There’s good reason for that, outside of a few industries, American unions were pretty comprehensively dismantled by the likes of Reagan. We’re resilient creatures, we’ll tolerate a lot before burning out, but people will also demand better conditions if they’re shown they can have a say. We just don’t have many contemporary examples of workers wielding that kind of power in the states. The guilds in the movie industry are a steadfast counterexample, though, and united auto workers have been showing some muscle recently. There’s no denying it’s a really tough battle, but people will fight back if they’re given some hope.

Disregarding clinicallydepressedpoochie’s weird blend of a hero complex and defeatist puritanism, the concept of one big union organizing strikes across trades and states, while never really successful, did play a significant part in galvanizing workers and popularizing unions. Even in smaller countries where general strikes are more common, they remain isolated events, but they do a lot to promote the potential unions have in giving workers a voice, and grow unions’ ranks by increasing enrollment.

I think the blade runner sequel had something like this too.

I’m franco-american, living in france, and I regularly get people telling me they’re sorry for insulting me for being american. It’s so ingrained in the culture here to shit on americans it’s something of a knee-jerk reaction. I get it, america’s the hegemon, we’re the big baddy, I just wish that didn’t spill over into a kind of xenophobia that people are so comfortable with they regularly catch themselves being openly insulting to people they call their friends.