The Waving Woman in So Many of Us: 25 Years of Dispossession and Disenfranchisement in the Wake of 9/11

Introduction

With some 25 years having passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most if not all of the galvanizing rhetoric, the appeal to unison, the false but cozy assurance that each and every American is “in this together” has been dispelled and repudiated, at least to any person who possesses the faculties of reason, discernment, and discrimination to at least some limited degree. Of all the harrowing images from that day, there is perhaps no greater symbol for the state of many Americans in the wake of this event and the dire consequences and ominous trends cascading from it than that of the waving woman: a series of harrowing images and archival video footage of a woman who emerged from the multi-floor impact zone shortly after American Airlines flight number 11 collided into the North tower at 8:46. She is seen at various moments waving at the camera. One of many features that render this apparition particularly unsettling is how blurred these images are; all footage was taken at some considerable distance and the limitations of image fidelity at the time render closeups blurry and distorted.

The waving woman has of course widely been believed to be Edna Cintrón. There are, however, claims the woman may have been Jeannette Lafond-Menichino. Whoever the doomed woman was, the last known footage of her standing before the tower’s collapse was recorded at 10:28, just seconds before the collapse. From this, it is concluded she stood there for over 100 minutes, standing before the abyss, waving, in vain, for help. She may have simply being seeking some recognition and acknowledgment before her inevitable doom.

This is arguably the best image of the waving woman available.

Over the past 25 years, many Americans have been and continue to be greatly harmed by any number of severe and permanent negative consequences arising from official state policy, foreign and domestic. To describe such harm as merely “adversely affected” would be a gross understatement and insult to those so harmed. Much of course has been written about the human cost of the forever wars—ie prolonged, fruitless ground operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—that were instigated in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Thousands of Americans have lost their lives in these wars, with countless others suffering horrible injuries, while others contend with crippling depression, post traumatic stress disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, and other disorders. Suicides attributed to post traumatic stress and other social ills are estimated to be over 30,000.1 As so much has already been written about those tragedies, this essay will focus on those who have suffered in more silent, invisible ways in the wake of widespread dispossession and disenfranchisement that has arisen as a direct and immediate consequence of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and later economic disasters in 2008 and 2020, as well as both official state policy and market dynamics set by corporations and other players in the U.S. economy at large and the labor market most particularly.

Combined with those who lost their lives serving this country, those who mourn their loss, as well as those who survive with injuries and myriad other afflictions, this quiet but all too real displacement and dispossession reveals that large segments of the U.S. population are victims to this day, victims not unlike the waving woman. The waving woman’s ordeal was about 100 minutes while looking down at the very abyss after having emerged from the fire and explosion that occurred after impact. To state the obvious, her terrifying ordeal embodies sheer, unadulterated terror. With some 100 minutes to contemplate pending doom, it would be offensive to suggest her living terror was over quickly for her, but neither was her torment protracted over months, years, or decades. Those who have been harmed by the multitude of harms that have unfolded from 9/11 most especially and the past 25 years more broadly have endured a more subtle form of terror and despair, but have been subjected to these tribulations over quarter of a century. In this way, so many Americans have a bit of waving woman in them, even as they, too, appeal for help, to no avail. Much like the waving woman before them, they make such appeals in vain, even as no one has come to their aid and probably never will.

American Responsibility for The Causes and Aftermath of 9/11

As this piece serves as an express denunciation and indictment of both U.S. domestic and foreign policy as well as institutional frameworks governing both American society as well as the economy overall and labor market more specifically, a brief note is in order about the nature of the September 11 terrorist attacks and both American culpability for the underlying antecedents that precede this terrible event and how foolish, irresponsible, and reckless the country and the government was in response. This aside may seem tangential, but, without this foundational basis, detractors will simply aver that the many harms documented in this essay and other works are rightly attributed to the enemies of the United States, not the U.S. government or American society at large. Many are likely to take umbrage for daring to suggest that the American government or American society at large bears any responsibility for these and other harms without having established this important premise.

Similarly, because there will likely be a small but particularly obnoxious contingent of hostile readers who are either so intractably stupid as to be unable to understand any text written beyond an eighth grade reading level, or are utterly compelled to engage this text in bad faith, or both, this essay unfortunately requires a further disclaimer: while I (obviously) condemn and denounce both Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks unequivocally and in the very strongest terms possible, such condemnation is not, in fact, mutually exclusive of criticism of this country and this society, both for policies preceding the terrorist attacks and the multitude of bad decisions in their aftermath. Nor does such condemnation preclude criticizing hollow, empty rhetoric by both the government and various corporate and institutional players for what it is, or how both American society and decision makers have disenfranchised so many.

While no argument or case insisting that 9/11 was an “inside job” by the CIA or other government agencies is persuasive to this author, it is doubtful that at least some elements within the United States government did not have advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks to at least some limited degree.2 For that reason and others, including that competent intelligence would have discovered additional signals of the impending attacks even in the absence of such foreknowledge, the United States government should be condemned for not having prevented the attacks in the first place. Above all, a supposed indispensable ally of this country, the Israeli government—or at least certain elements of the Israeli government—certainly had advance knowledge. So, in all probability, did certain Jewish elites in the United States have at least some advance warning of some sort.

How very convenient. The purpose of a system is what it does. What can readers infer from state policy and actions that benefit a small insular bloodcult, at the expense of American society at large.

Setting aside these and other matters that are well beyond mainstream discourse, and accepting orthodox understanding of the terrorist attacks at face value for the purposes of this essay, the American government can—and should—be condemned both in relation to the antecedents of this event and its response. Culpability and responsibility for underlying antecedents and causes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks runs the gamut from not responding to the threat with baseline competence—this includes most especially the Clinton administration’s tepid response to the bombing of the USS Cole just a year earlier—to the decades of military and financial aid given to the Israeli government at the behest of the ever powerful Jewish lobby in this country.3 The latter of course has incurred great enmity from the Muslim world, and continues to this day by way of the current conflict with Iran.

The United States bears further culpability in its response, or rather responses, to the terrorist attacks of September 11. This wide-ranging indictment or series of indictments is even more expansive. First and foremost is the colossal error in not limiting action in Afghanistan to a short-and-sweet hunt and kill operation of Al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives in Afghanistan. That led to a disastrous quagmire that lasted over two decades, which was all too foreseeable given the Soviet experience in Afghanistan just a few short years before. Indeed, even the briefest survey of the history of any empire foolhardy enough to entertain ventures in the “land where empires go to die” further informs how disastrous this campaign was destined to be from the start. This was exacerbated and compounded by a ginned-up casus belli based on abject lies and fabrications about weapons of mass destruction underlying the Invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime. Critically, these and other misadventures squandered untold trillions of dollars as well as needless loss of life and suffering not only of U.S. servicemen but civilian populations residing in these countries. Such expenditures were lost both in the protracted, unending military engagements as well as the ludicrous proposition of nation building and installing democracy in foreign and alien lands that could not be more dissimilar to the Anglosphere and the centuries long democratic tradition that traces back to the Magna Carta. The needless squander of both blood and treasure inflicted positive harm both in a direct way (e.g. deaths and casualties arising from these actions) as well what might be stupidly described as secondary harms and harms by omission. These harms are quite expansive, indeed, ranging from harmful effects associated with the explosion of the deficit, to the lost opportunity cost in how these resources could and ought to have been expended for the benefit of the American public, if they should have been taken from the private sector at all.4

The Consequences of Three “Once in a Lifetime” Economic Disasters in 25 Years

With these and other considerations placing responsibility for the number of disastrous consequences of 9/11 and subsequent disasters squarely on US domestic and foreign policy, an examination of the very real but all too often silent dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement of so many millions can begin in earnest. Many who graduated in 2002 and 2003 in particular were subjected to what some economists aptly describe as “economic scarring,” with career trajectories either rendered still-born from a number of structural aspects to the labor market, while others have recovered, but have not enjoyed anything close to the same trajectory they would have enjoyed if the “once in a lifetime” economic disaster attributed to 9/11 and compounding events surrounding the Enron and Worldcom securities fraud scandals as well as the dotcom bubble and NASDAQ collapse not occurred in quick succession. This first economic disaster—or series of disasters—has been compounded, in turn, by the Great Recession of 2008 and the slow-burn economic disaster that continues to unfold from 2020 and deranged Covid policy that destroyed a large contingent of all small businesses among many other unprecedented but largely self-inflicted economic harms.5 This combined with fevered government spending and money printing unleashed an inflationary crisis that has still not been abated.

Critically, all of these “adverse economic events,” with exception of perhaps the NASDAQ collapse and the dotcom bubble, can be attributed directly to official state policy, lax oversight and enforcement against securities fraud, as well as rampant corruption and fraud in the financial sector in particular. The dotcom bubble and NASDAQ collapse would have been a far more benign, garden variety economic downturn and correction with reasonable prospects for a strong recovery if not worsened by 9/11 and the Enron and Worldcom securities fraud scandals. While bad actors in those scandals were tried and convicted, receiving of course lenient punishments with no proportion to the economic and other secondary harms they caused, no person or institution has been held accountable for the massive fraud and other criminal malfeasance that predicated the 2008 crisis. With the self-inflicted economic disaster arising from COVID policy thrown into the mix, the past 25 years reveals deep-seated, systemic problems and deficiencies with official government policy, the regulation, oversight, and enforcement of securities laws, and the financial and other institutions that make so many decisions affecting the economy and our collective prospect for prosperity.

The “once in a lifetime” economic disaster that occurred as a result of 9/11 and continued through 2002 and beyond was very comprehensive in the economic and tangible harms it afflicted on the populace, and was felt across a wide range of fields in technology. The dotcom bust, NASDAQ collapse, as well as 9/11 itself and the Enron and WorldCom securities fraud scandals produced widespread rescissions of job offers in the technology sector. Cisco alone rescinded a large number of offers to ‘02 graduates from On Campus Interviews. Other players did as well. The residual effects continued to impact new graduates through to 2005. Jobs in finance and banking were also devastated. Financial firms cut job offers sharply, as business volumes hit lows not seen since 1987 if not before.

The legal profession was also impacted, perhaps more than any other with what was then the worst market for new and recent graduates since World War II. This would be eclipsed by the Great Recession of 2008, which led to what has been described as the “lost generation” of lawyers, punctuated by suspension of entire summer associate programs over a multi-year period. Several big law firms were wiped out in each economic disaster in 02 and 08, respectively, with countless more midsize firms as well in the wake of 9/11 and compounding factors. These firms include Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, Hill & Barlow. Arter & Hadden, all of which folded as a direct consequence of this economic disaster. Coudert Brothers, once one of the premier international law firms in the world, straggled a bit longer but ultimately dissolved in 2005 in the shadow of 9/11 and the economic disaster (or disasters) that unfolded thereafter. As bad as this period was, it would be eclipsed by 2008, with even more big law firms dissolving, including Heller Ehrman, Thelen, Thacher Proffitt & Wood, Dreier LLP, and Wolf Block. As with 2002, many mid-size and even smaller firms were also wiped out.

A unifying theme among these and other fields is that employers tend to simply discard candidates whose graduation year just happened to coincide with these “once-in-a-lifetime” economic disasters. The economy recovers at some point, although each recovery after both 2001-02 and ‘08 has been a listless, largely jobless recovery. Employers simply look to new graduates whose graduation year happens to coincide with these “recoveries.” Older graduates are given little if any respite. There is no outreach program or any effort at all to work with these older graduates. Nor is it the case that most employers see underemployment or less than ideal employment in the wake of these economic disasters as mitigating factors. Indeed, such things are almost invariably held against these candidates as a veritable scarlet letter, as if they graduated in a normal economic cycle with healthy prospects for new and recent graduates. They of course did not.

Although the economy and job prospects have hardly been ideal for either millennials or Gen Z, a certain contingent of Generation X—namely the latter third of the generation born between 1974 and 1980– has been harmed the most. Only this generation has suffered all three of these “once in a lifetime” economic disasters. Those in this generation who graduated (either from undergraduate or postgraduate) in 2001, 2002 and beyond suffered the “economic scarring” described above, only to face substantial rates of layoff or termination of employment in 2008 and after, just as it seemed the “economic scarring” from ’02 to the next few years might be mitigated to some limited extent. This represents ten years or more of underemployment, unemployment, and other adverse circumstances when there would have been a normal career trajectory in a healthy economy not beset by a series of economic disasters. These and other factors explain why large contingents of this generation will never be able to retire, and why this generation is the first that had a lower overall standard of living than the preceding generation.

As stated, employers are generally not understanding or compassionate about circumstances associated with these hard times. Any such mitigation is not seen as having that “can-do attitude” or being a “hard scrabble” that the American ethos pretends to value. Quite the contrary. Stated another way, these economic disasters have been cruelly and needlessly compounded by constructs installed in the labor market which render such economic scarring far less like temporary setbacks and more like permanent life-ruination. Gaps of even a year or even graduating without a job in years marked by these “once-in-a-lifetime” economic disasters are seen more and more as a seemingly intractable bar to meaningful employment and advancement, with no consideration of “adverse events” and large-scale, macro forces in the economy. Hiring committees and above all automated applicant screening processes certainly do not afford such explanations any quarter. The combination of economic disaster and these constructs in the labor market are thus revealed to reinforce one another, compounding these harms in a cyclical manner.

There are certainly career killers or at least career detours in other fields such as technology and finance. In the tech sector, such examples include first-line support, endless ticket work, and software testing, much of which consisted of three to six-month contracts that were sold as auditions and ended with resume gaps. In finance, such dead-end jobs include analysts to refresh customer files, clear alerts, and reconcile breaks.

No profession, however, has been as cruel or as contemptible on this matter as the legal profession. A dirty little secret since the turn of the millennium that far too few know about pertains to how tens of thousands of young attorneys have been displaced and dispossessed in the wake of these “once in a lifetime” economic disasters. Many have turned to temporary document review to make ends meet and to keep a nominal foothold in what can only be described as a shit profession. Rather than being regarded by decision makers in the legal profession as evidence of resilience, of the sort of “can-do spirit” in tough times exemplified by, for example, the likes of Ronald Reagan, this sort of work is regarded as not just a scarlet letter but is a de jure bar against permanent employment with a meaningful career path by all big law firms and the vast, overwhelming majority of mid-size firms and even boutiques. These attorneys, with vanishingly few exceptions and outliers, are only ever hired as “staff attorneys” or “litigation analysts,” which entails the same sort of work with nominally improved work security, but in a supervisory role of other document review peons. These roles are also a sort of second class role in the profession, clearly and permanently demarcated from any partnership track or any substantive work.

Various descriptions of this sort of work as well as the conditions that such work often entails have been described elsewhere. Document review pertains to discovery work whereby licensed attorneys review both materials produced by opposing parties and materials to be produced by a firm’s client for relevancy and privilege. Many of the working environments that these attorneys are subjected to are flat out degrading, including working in the basement or a windowless room, being made to use different bathrooms, and other indignities that clearly and unmistakably denote second or third-class citizen status. Some undertake career changes with eventual success, but such alternatives are not available at scale as many would imagine. For those seeking career change, a juris doctor with the stain of document review can be seen as worse than merely having an undergraduate degree.

Unlike substantive litigation or transactional work, document review does not advance marketable skills for an attorney to develop in his career and improve career prospects. Wages have not only not kept up with inflation, they have actually gone down in absolute dollar amounts. “Jobs”—or rather temporary assignments—that paid 35-40 in 2005—in 2005 dollars—pay 30 or less in 2026 dollars. Neither law schools, their career offices, nor the syndicates of law firms of varying sizes and pedigrees nor the bar associations themselves have done anything to assist those caught in this trap, either by assisting with meaningful career progression in the field of law or to assist with career transition suitable for those with a college education let alone a post-graduate degree.

Many lawyers, especially those who graduated from 2008-2012 have suffered other forms of underemployment, either working in jobs that do not require a law license or even jobs that do not require a college education at all. Precise statistics are elusive for a variety of reasons. A small number of jobs that do not require a law license are quite lucrative, while others are most certainly not. One account tallies some 1.3 million licensed attorneys set against an estimated number of 800,000 working attorneys, for a remaining balance of some 500,000 not working as attorneys. One article on Above The Law estimates some one million juris doctors do not work as lawyers, counting the 800,000 or so lawyer jobs against some 1.8 million people who hold juris doctor degrees, with almost 800,000 either not obtaining a law license or letting it lapse. Again, no statistical analysis breaks down how many of these are good paying jobs versus those that are not. It should be emphasized that document review jobs as well as solo practitioners barely scraping by (and who very often fail) technically count towards employment requiring a law license and are included in the numbers of attorneys working as such. The numbers are almost certainly gamed in other ways as well.

Similar dispossession and disenfranchisement is also characteristic of at least some with a higher education and even post graduate education at the highest levels. This compounds challenges of career transition for those left in the lurch in certain fields such as law, finance, and technology. U.S. Bureau of labor statistics are damning. Some 5,000 PhDs are working as janitors in this country, as 185,000-190,000 janitors have between a four-year degree and some post-graduate education. 26,000 college graduates work as parking attendants. 400,000 persons with a college degree work as waiters or waitresses. Some 760,000 college degree holders work in retail.

Some of this can, to a very limited extent, be attributed to a decline in academic standards, the foolish proposition that college education should be for everyone, so on and so forth. Some of them perhaps did not do well in even marginal schools. However, it would be incredibly naïve to suggest that strong academic credentials, absent requisite experience, a personal connection, or other considerations are sufficient in most instances to secure an entry or junior level job offer. Indeed, particularly as elaborated further below, many of these cases stem from little more than rigid and unreasonable application screening processes as well as the advent of the unpaid college and college graduate internship, either over a summer or in immediate succession after graduation. Indeed, more and more employers simply do not want to train or invest in candidates under any circumstances and expect that even entry-level hires will have a year or more experience that precludes any training or mentorship of any considerable extent.

These and other features of both the economy and institutional constructs embedded in the labor market explain the increasing prevalence of “economic scarring” for graduates who, by sheer bad luck, enter the market during these recessionary periods. As a result of this scarring, lower earnings, underemployment, and even longer stretches of unemployment can and often do persist a decade or longer, if it ever goes away at all. Some are rendered unemployable, while others are relegated to fields and positions that would otherwise be less than commensurate with such academic credentials. With greatly reduced potential to match increasingly onerous and ridiculous candidate screening processes, there is greatly reduced likelihood of being given a chance by high-paying or even decent-paying employers. This in turn leads to delayed home ownership and even the inability to ever own a home, reduced prospects for marriage and starting a family, and elevated risks of drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide ideation and other vices. In the worst instances, they account, in no small part, for the crisis in “deaths of despair” that has afflicted American society of late, ranging from suicide to drug overdose. All of these harms have been inflicted on substantial numbers of Gen X, millennials, and now Gen Z as a direct result of 9/11 and subsequent economic downturns and disasters.

Compounding Harms and Felonies

Such widespread dispossession and disenfranchisement are compounded in turn by a number of additional factors that substantially worsen the economic prospects of so many millions, above all those harmed the most by these singular, exceptional “economic disasters.” Many of these factors are themselves a products of these disasters, most notably the affordability crisis stemming from inflation and the explosion of housing costs. Others stems from dysfunctional practices and fixations that have been adopted by various players in the economy and above all the labor market, many of which have become part of corporate culture and the American labor market for no defensible reason whatsoever. Other factors include the odious “SKI” (spending our kids inheritance) trend, as well as the contempt and disdain by the political elite and mimicked by certain constituencies of mainstream conservatism. Perhaps worst of all is how agencies with the American government as well as the media lie about these and other hard economic realities. All of these are a further indictment of both the United States government and American society at large.

First and foremost among this parade of horribles is an affordability crisis that also started at around the same inflection point, shortly after the turn of the millennium. Rents have outpaced incomes for long stretches since 2000. Real median rents rose substantially while incomes have remained stagnant and, adjusted for inflation, have even shrunk. Some wages have even shrunk in absolute dollars even without adjustment for inflation. Across the board, rent-to-income ratios have increased at an unprecedented pace. Housing costs consume an ever larger share of income for lower- and middle-income persons, even as wages and career opportunity becomes more and more limited.

A unifying theme that connects all of these indicators and the widespread dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement that so many suffer from is the nonchalance and disregard for those who have been harmed through some 25 years of what are unquestionably hard times. Most importantly, the structural displacement and dispossession afflicting large portions of the population further defies this-and-that talk about how “we are all in this together,” either just as the dust settled from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or now. Critically, the same corporate entities that discard large numbers of graduate classes who simply had the misfortune of graduating in the midst of any one of these “once in a lifetime” economic disasters are particularly apt to spout such rhetoric. Critical readers should regard such pandering with both skepticism and contempt as the 25^th Anniversary of this event unfolds. Actions always speak louder than words, and the failure to do what is right by those left behind is a searing indictment not only of this country but those institutions in finance, technology, law, and other sectors that make decisions and set trends that define the labor market now and in the future.

The rank hypocrisy does not end there of course. The same corporate entities that touted such horseshit—both back then and now—have aggressively pursued any number of policies that facilitate and exacerbate the dispossession of so many. The aggressive pursuit of H1-B visas is but one example. The seemingly monolithic decision by Fortune 500 companies to simply not hire white males in the wake of The George Floyd riots and the Black Lives Matter phenomenon is yet another.

Institutional employers are harming people in other ways, particularly in relation to the application screening and interview process itself as it has evolved, or rather devolved, over the past couple of decades. The very notion that employers should be expected to train entry-level or junior level employees and candidates has become something of an anathema to most if not all employers in the post-millennial labor market. This has given way, in no small measure, to unpaid apprenticeships for entry level positions, which are in many ways exploitative and only limited to those whose families can prop up college graduates for extended periods of time by paying rent and living expenses, usually in more expensive urban centers.6

This is compounded by an obscene application screening process whereby most employers no longer read resumes manually, but filter resumes through various application screening applications. As a consequence, applicants typically never have a single resume or a couple of resume variants for a job hunt, but undertake the thankless—and, in actuality, senseless—task of tailoring each resume to a given job opening’s keywords and buzzwords. Instead of writing one resume or at most a couple variants, applicants must typically rewrite and tailor a unique “one-off resume” from a master resume template hundreds if not thousands of times over, creating untold hours of senseless busywork as well as multiplying the possibility of an errant typographical, formatting, other error by some exponential order of magnitude.7

The applicant screening processes that have evolved (or rather devolved) as well as institutional prejudice and stigma over perceived flaws in resumes that are regarded as personal flaws but actually stem from macro forces in the economy have another consequence. Most successful job searches rely primarily on personal connections that can pull strings to circumvent onerous screening processes that are calibrated to discard all but an absolute perfect match, even as hiring committees and human resources departments overload job descriptions with more and more unreasonable and even fantastical criteria. In very real ways, the United States has always been much more about “who you know” rather than “what you know,” but in this post-millennial climate personal connections seem to be the only decisive factor.

The unreasonable demands typically set by most employers cannot be emphasized enough. Employers routinely reject applicants that otherwise match otherwise exhaustive lists of criteria for incredibly fickle, even arbitrary reasons. Typically a candidate will have years of experience in a field, but lack one highly specific criterion. This could often be ameliorated by reasonable investment in training in hired applicants, but employers balk at the suggestion, even when an opening remains unfilled for months. A classic example is a candidate’s familiarity in one software application for a given field but not another, e.g. in the field of architecture mastery of Rhino, AutoCAD, SketchUp, but lacking experience in Revit.

Bryan Creely of the YouTube channel Life After Layoff recounted this very experience in a post on Linkedin some months ago. He had all the qualifications, as well as impressive experience in recruiting and human resources, but received a rejection letter regardless. After he reached out for feedback, the recruiter stated he “was surprised too, but she felt you didn’t have recent experience with their Applicant Tracking System.” Creely explained how he “used similar systems for years and could learn the interface quickly, a couple weeks at most.” The recruiter agreed but there was no reasoning to be had with the hiring manager. They posted the job soon after, only to be “reposted again a month later,” and at least one more time after that. Creely notes how absurd it all is, stating “Some hiring managers will spend eight months searching for the perfect candidate instead of spending one month developing the right one.”

The problem has become so pervasive it has become derisively referred to as the “purple squirrel problem.” The term “purple squirrel” originates from recruiting and staffing jargon, denoting a supposed “philosophy” in recruitment and staffing of striving for and insisting on nothing less than the very perfect candidate, even if such a candidate is as rare or fantastical as a “purple squirrel.”

The interviewing process is harrowing in other ways as well, including a far different and much less humane or civilized set of business norms than existed in the past. In the past, an applicant would generally go on one initial interview and one extended callback. Even then, in certain fields the callback interview was ridiculous, with interviews lasting several hours while talking to five or six different persons. Largely due to the influence of Google and Apple as well as Meta (formerly Facebook), the interview process can now take months, often with three or even four rounds of interviews over that extended period of time. These and other practices, including try-out projects involving as much as eight or even sixteen hours or more of unpaid labor, which are little more than a labor extraction scheme, make the job hunt process far more grueling and demoralizing than in decades past.8

Adding insult to injury, the vast majority of media conglomerates and government entities craft a lie that the economy is and has been far better than it is and has been over the past 25 years. Employment data is defined ever more narrowly, excluding the long-term unemployed and discouraged workers who have simply given up. This is belied by a recent statistic of some 100 million American adults who are not part of the workforce. Nor do employment numbers count the underemployed or “gig economy” work that hardly count as jobs at all, at least as the term is properly understood. Each of these “unprecedented” economic disasters has been interspersed with a mild, largely jobless “recovery.” In those periods there has been some growth of the economy measured largely by gross domestic product, but almost all of this economic growth is concentrated in the hands of the increasingly few, as demonstrated below.

A more damning indictment of how misleading and fraudulent most economic indicators are was set forth by Eugene Ludwig in “Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.” In this essay, he asks, in relation to the 2024 presidential election, “What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations?” Over time, Ludwig became “increasingly skeptical that the government’s measurements properly capture the realities defining unemployment, wage growth and the strength of the economy as a whole.” That skepticism led him to ask some hard questions via a novel research initiative that looked to examine if numbers actually reflected economic reality, and how adjusting some statistical criteria might better reflect economic reality. He concludes that “for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the election, voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics.” He notes, as have others, how misleading employment figures really are. Indeed, “near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as ‘employed.’” Conversely, if the statistical criteria for unemployment are altered, for example, to “include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent.” Stated more bluntly, “nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today.”

Ludwig dispels other misleading data that “paint[s[ a much rosier picture” than cold, hard economic reality confronted by more and more Americans. For example, Ludwig designed an alternative “indicator” for inflation and the consumer price index. This revised indicator “excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase — and tend to have more stable prices over time — and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can’t avoid.” This is because such luxury goods have been less susceptible to the inflationary crisis.

His assessment of gross domestic product as an indicator for overall prosperity for society as a whole—and not just the ruling class—is particularly chilling:

GDP is an imperfect measure even of that. But as useful as the figure may be in the sense that it purports to track generalized national wealth, it is hampered by a profound flaw: It reveals almost nothing about how the attendant prosperity is shared. That is, if a small slice of the population is awarded the great bulk of the bounty from economic growth while everyone else remains unenriched, GDP would rise nevertheless. And that, to a crucial degree, is exactly what has happened.

As Ludwig concedes, deceptive statistics were not novel to 2024, although such deception may have been somewhat more pronounced out of some sort of desperate bid to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. This sort of deception and trickery has been going on for decades, particularly as the Clinton Administration excluded certain segments of the non-working from employment statistics. Where critical, discerning readers differ from Ludwig is his refusal to assign malice and deception where it is so rightly belongs. Although the people staffing those agencies are “talented,” insofar as motive can always be imputed to the natural consequences predictably resulting from a given course of action, the people staffing those agencies are most certainly not “well-intentioned” as Ludwig unconvincingly insists.

In addition to facing ever more challenging factors in the economy and job market, various macro forces in the U.S. economy and society render inheritance far less likely than in generations past. Various elements in the mainstream media are propagating a carefully choreographed message encouraging parents to purposefully leave their children and grandchildren with nothing. Gordon Ramsey and other celebrities have been ostentatious in their declarations that they do not plan to leave children which much of anything. Then there are pundits of a most despicable sort who actively encourage wealthy and even just middle-class parents to leave their children and grandchildren with nothing. A particularly odious specimen is David “Dave” Ramsey, who consistently insists that parents have no moral or ethical obligation to leave their next of kin anything.9

This is applauded by many segments of the mainstream conservative set in particular, which will place their progeny at a concerted disadvantage compared to those with real, generational wealth and who do not entertain such mad delusion. This works in tandem with the peddling of reverse mortgage scams and exorbitantly priced retirement homes that are specifically designed to take everything an estate has. Such morally reprehensible enterprises are rendered even worse by how many signatories to these products sign these legal instruments with diminished capacity, as many—if not most—have, at the time of signing, at least some diminished capacity by way of senility, early stages of onset dementia, and other maladies that technically deprive them of legal capacity to sign such instruments.10 As a practical matter, however, these enterprises routinely get away with this because of the practical and evidentiary burdens of proving such claims in court.

The end result of these and other factors is that these generations are not just left with far more difficult challenges in a job market that has suffered from three “singular” economic disasters, an explosion of housing costs in addition to stagnant and even shrinking wages, and other maladies that have surfaced over the past 25 years. Many of them are, in addition, deprived of any sort of inheritance by a confluence of compounding factors that are designed to eviscerate such inheritance, for the material gain of those entities that stand to profit handsomely from this particular form of dispossession.

Contempt, Apathy, and Disdain from the Political Class and Many Citizens As Well

The widespread dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement further indict both sides of the proverbial and literal political aisle. Mainstream Republicans are the most contemptible, as they typically win elections from the constituencies they largely despise by paying just enough lip service to at least feign marginal opposition to the Democrats and the left. Those electoral victories are won with increasingly narrow margins and seem more dubious in the future for any number of reasons, including the demographic transformation of this country, but also the increasing hesitance and distrust from these constituencies. Dan Crenshaw, who thankfully lost a primary recently, illustrates the callous disregard and contempt that elites harbor for those dispossessed and harmed with a contemptuous remark about how invalid any complaints of economic hardship are—that people should just work harder and “eat ramen.” He of course did not mean quality Japanese ramen which is delicious, savory, and not all that unhealthy, but Top Ramen, a poisonous concoction so filled with various adulterants it should be banned by any regulatory body that actually fulfills its role in protecting the public health with some minimum fitness for purpose.

Then of course there is the incident between Jesse Watters and Karoline Leavitt, a gold-digging whore who married a wealthy man old enough to be her grandfather (only barely so with thirty-two years age difference, but the point stands). Leavitt—an attractive blonde who used her sexual prowess to marry into wealth—had the absolute gall to talk down to zoomers in particular about communism and other “boomercon” platitudes that pander to the aging, out of touch Fox News audience. She even used the tired expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” a tell-tale sign of a midwit mind incapable of both original and insightful thought, let alone the ability to express unoriginal ideas in a remotely interesting or unique way. The expression is both non-sensical and stupid, and is traced back to a joke built on the premise that it is physically impossible for anyone to pull himself up by his bootstraps. That this tiresome and, indeed, utterly moronic refrain is not viciously and unrelentingly mocked every time it is uttered is yet another indictment against the American national character. The inexplicable currency and sway of this dumb idiom may be waning, however, as Leavitt was thoroughly skewered in online spaces, Twitter most especially. Indeed, this controversy may have played a role in her recent resignation. And yet the contempt and disdain continue largely unabated at a macro, sociological level, especially among the elites in the mainstream Republican establishment.

Not nearly enough ire or scrutiny has been directed at Jesse Watters, a Fox News talking head who panders to his aging, largely boomer generation audience by spewing the very same, tiresome platitudes that flatly ignore economic realities that have persisted for a quarter of a century. It should be noted for all the this-and-that talk about family values, Watters cheated on his wife, Noelle Watters, nee Inguagiato, and mother of his children with a much younger Fox News staffer, Emma DiGiovine, now Emma Watters. He eventually divorced Noelle and married the little strumpet. So few in the mainstream conservative set denounce either infidelity to one’s wife and mother of his children, or poaching younger women and exacerbating hypergamous tendencies in women, creating in turn a sexual and dating marketplace increasingly out of balance.

Real family values. On the left, Watters with his first wife, Noelle. Circular insert depicts Emma DiGiovine with whom he had an affair, at work. Middle image, Watters with DiGiovine, now Emma Watters. To the right, the lovely but often biting Rebecca Hargraves, perhaps best known as “Blonde,” throwing bombs.

These are just but two examples of seemingly countless such instances. “Little Benji” Shapiro caused similar controversy with recent commentary that the actual source of zoomers’ problems is not the number of harmful macro economic factors set forth in this essay, but rather that people are spending twenty dollars on burritos. Richard Hanania has made similarly contemptible commentary, including his refusal to acknowledge the existence of any “high IQ white guy[s] who worked hard, excelled at everything they did, and got sidelined again and again by a discriminatory system,” stating:

Such people don’t exist. To be an American and talented in the current era gives you more opportunities than any humans in history. If you failed it’s because you’re bad at life, and if you blame immigration you’re also morally repulsive and pathetic.

Unfortunately, much of this callousness characterizes much of mainstream conservatism at large, including large segments of the constituency. That mentality, while certainly characterized by a certain sort of mean-spiritedness, could be further described as willful ignorance to some 25 years that oscillated between economic disaster after pending economic disaster, interspersed with economic malaise and lackluster recovery. One need look no further than the mainstream, default position on the student loan debt crisis and many of the reactions that typify much of mainstream conservative discourse on that weighty issue and many other matters besides. Many of these sorts take positive delight—unabashed Schadenfreude—in the hardship and suffering of others. Social media is rife with cretins of the mainstream conservative set who all but luxuriate and bask in the suffering of others, many of them white Americans. Some even express glee at the prospect of wage garnishment or the indignity and misery of a poverty existence, replete with tired unoriginal quips about eating “beans and rice.”

Much of this is justified, in their small, limited minds, by various absurd notions, such as that anyone and everyone who has a higher education is a leftist, or that anything other than STEM is a “useless degree” on par with the thoroughly tired and unoriginal quip about “underwater basket weaving.” As has been written before, English departments are not what they used to be or should be. The same is true for history departments and the like. But one strongly suspects, with a fair degree of certitude, that such elements would be no less hostile to higher education if English departments and the humanities were still teaching the dead white males and upholding baseline, minimum academic standards and basic standards in curriculum and course content. There certainly seems to be no quarter given to those young people who take a serious interest in culture and take the study of literature (or other humanities) seriously and resist the many negative, subversive elements in higher education. This of course is part and parcel of a prominent strain of philistinism that defines much of mainstream conservatism in America, just as such philistinism all but guarantees that mainstream conservatism had no chance of ever winning the culture war.

Such callous disregard takes many other forms as well, including the blithe and patently absurd assertion that anyone dispossessed and disenfranchised did not “try hard enough” or somehow did something wrong, even as so many played by the rules handed down to them by parents, teachers, and elders since elementary school. No thought or mention is given to the sorts of compounding macro-economic factors discussed in this essay and elsewhere. Instead, a critical mass of the mainstream conservative constiuency blurt out slogans such as “free market capitalism,” “get a job” (with no awareness of any of the staggering difficulties set forth in this piece) and yes “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” and they do so in a reflexive, emotive way utterly devoid of thought, not unlike the bleating of sheep or other groans and exhortations of various farm animals. If mainstream conservatism does not disabuse itself from this sort of folly, it will be a key, critical factor that guarantees the left wins, and wins to such a degree as to push leftist power and hegemony beyond the point of no return. It is probably too late, however.

The left does give some lip service about some of these economic issues. Many may rightly decry some of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policy measures and initiatives, but at least he is addressing, or purports to address, real issues like housing and the cost of living to some intelligible degree. That of course will not benefit even middle-class whites. This is punctuated by statements by his cabinet member, Cea Weaver, who has stated an express desire to “impoverish the white middle class.” Similar rhetoric has been uttered by Hasan Piker. On one hand he has made virulent comments about the landlord class that relates in at least some negligible manner to the housing and affordability crisis that has steadily worsened over the past 25 years. But he has also expressed utter contempt and disdain for white people, whether independently wealthy landlords or among those suffering the dispossession and disenfranchisement discussed at length above. Consider one sample quote:

We’re going to keep bringing in immigrants to this country on purpose, just so they can fuck your sister and then maybe your daughter. We’re going to destroy the white race.

Perhaps a lesser known but no less troubling figure is that of one Stephen Prince, a multi-millionaire who made his riches after founding a stationary company some decades back. Profiled in the leftist volume Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, Prince, like many on the left, is right about some very troubling structural flaws, both in the economy and the underlying body of American norms and traditions that underlie at least some of these pathologies. Specifically, he acknowledges that “as inequality has skyrocketed and the rich take home increasingly larger shares of the nation’s wealth, social mobility has declined dramatically. . ..” However, he makes clear in no certain terms that he believes so-called white privilege is real, and expressly endorses policies that give an advantage to blacks and other minorities while placing various burdens on whites falsely presumed to enjoy such “white privilege.” In his own words:

If the jockey is too light, they put more weight in the saddle; the same thing should be true in our society.”

As articulated at length in this critical review of the Bootstrapped, Prince, and those like him endorse placing such burdens on whites categorically, with no differentiation between those born into wealth and real, actual privilege, and ordinary whites presumed to enjoy so-called white privilege:

Note he does not, to continue with this remarkably poor analogy, discuss lightening the load of the black jockey, or helping someone unduly disadvantaged because of socio-economic factors, a chaotic familial background or the like. Rather the quote involves placing artificial weight on these perceived to have undeserved privileges.

As most readers know all too well, such ideas are by no means an outlier, but are pervasive throughout the left, both in the United States and, quite shockingly, the nations of Europe which should only ever consist of their historical, homogeneous populations.

An Indictment Against America Itself

These and other considerations reveal once again that neither mainstream conservatism nor, above all, the left have any answers. Neither this country nor this political system have any solutions for what remains of the white middle-class and those who have been removed from its ranks, as both this country and this political system bear direct responsibility for such unquantifiable harm. This harm goes well beyond the past 25 years, from any number of social evils and ills, beginning with the rise of single motherhood and no-fault divorce. That social experiment quickly yielded to the law of unintended (but entirely foreseeable) consequences, as so many so ills emanate from that single inflection point. This is compounded in turn by both elements in the culture and official state policy that are nothing less than the persistent and deliberate ruination of several generations of women. This, in turn, has wreaked havoc in the relations in the sexes, greatly increased the difficulty in finding a suitable companion worthy of marriage, and so many ills besides. On top of that, both the American government and cultural and other institutions of power introduced the vector of multiracialism both here and above all Mother Europa occupied by the American Empire. Despite all the insistence of being the greatest country on Earth, American society is intrinsically and irredeemably dysfunctional and dystopic and unworthy of any assessment other than absolute condemnation.11

These and other ills inflicted on so many millions as a direct and, in some instances, inevitable consequence of official state policy, both foreign and domestic, once again raises the question how any sane person could harbor even the barest semblance of patriotic fervor, or even more subdued, tempered feelings of patriotic feeling or sentiment for this country. Without the advantage of hindsight, such misguided feelings were perhaps understandable 25 years ago, particularly in the immediate wake of 9/11 when so many really did buy into the rhetoric that we are all in this together. Now, however, some 25 years of experience informs what an abject lie such reassurances were then and most certainly are now.

If those politicians, corporate entities, and others attempt to sell such snake oil now, so moving to far too many 25 years ago without the advantage of hindsight, ask what any of these entities have done to help those harmed in subtle but profound ways by these policies and the economic disasters that inevitably flowed from them. When Fortune 500 companies sell this lie—know that it is an absolute certainty that they will— ask what these entities have done for graduates in ‘02 or ‘03, or ‘08-12) or now even graduates today. What is their stance about H1-B visas, or any number of policies that seem tailor made to harm and dispossess so many millions? These and other positive harms must be the singular and undivided focus of the American public whenever such institutions dare to trot out such blather that “we are all in this together” or that “as Americans we remain united as ever.”

These and other considerations besides paint the portrait of a nation, society, and institutions in commerce that have no regard for so many millions left behind. Indeed, the dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement that arose at scale is a breach of the social contract that justifies accepting governance by the powers that be. For that reason, if the means to do so ever become available, this government and form of government should be jettisoned for a new, authoritarian order better capable of protecting and facilitating the collective welfare of the white population.

It is in this way that so many of those dispossessed and disenfranchised bear all too many similarities with that waving woman pleading—in vain—for someone to help. She, however, was seen by so many tens of millions and has become one of the most harrowing symbols of 9/11 and its continued legacy for a quarter of century. So many of those who share these similarities with the doomed woman remain unseen, unheard, and unsung. Like her, they wave in vain, calling for help. Setting aside poor policy decisions underlying the terrorist attacks, consider that the waving woman was doomed because nobody could have helped—the helicopters were unable to fly in position to hand those stranded rescue ladders. The millions who have been disenfranchised and dispossessed, on the other hand, have been left behind by choice.

Such choices are reflected in the number of policy decisions outlined in this essay as well as institutional choices of decision makers in the economy and labor market and the various institutional constructs that have become pervasive over the past quarter of a century as a result. That in turn must dispel any comforting (at least to some) patriotic blather first touted by George W. Bush in regard to 9/11 which will surely be echoed again on this 25^th anniversary of this event. The necessary response is “ask not what you can do for your country,” but rather “ask what your country did to you.” That new, more enlightened paradigm leads in turn to both questions and answers that must, for now, remain unstated and implied, but are understood and perceived perfectly by more and more.

Other articles and essays by Richard Parker are available at his publication, The Raven’s Call: A Reactionary Perspective, found at theravenscall.substack.com. Please consider subscribing on a free or paid basis, and to like and share as warranted. Readers can also find him on twitter, under the handle @astheravencalls. Readers of this essay may be particularly interested in reading “Taming the Terrors of The Human Resources Department: Only Regulatory Intervention Can Stop Abusive Hiring Practices.”