From the Mailbox

I'm sure we've all seen this one, from Robert Hall...it keeps popping up in my mailbox like clockwork every three months or so. Unlike most of these perpetual email circulars, it is correctly attributed--it was Hall's blog entry for February 19, 2009.

Hall is a Vietnam vet and Massachusetts State Senator. I strongly agree with some of his views, and even more strongly disagree with others...

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

Okay, right away we can tell the writer is American.

"How, pray tell, did you come to that conclusion, Ken?" Mostly because I've written essays. When you write a polemic like this, you want to get one of your strongest points right out front and hook your audience. And if Hall considers this his strongest point, he surely must be American.

"Spread the wealth" is probably the dirtiest three words you can string together in American political parlance nowadays. This is in direct contrast to the rest of the Western world, where spreading wealth is generally seen to be a good thing.

It also seems to be perfectly okay in America to demonize the poor. If you're poor, you must be "lazy" and lack a "work ethic". Memo to Mr. Hall: Poor people work pretty damned hard for their money, too. They just get a hell of a lot less of it.

Google "American income gap" some time. Sources vary as to exact numbers, but everybody agrees on two things: middle class income started stagnating in the 1970s and has actually fallen over the last forty years when adjusted for inflation; and the top ten or twenty percent of income earners take home an ever-increasing piece of the pie. Many of these rich folks, I'm sorry to say it, don't work hard for their money at all. It just shows up in their bank accounts regardless of their company's performance, and the most strenuous thing they have to do in a day is attend a stakeholder's meeting.

Mr. Hall may have earned every cent of his money, and I'm not suggesting he hasn't. But others who earn less do that and more.

I have long supported some sort of maximum wage. I would suggest that, rather than assign some arbitrary number like a million bucks a year, the maximum wage in any company should be directly and irrevocably tied to that company's minimum wage. I think ten or (at most) twenty times the minimum wage is more than reasonable.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

Right on. It is widely known (and yet, for some reason, not widely accepted) that Islam does not mean "peace": it means "submission". Interestingly, Christianity is also replete with demands to "submit" to the will of God. Of course, Christianity is a religion of peace...its founder was even called a "Prince of Peace". Which makes the Crusades and the Troubles and the whole idea of "holy war" (in a Christian context) rather hard to explain.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

This is a good point. Tolerance is a core value of Canadian society, right up there with universal health care and hockey. We do have a tendency to take it too far on occasion, even expressing tolerance for those who wish us ill. That's where I draw my own line: I'm exceedingly tolerant of all but the intolerant. You believe what you want and act as you will; provided it doesn't harm me or anyone else...and provided you allow me the same courtesy...then I have no problem with you.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

You know, if we're not allowed to debate global warming, nobody's bothered to tell the deniers. I've never heard such a shrill and strident chorus in my life. And it always comes down to "my standard of living", ever notice that? As if you're paying for any climate change initiatives all by yourself. You see this attitude expressed in Canadian society, too. Usually the phrase used is "my tax dollars", as in, "you're using my tax dollars to fund WHAT?!" Obviously the income gap is a hell of a lot wider than I thought it was.

I don't recall anybody ever once suggesting that living standards should be lowered. What I've often seen is a call for a reduction in the accumulation of stuff. The two are seen as one and the same: they're actually close to polar opposites.

...they bought things. They just acquired. Because many people in this country, for reasons that escape me, still believe that he who has the most things when he dies, wins. Well, you're dead, fucknut. So....you didn't win.

--Lewis Black, "Rules of Enragement"

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off?

Yeah, actually it did. A giant germ called poverty rushed out of a dark alley and grabbed them. This poverty germ affects different people in different ways. Some people get it and throw it off with a combination of hard work and good luck. When most of the people in their immediate surroundings are also afflicted with the poverty germ, fighting it off is much, much harder. Especially when everything you see and hear reinforces the idea that if you're sick with that particular disease, it's your own fault. Maybe if we actually put some kind of concerted effort into fighting the poverty disease, the other diseases it tends to spawn wouldn't be so prevalent. But no, that'd cost you money, Mr. Hall, so we can't do that.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Yep, I'm tired of that too. I'm tired of hearing people say they worked hard for their money and implying that other people don't. I'm tired of people who are living far beyond comfortably saying that a portion of their money shouldn't go towards making the rest of society a little more comfortable.

As for mistakes...I'm a pretty forgiving guy, for the most part, if the mistake fits my definition of mistake. A mistake, to me, is something the consequences of which couldn't have been reasonably foreseen. Crimes aren't, and should never be called, mistakes.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

There's a happy medium here that Hall is missing and I have been known to miss myself. I agree that there is a disturbing lack of accountability in society. We all have frivolous lawsuit stories; in Canada at least, there is a distressing tendency to blame the government for anything that isn't perfect; many folks have an annoying habit of crying racism or sexism or what have you whenever a standard life roadblock appears in their path.

And yet...discrimination exists, and is a pervasive and insidious force. "Big-whatever" is in business to make money, and it's relatively recently been decided that a great way to make money is to outsource every job you can, reduce wages and benefits on those you can't, and force one person, wherever possible, to do the work of two or three. And government, needless to say, doesn't always have its citizens' interests at heart.

Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

I'm not. Well, in some ways, maybe--that climate change we're "not allowed to debate" will be a real and pressing predicament for her. But despite Hall's doom-mongering (which I, as you well know, am prone to as well), it must be said that we've got it pretty good. Compare the prevailing standard of living from five or six centuries ago to ours today: all but the poorest of us live like lords. That's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say.

A word of caution: the foundation of all we've attained is an abundance of cheap oil. That's running out, and its decline is the biggest reason I'm sorry for Hall's granddaughter and others of her generation. His daughter is apt to be mighty tired at the end of each day, doing things once relegated to machines. She may not have time to muse on just how tired she is, either.

But...consider the words of Harry Chapin, or rather, his grandfather. These are words I first heard as a small child, and they have stuck with me.

"My grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry. He was looking at me one day and he said, `Harry, there's two kinds of tired. There's good-tired and there's bad-tired. Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day in which you won, but you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas and dreams, and when it's all over, there's very litte you in there, and when you hit the hay at night, you toss and turn, you don't settle easy.

Good-tired, ironically enough, can be a day in which you lost, but you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, "Take me away."
Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter. So I painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful. But I painted and painted. And I am good-tired, and they can take me away.'"