in America's history, and the first airplane attack ever on US ground.
100 people were killed in that final attack. Them and all those before them, murdered to cowe the rest into silence, this huge story erased from the popular mythology, because the owner class is terrified of the power of a united people.
Yeah, I honestly still don't think it's sunk in for me that this is all happening, you know?
Being constantly gaslit about "back to normal" is both infuriating and getting more people killed. On the plus side, all my socdem friends are ripe for radicalization now that they're blatantly being shoveled into the economy for fuel. Been doing a lot of "Have I told you the tragedy of Blair Mountain?"
Side note, could you tell me of the tragedy of Blair Mountain?
It's not a story the US Education system would tell you.
A hundred years ago, when coal and oil were still black gold, Virginia was El Dorado. Much of the land was occupied by company towns, and the mine and railroad barons who owned them were aptly named. These towns were their fiefdoms, and they ruled with gilded iron fists. The work was long, brutal and dangerous. Worker's protections were nonexistent. They were paid in scrip, worthless company money that could only be spent at company stores.
Sometimes a miner would be caught with real money, and beaten. This would be carried out by the private security companies hired by the boss to break strikes and enforce "order." The only time they didn't hire these private goon squads was when they owned the local sherrif. In one such case, a psychotic railroad magnate and his pet sherriff's department put a gatling gun on a train and did a drive by on a camp of striking miners and their families. They made two runs. The judge in the case was replaced mid-trial, and the magnate was exonerated. The court transcript is...interesting.
Things escalated from there.
Eventually, one particularly zealous sherrif and his 2,000 private thugs, with the support of a hired airplane dropping surplus WW1 bombs, both frag and gas, broke the strike, but not before federal troops were called in and martial law declared. To this day, it's the biggest labor uprising in America's history, and the first airplane attack ever on US ground.
100 people were killed in that final attack. Them and all those before them, murdered to cowe the rest into silence, this huge story erased from the popular mythology, because the owner class is terrified of the power of a united people.
Thank you very much comrade <3
Always happy to hone my storytelling skills<3
Deserves its own post I'd say :)
I love redpills like these about history I wasn't alive for.
One of the coolest things is when I realized how the war against Disco music and Sheep farming was just a war against Black people.
Nothing ever changes.