Nation of Whiners
Phil Graham, former Senator from Texas said recently some things that got John McCain into a bit of trouble on the campaign trail. He said in an interview:
"You've heard of mental depression; this is mental recession... we have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline despite a major export boom that is the primary that growth continues in the economy."
Now, let's make something clear before I make my points: I'm not one of those kids who takes a summer job like walking dogs, delivering papers or cutting grass. I'm not even one of those kids who works at a grocery store or some other retail job. No, I WORK all summer. The jobs I do are ones that my co-workers are all doing this for a living, not as a summer job. They are the kind of people that the Senator is talking about, the whiners, if you will.
So when I heard Sen. Graham's comments I was stunned and shocked and was ready to stand up and say, "Who are you to call ME a whiner?! I am a hard working, pick yourself up by your bootstraps American like my father and my grandparents before me, and you up there in your ivory tower have no idea of the plight of the working man." And this is the reaction many people took, saying the same thing, all clinging to the notion of America as it was in the first two hundred years of our history.
We look back with fond memories of times we never have seen. We look back to the Pilgrims surviving the harsh winters of Massachusetts. We look back to the Wild West and the Industrialized East at the turn of the century. And we remember the Depression and WWII and how our grandparents and great grandparents fought off hunger, famine, and unemployment and survived to defeat one of the greatest threats the world has ever known in Adolf Hitler. We see these times as the best and always consider ourselves as cut from the cloth of those tough workers. But I got news for you... we're not.
I worked this summer in a dairy with a bunch of people who have either been jumping around from job to job and were older or younger guys who had jumped a bit but haven't had the years of work these older guys did. The work was tiring, but not hard; mostly it was repetitive motion and a lot of standing. We got paid very well, and came home with a good amount of money in one week. In addition to forty hours, we got a ton of overtime, and that helped a ton with the payday. It was a good job that paid well, and I'm sure that the paycheck would make our hardworking ancestors fall over in shock.
So what did my coworkers think of the job? Well, they had an opinion about it, and never ceased in reminding everyone what it was. They always had a problem with something. They didn't want to work a full day, but complained when they didn't get overtime pay. They liked not having to get up early for the shift, but complained that we got home so late. They liked the bosses and joked around with them and then complained about them all the time and complained about how ignorant or unfair they were. It seemed that no matter what they did, the job wasn't what they wanted. Some came for a few days and quit, some a few weeks. One guy came for one day, then never returned. I know these people were just a sample, but I've seen it before, and this is the normal reaction of today's worker... nothing but whining and complaining.
So that's what we have become, exactly pegged by Sen Graham... a nation of whiners. He might have been talking about us complaining about jobs being lost overseas, but the truth is there's work out there and Americans won't stoop to doing those jobs. That's why we have illegal immigrants coming to do those jobs, that's why I have a new employee every week, and that's why we're falling behind in the world in production and economy. We need to stand up once again and take responsibility for our actions, not complain about others'. You can't control anyone or anything but your own actions, and if you haven't done everything you can to make a good living and done a good day's work, then you can sit down and shut up.
Posted by ShawnConway at August 2, 2008 10:22 PM