Sunday is, as usual, the day for my driving lesson. And a driving lesson brings yet another string of sermons from N’s favorite Christian radio station. All of those sermons are a little bizarre, but today’s were special.

The first sermon was by a preacher who thanked God for the nuclear bomb because it was “a great equalizer in our fight with the Asian hordes.”

When I practice, N walks by the car, giving me directions (we were practicing driving into a garage today.)

“What station is this?” he asked when he heard the “praise the Lord for the bomb” bit. “Go back to that Christian station.”

“This is the Christian station,” I said. “It’s just a nice, loving message of obliterate-the-yellow-people-for-the-love-of-God.”

The next sermon was about taxes. The preacher told his audience that the concept of taxes was ungodly and we should resist the extortionate government that wants to rob us and give money to lazy people.

“And what, you are going to tell me this is still the Christian station?” N asked sarcastically.

“I haven’t even touched this radio!” I replied.

“But wasn’t Jesus in favor of paying taxes?” N asked.

“Yes, and he was also in favor of not killing people, but who cares about that boring fella?” I said.

Seriously, folks, what kind of Christians are these?

Another reason why the argument that today’s problems in the academic labor market are caused by the recession bothers me is that it simply isn’t true.

When I was a union organizer at Yale between 2003 and 2007, the main issue we were discussing and trying to fight was casualization of academic labor. Casualization means the destruction of tenure lines in favor of adjunct positions. And when I joined the union, that fight had already been going on for a while.

This is why it bothers me to see people buy into the egregious and dangerous lie that the current situation was caused by the recession. All the recession did was intensify a trend that had been developing for a while.

The excuse we keep being given for the destruction of tenure lines is that there is no money for them because of the crisis. That is a lie, people. There is money aplenty. None of it goes to people who teach and do research. This is the real problem, and it was not caused by the crisis.

It pains me to see intelligent, good people buy into this fiction of big, bad recession that is forcing college administrators to exploit adjuncts. Nobody forces the administrators to do that. If times are as tough as we are told, why don’t we get rid of half of our useless paper pushers with their “austerity exercises”, “diversity initiatives”, “5-minute networking sessions” and all the other crap they keep dishing out to conceal their extreme uselessness?

So let’s stop listening to these lies about the recession and start asking why the first and only answer to absolutely anything that happens in academia these days is to defraud students and educators.

As the protesters in Spain keep saying, “There is no crisis. The system is broken.”

One of the side effects of going to the gym is that people start feeling obligated to give me explanations as to why they don’t go.

Believe me, I’m not one of those obnoxious converts to a healthy lifestyle who badger everybody into joining their sect of health freaks. I don’t think anybody needs to go to the gym unless they feel like going. It’s everybody’s own business what level of physical activity they maintain.

Still, a day doesn’t pass without somebody offering me a string of excuses for why they don’t work out. I can’t say I enjoy provoking an intense sense of guilt in everybody who sees me.