Why Did We Ideologize All The Societally-Relevant Jobs?

Nurses. Teachers. “Essential” workers. F*ck, even judges.

Ted Bauer
4 min readDec 14, 2022

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Obviously we live in a very ideologically-driven time. That seems indisputable. Now, you can argue that in face-to-face interaction, most people are generally decent. I’d argue that. Online is a f’n cesspool minus a few “dog saves owner” or “toddler bonds with dog” or “infant rings cancer bell” videos. Otherwise it’s just fighting. I think the new topic is Musk, but I try to only go on to post memes and stuff. I’m devious.

But what seems concerning in the past 5–10 years, and especially since COVID, is that we took all these professions that were once viewed as:

  • Good
  • Aspirational
  • Stable
  • Quality profession

… and we turned them into ideological cesspools where the people in them routinely get abused by others, and thus we created a staffing crisis in most of them. Notably:

  • Teachers
  • Nurses
  • Essential (“essential”) workers
  • Hell, even judges.

I’ve already discussed the “essential” workers narrative, via this post. Let me turn to teachers for a second, then. I think it’s relatively…

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Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.