We Need
To Change Before Big Airlines Decide To
Like many of you, I was disgusted by the violent video of
a paying customer being beaten up and forcibly removed from his seat in a
United Airlines jet. I wasn’t
surprised by the violence, though, because any time you bring a thug goon squad
with badges on a plane, that will happen.
I also wasn’t surprised by what United Airlines did after the incident. Their disgusting playbook of blaming the
victim for their own orchestrated incident, for denying they “overbooked” the
flight and then falsely claiming that it “keeps prices low”, and then, only
when their stock sinks like a rock, they make the false promise of “this will
never happen again”.
Yes, like many of you, I was pissed at hearing all of this. And this was on top of the
incident with the “leggings”, and before the latest news about a passenger being stung
by a scorpion while on another United flight. And it comes as airlines get rid of more and
more so-called “luxuries” for certain passengers, including overhead
storage and the number of carry-on items they can bring on the plane.
It’s pretty clear that the big corporate airlines suffer from a
sociopathic streak of outright sadism in the name of profit. To hear business apologists claim that the
airlines “really do not make much in profits” is about as genuine as Bill
Clinton’s claim that he “never had sexual relations with that woman”. You cannot boast about record profits on one
hand and then claim poverty in the next.
That is the kind of hypocrisy that start bar fights.
So... what to do about it?
Well boycotting United doesn’t work, because the airlines along with
career government regulators and politicians have conspired to eliminate competition
and create yet another corporate oligarchy.
In certain parts of the country, you have no choice which airline you
use. You’ll either fly United or you fly
some subsidiary of United, and that’s it.
And it’s not like the other members of Big Airlines are any better! They all conspire to keep us miserable so as
to keep themselves rich.
Regulation? In the age of the Cult
of Trump? Are you out of your mind? Trump and his corporate minions have been very
busy eliminating regulations that protect the ordinary human being from the for-profit
sadism! Besides, just like French
nobility would tell the starving masses “let them eat cake”, Trump and his
people would probably tell us to simply charter a private jet if we don’t like
Big Airlines. After all, that’s what *they*
do, right?
So no matter how many hearings that Congress put on, we really should not
count on them to come to the aid of the struggling human beings, and we sure as
hell cannot count on Trump and his corporate minions to help ordinary human
beings. We simply do not matter to them,
even when we put on those stupid red hats.
That leaves us with only one other option.
Stop flying.
No, I’m not talking about boycotting one airline or just “the worst” of
the airlines. I’m talking about all of
them.
Stop flying, period.
No more business flights. No more
flights for Spring Break. No more
flights to Disneyland. No more flights
to Hawaii. No more flights to Europe or
the Middle East. No more flights to
visit the relatives. Take the bus. Take the train. Rent a car.
Charter a cruise line. Teleconference. Or just don’t go there at all. Stop flying.
Yes, that is dramatic. It is
extreme.
But let’s get brutally honest here... that is the only way - the *only* way - that Big Airlines will really change
their attitudes.
Big Airlines are allowed to be outright goddamned sadistic to their
paying customers because they know that, no matter what they do, we the stupid
fawning sheep will still cough up our money and put up with the sadism just so
we can get to where we want to be. They could
force us to strip naked for “security” and have us standing, squeezed in like
cattle during the whole flight, charge extra for breathing air, and be subject
to removal for any reason or even for no reason, simply because they know that
we are stupid enough to pay for the “convenience”.
Once enough of us collectively decide to stop flying, however, that all
changes. Then Big Airlines stop making
record profits. Then they stop making
profits, period. Then the pressure is
put on them by their shareholders to do better to get us to start flying again. That means bringing back the things that they
originally took away from us like carry-on luggage and overhead bins. That means stop treating passengers like
sheep to be fleeced for their profit sweaters.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately that probably won’t happen, because that would require us,
the stupid selfish masses, to make the sacrifices first. And we don’t want to make the sacrifices, do
we? No, of course not! We’re lazy!
Remember the high gas prices? What
would have really cured us from Big Oil’s unchecked greed? For us to change our driving habits and to
stop buying gas-chugging urban assault vehicles.
Who told you this? I did. Repeatedly.
Did you listen to me? Of course
not! Because we don’t want to change our
habits and our routines. We’re
lazy! We expect other people to make the
sacrifices and to change their habits so we won’t have to.
And it’s the same way with the airlines.
We’ll put up with the hoops and hurdles that Big Airlines demand of
us. We’ll go through security
checkpoints like prisoners. We’ll show
up hours in advance simply because they demand us to be. You know, “for security”! We’ll pay extra for that “second seat”
because they consciously shrink seat widths to squeeze us in tighter. We’ll give up having carry-on luggage and pay
extra to have everything checked in as luggage, because, you know, profit. And we’ll wait however long it takes as their
prisoner and suffer any indignity possible like frogs in a slowly-boiling pot for
the “privilege” of flying their airlines because... “it’s convenient”. We’re lazy!
And they know us all too well!
Do you want that to change? Do you
*really* want that to change? Then *you*
– not Big Airlines – will have to make the sacrifice needed for them to
change. You have to consciously decide
to stop flying before they will make the needed changes. If you refuse to do your part, if you don’t
have the strength to do it, if you are too goddammed lazy, then you have no
right at all to complain when things do not change for the better simply
because “you’re pissed”. All that tells
Big Airlines, along with the rest of Corporate America, is that you’re just not
“pissed off” enough.
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