Whiner Nation - Time for real problem solving

From time to time I feel the need to put some views down.  Real world views that interject themselves into my preferred pursuit of fiction writing.  Here's some notions for your comment.

Whiner Nation:

When I was a kid, there was one sort of kid everyone disliked – the whiner.  This was the kid who was always complaining, always saying that things weren’t fair, always making excuses, always objecting and never just joining in.  That kid was viewed as weak and useless. Now, it feels to me that a growing percentage of Americans on the Left and on the Right are acting like that friendless malcontent.  And now these disaffected elements seem to be forming their own social groups to hang with and to push their complaint agenda forward often screaming at the top of their lungs.  At least in the past whiners tended to speak in small voices. 

Whiners on the Left make excuses for people who aren’t doing their share, who aren’t pulling their weight, who act like victims, and who demand to be taken care of.  The Right complains that the disadvantaged and the poor are leeches, and  that they have to pay too much for the benefits of society, taxes are too high, too many regulations keep them from just doing what they want. “Immigrants go home,” “Hard working Americans don’t get no respect,” “Guns don’t kill, people do.” The Right protest in a society where hard working Americans are often the very immigrants they hate,  where gun violence is rampant, and far exceeds such violence in nations where guns are restricted.  Taxes, they say pick the average guys pocket, and redistribution of wealth is unfair.  Incredibly they make these claims as they support the free market that puts 95 % of all of the money in the hands of a fabulously wealthy few while many remain un-employed or under- employed.

The Whiner groups are obsessed with their favorite activities - name calling and stone walling.  They seem to want to win their point rather than to accomplish the hard work of problem analysis.  They can’t or won’t make the tough decisions to do what is needed for the good of the nation.  In their view, they are right and anyone who holds a different opinion is wrong.  Unreasoned and simple minded ideas are put forth as if they were facts.  Half baked theories and untested solutions are put forward as if they can magically fix the monumentally complex problems of a modern society.

Where true revolutionary change is needed, where historical perspective needs to lead to creative synthesis, these folks prefer knee jerk tearing down and put their faith in the notion that it will work out in the end if they are just given their way.

I’ve worked with lots of people like this in the past and results are always disastrous.  The whole approach reminds me of a group of teens who worked for me one summer.  They complained when I supervised them as they worked and demanded that they be given the respect to “Do it their way.”  What was the result, as they took on the task of repairing a horse barn so we could bring in horses?  They tore down the stalls to get the wood to build the ramp into the barn.  They ripped down the failing hay loft and then couldn’t figure out how to build a new one.  They left untouched the pile of new timbers where they had been delivered, because it was too much work to cart them across the property to where they were needed.  And then these self righteous geniuses painted the barn a garish patchwork of every color in the world, letting everyone have a section to paint, because they didn’t want anyone to decide on the colors.  To finish it off, they wrote “Fuck the fascist rednecks” on the wall… even though the facility was intended to be used by poor farm kids… I guess you would call those farm kids “red necks.” 

What I can’t figure is what to call the collection of destructive, unruly, lazy teens who did such a useless job in renovating the barn.  The other thing I can’t figure out is why these teen seem to remind me more of today's politicians than of statesmen.

What I wish at this point is that rather than so damned much Republican vs. Democrat fervor, we could muster up some statesman-like leadership and actually do some problem solving with the best outcome being decisions forged through thinking and compromise.  Let’s get the job done.  Cut the cost of health care and improve heath outcomes, eliminate waste, cut down the debt, but provide essential services to people who genuinely need help.  Let’s build a military that knows how to work in targeted actions for maximum effectiveness and end the ineffective and draining deployment of troops and resources around the world.  Let’s solve the energy problem with ingenuity, and mobilized industrial capability, and end our dependence on foreign, polluting fossil fuels.

In short, let’s mobilize the brightest and best to achieve real solutions and turn away from the whiners and stone-wallers who are stuck in their agenda and can’t see the solutions for all their complaints.  working against one another leasds to bad legislation and bad policy.  Time and money is wasted.  And the solid strength of cooperative planning is left in the rubble.

email me at gargoylegar@gmail.com