Uh, yeah. Everybody knows that. Women can’t participate in the workforce? Childhood poverty funnels kids into the military and prisons while ensuring gun violence remains a national boogeyman? That’s kind of the point. These regressive outcomes are exactly what the American political right wants.
This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all. I just had a small argument with my 11 year old about how not-a-big-deal-who-cares this is, and it basically ended with us agreeing to disagree since it’ll be his problem and his kids’ problem.
And the problem is normalizing the notion that an OS doesn’t need to include a non-subscription word processor. The entire point of this move is to shift the OS Overton Window in favor of consumers accepting and expecting that features like word processors, spreadsheets, etc., should be installed separately and paid for on a subscription basis despite previous iterations of the same software being feature complete on install and purchased at a set, non-recurring fee.
WordPad hasn’t been anybody’s first choice for a word processor in years, but it was included with Windows and did the bare minimum for unsophisticated users. Now we’re entering an era in which those users will as a matter of course buy off-the-shelf computers that come pre-installed without WordPad, but rather with a trial of Office Fuck-You-Pay-Me Edition. Those users may well discover that after their first six months with their new computer (that has made Microsoft more money selling their data than they paid for it), they suddenly get a pop-up informing them that their trial is up and MS wants $99.99 to release the documents they’re holding hostage.
It’s a step backwards for consumers in general, so even for the sophisticated of us who are least likely to be personally affected by this change, there’s definitely cause for alarm.
If there are white people who qualify due to their own generational poverty, they should receive benefits. The systemic finger on the scales clearly didn’t benefit them. This has always been about money. That the money in past generations flowed to white families is a consequence of their greed. The racism was incidental. They weren’t doing it for the poor white subsistence farmers in the next town over. These power structures were instituted by and for the rich. The rich just happened to be white. Plenty of their white neighbors got left behind.
This is why we vote blue down the line. Can’t start packing if we don’t have the majorities.