On the screen Laura Whiting was just getting into her latest speech. The bi-weekly addresses were something that neither of the former gang members ever missed. There was something hypnotic and irresistible about being told by a politician just how they were all being fucked raw by the powers that be. The subject of today's speech was particularly interesting to them. It had to do with the perpetual class struggle between the Martian welfare class and the working class.
"You have to understand," she told her audience, "that this struggle is deliberate and pre-meditated by the corporations and the government that they've imposed upon us. It serves their interests for there to be strife between these two classes of people. If we are busy fighting each other and concentrating our energies on hating each other and what the other group stands for, we are much too distracted to concentrate any energy on the real enemy, the one who has put us in this position in the first place. It is a trick that is as old as repressive governments themselves. The British used it on the Irish Catholics and Protestants. The Americans used it on the poor whites and poor blacks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It's the old conquer by division trick and it has worked well here on Mars ever since the end of the Agricultural Rush.
"Most of those that we flippantly refer to as 'vermin' are not in that position because of their own choice. Most of them would sincerely love to put in an honest day's work and take home money that they've earned instead of having it handed to them by the government. But they cannot. There simply are not enough jobs under this system that we have. And every year the unemployment rate grows worse and worse as the corporations merge and adjust and adapt cost cutting measures in a quest for more profits. How long will it be before we reach forty percent unemployment? How long until four out of every ten people on this planet are called vermin? Not very long if we go on like this. Not very long at all.
"And how, you may ask me, does WestHem and the corporations perpetuate this class struggle between the welfare and the working? I've told you the why, but what about the how? It's quite simple really. They already have human nature working on their side — human nature that just loves to find a group of people that one's own group can hate. All they really have to do is take something from the more advantageous of the two classes and give it to the lesser. In this case I'm talking about welfare money. Working class tax dollars — already outrageously high in comparison to what upper class and corporations pay — is used to buy food, housing, alcohol and marijuana, health insurance, and lawyer insurance for the welfare recipients. It is used to give them their bi-monthly allotments of spending money. Now this act in and of itself is not really a bad thing. We should help those that are disadvantaged. But what it does is cast a stigma on the welfare class and cause resentment among the working class. This resentment is turned to hatred when the prices of food and clothing and housing are raised without a corresponding increase in working class salaries. The working class are forced to struggle to survive, working hard every day just to make enough to keep their children fed and their rent paid and they are given no assistance whatsoever in their endeavor. In a way they are made to feel punished because they work. At the same time the welfare class are handed everything that they need and are discouraged from even looking for work. They are taken care of as far as basic needs but they are forced to endure prejudice and mistreatment by police officers, healthcare workers, and others that they deal with in their lives.
"People, this has got to stop! If we're going to be successful in gaining our independence the welfare and the working classes are going to have to work together. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, you need to stop treating people differently because of their employment status and what kind of health insurance they have. If you participate in this prejudice, you are helping the corporations keep us down. Police officers, teachers, transit workers, you need to stop treating the welfare class differently than you do people with jobs. They are human beings just like yourself and they are Martians — the descendants of those who came to this planet to escape from the squalor of Earth. Just because your family has somehow managed to escape from this engineered squalor so far, you do not need to look down upon and mistreat those whose families have not. The welfare class do not choose to be put on welfare, they do not enjoy taking our handouts, but they simply have no other choice in this world that has been created for us."
"Fuckin aye," Jeff cried, sitting up a little straighter. "That bitch really knows how to tell it. And to think, I blew her off a couple months ago as just another scumbag politician."
"I always told you she was different," Matt said, sipping from his bottle. "I'm starting to think that she just might pull this independence bid off. After all, she's beaten the corporations at every turn so far."
"So far," Jeff agreed. "She's got a long haul ahead of her, but maybe she will."
"And what if she does?" Belinda asked sourly, her words thick and slurred from the two bottles of Fruity that she'd swallowed while cooking. "What if this bitch that everyone's talking about actually does manage to get us independent? Do you really think anything is going to change around here? We'll still be unemployed vermin living off of welfare money and drinking this crappy brew that they make out of apple piss."
Jeff usually ignored his wife when she talked. If he was forced to acknowledge her it was usually in an argumentative tone. This time however, he spoke calmly to her. "So what if nothing does change?" he asked her.
"What?" she asked, not grasping what he was talking about.
"What if Laura Whiting takes over and everyone's worst fear comes true and she turns out to be some Adolph Hitler fascist dictator who only wanted to rule the fuckin world? So what if that happens? Would we be any worse off than we are right now?"
"That's not the point," Belinda said.
"It is the point," he told her. "I personally don't think that anything is going to come of this shit. I think that WestHem is going to find a way to get rid of her pretty soon and everything is going to go back to the way it always has been. But right now, she's tweaking some serious sack among those WestHem fucks and I love every goddamn minute of it. And if there's the slightest chance that we might have our miserable lives improved by what she's doing, shouldn't we support her? Shouldn't we help if we can?"
Belinda shook her head in disgust. "You're getting as bad as your friend there," she told him. "Talking about improvement and independence and shit like that. I guess three generations as vermin hasn't taught you much. Wait 'til you're five generations in like me."
"Fuck off," he told her. "You don't understand shit. Why don't you go finish up that slop you're cooking?"
She did so, after only a minor argument to the contrary. In truth Jeff could see that even Belinda was feeling some hope despite her cynical blabbering to the contrary. Wasn't she always coming in and out of the room when Whiting was speaking, pretending not to be interested but keeping one ear tuned to the screen? Wasn't she always looking through MarsGroup articles regarding the latest Whiting exploits and then pushing them to the background if he happened to come in the room? Belinda's attitude was typical among many of the welfare class. They pretended to be disinterested because they wanted to be able to say "I told you so" if Whiting ultimately failed.