Eisenhower, the Union Man

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2023 by Uwe Bahr

In our age of cutting-edge technology, where greedy corporations shamelessly exploit the labor of the mass of their employees and leave them to live little more than from payday to payday, no one remembers words like the following. They did, in fact, come from a Republican president:

“Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those – regardless of their political party – who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.”

The statement was made in 1952 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II and 34^th President of the United States of America. Eisenhower, a Republican socialist; a forerunner of Bernie Sanders, so to speak. Imagine that.

The fools today would be: Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Starbucks …, to name just a few. They all have one thing in common: they suppress workers’ rights by all legal and illegal means and do everything they can to prevent representation of the interests of the weak. They all rake billions into their own pockets and have little more than starvation wages left for their ordinary employees, who can barely make ends meet.

This is what the modern age of the 21st century looks like.

If Eisenhower’s words are anything to go by, then the fools of our day would unfortunately also be those who are sorely informed and believe they must elect Trump, DeSantis or even Biden to represent the interests of the American majority. The exact opposite is the case: for these sorts of politicians use their power and influence in the interests of the billionaire class and ensure that corporations can continue to wallow in their greed.

The latter is obviously not what Eisenhower wanted for the American future. “Ike” would be shocked to hear today’s bullies like Trump and DeSantis talking.