Rant for the Nobodies

The Rant would posit a simple understanding of a country’s general well-being: How easy/difficult is it to be a Nobody? Let’s define a Nobody as a person that wields little power outside their family and social circle, has little access to those that do wield such power, and has to navigate the daily chores of life without shortcuts to VIP lines, exemptions, and manipulations of the system. The price of a dozen eggs has a real impact on their budget; a health crisis can alter the trajectory of their entire families’ lives. Collectively, Nobodies account for the vast majority of economic productivity yet are paid far below the value of their labor and skill.¹

Being a Nobody has never been a walk in the park—owing to the fact the Nobodies have to mow the lawn and trim the hedges and clean up the mess from all the frolicking the Somebodies did. Takes the starch right out of your picnic plans. But there have been times when being a Nobody contained more than one path to becoming a Somebody. After WWII, the GI Bill, strong unions, an equitable tax system, cheap health care,² and the housing boom all offered true opportunities. For those left out, the demand for civil rights at least expanded access from what had come before. Economists from the University of Chicago and Stanford determined that 40% of per-worker economic growth after 1960 occurred from new opportunities for minorities and women.

Then the Somebodies, as they always do, got their collective designer undies in a wad. Anyone becoming even fractionally more rich, autonomous, or successful at their perceived expense cannot stand. Thriving minority communities were deemed “urban blight” and plowed under so highways could be constructed to the White suburbs; only Somebodies can be paid for doing nothing, so the the myth of the Welfare Queen was born to dismantle the social safety net;³ the rise of the medical-industrial complex crushed affordable healthcare;⁴ the homeless became crazy, lazy, drug addicts to hide the predatory housing policies that nearly eliminated affordable, entry-level options.⁵

So The Rant spends endless hours talking customer service bots in a search for the meaning of the mysterious fees and surcharges on all our bills while being told the loving corporations keeps our costs at bay. We weigh the merits of going to the doctor against other pressing financial issues. The average CEO made $17.7million in 2023, 268 times higher than the average worker. The same CEOs shrug and move on to their next failure while our retirement investments are gutted. Any Nobody not White and male is endlessly informed that any success, any accomplishment, has been the result of a rigged system that must be dismantled.

The nadir of any Nobody society occurs when the majority of Nobodies begins chanting that their position is simply inevitable. That change is impossible. That the benevolent Somebodies will soon open their gated communities to them. In the meantime, we are encouraged to direct our anger and frustration at conspiracies that never existed, at people supposedly living in a Shangri-La of free handouts that we will never see, at impending crime and violence that never materializes.

One day a Nobody named Rosa Parks got on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. When Whites began filling the bus, Parks was told to move to the back where Black passengers had to sit by law. Since Nobodies ever get credit for sparking social changes, people would later claim Parks was simply too tired to move, not engaged in an act of defiance against the Somebodies. But Parks made it clear what she was about:  “I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day . . . No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” Her subsequent arrest and efforts to help organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott would propel the Civil Rights Movement. For nearly a hundred years after the Civil War, the Somebodies declared Jim Crow inevitable, segregation benign, the demand for equality the beginnings of social chaos and destruction.

Currently, Nobody has grown tired enough of giving in. We sit in the back of the bus, deluded that at any moment a Somebody will offer us a seat at the front.

1. Rule of thumb: if you have to ask, you’re a Nobody.
2. The Rant remembers as a lad in the 70s our doctor still making house calls. No kiddies, a house call was not your doctor running for a touchdown. He came to our place of residence and dispensed medical care. This now sounds slightly less believable than the existence of dragons, unicorns, and Logan and Jake Paul.
3. Pay no attention to the endless handouts Somebodies receive in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts. Nothing to see here. Also, never think about where all the COVID stimulus money went or your head will explode.
4. Don’t get The Rant started on “nonprofit hospitals.” Fine, let’s get started. Let’s take a quick a look at Ascension Health, a consolidation of all the largest Catholic healthcare systems in America. Every nonprofit is required to file a 990 form, available for public inspection, so we can see where all those charitable, tax free dollars are going. First, ain’t no charity flowing to the The Rant’s astronomical deductible on our so-called affordable health insurance. If we just peruse the highest compensated employees for Fiscal Year 2023 at Ascension, we discover Chair, President, and CEO (So many duties. How sacrificial) Joseph R. Impicciche received the humble compensation of . . . $9.1million. Such a servant. Fun fact: the top five compensated employees at ol’ merciful Ascension totaled over $24million that year. Maybe that’s why they called a bill collector and ruined your credit score on the $32 balance you forgot to pay. Since you were wondering, 58% of all debt-collection entries on credit reports are for medical debt.
5. The National Coalition for the Homeless estimates 40%-60% of the homeless are employed.