On the Occasion of the SOTU
Dear George,
I’m sorry I missed watching your SOTU Address last night; I was outside cleaning up poop. I also fixed a fence yesterday, cleaned a coupla toilets, hauled some wood, bucked some hay and a 50# bag of grain, vacuumed, swept and washed my floors [with a hot-water rag on my knees] I’m sorry doing all those things prevented me from seeing you tell Americans, and the world, that there are jobs that “Americans won’t do.” Boy—do I feel like an absolute sucker, now!
And to think—I chose this life that has these chores. I didn’t realize that, as an American, it was beneath me to muck out stalls, clean toilets, make beds and wash floors. Wow—I’d better quit learning how to build stuff, too, cuz I guess using a Skilsaw, hammer and nails martillo y clavos is also beneath me.
What a dunderhead I’ve been! Not to mention my Dad and Mom. Daddy put up power poles for 33¢ an hour during the Depression despite his college education. And Mom, with her college education and finishing school skills, pulled up wire out of the fields after WWII, when metal was scarce, to create pens for her platinum fox ranch. I guess we’re a whole family of dupes and dopes, eh?
If we’d only realized that Americans aren’t supposed to do those difficult and/or nasty jobs—that we’re supposed to let those little brown people who refuse to obey the laws of our country do that work!
Wow—a whole new two tiered society! What an idea. Wait… I’m suddenly struck with a thought; maybe there are more than two tiers... Dang… Wish I had more time to think about that but I’ve gotta go rent the steamer to strip some wallpaper, rip up some carpeting, re-do those floors and re-tile a bathroom.
I guess being a dupe is habit-forming…
----
AND MORE—response to comment:
Helley—check your taxes. Somewhere in that $30 billion that is spent on illegal immigrants ever year is some o’ your money. [Spanish-speaking classrooms, health care, bi-lingual signs/ballots, jails, police, not to mention that we’re hemoraging cash directly into the Mexican economy [wages mailed home] without any return.]
I completely disagree that unwillingness to do menial work is a consequence of the “ownership society.” I think willingness to do what needs to be done—no matter how distasteful —is the backbone of an “ownership society.” And of a Free Society.
The boss hasta be able to do any job that she hires out—better than those she hires. [with the exception of specialized things like nuclear physics and taxes...] That is the essence of the American Dream: 1] build a better mousetrap, 2] make them in your garage until you can rent a bigger space and hire someone else, 5] become one of the Fortune 500. Or work for that guy emptying mousetraps [eww] until you work your way up to plant manager.
Disdaining hard, icky work as being beneath one is the prime demonstration of an effete lack of character [so John Kerry] that leaves one at the mercy of the less educated/less intelligent but more willing. [Think Howard Roark.]
“I don’t do windows,” is the visceral opposite of what our Armed Forces are doing right now, and what The Yanks did in WWII, etc. We are not too good to wade in and get our hands dirty doing what needs doing. The French were—repeatedly. [see the consequences of “let them eat cake,” the logical end of “I don’t do windows."]
If we become a culture where it is acceptable to refuse to do our own dirty work, or to start at the bottom and work upwards, we will become a culture that is unwilling to do the dirty, nasty work of fighting socialism / facism / terrorism. And we will soon be a dead culture; taken over by those willing to get their hands dirty.
Image blatantly stolen from Helen Wells
[*click* image to see more]
That was very good, Claire. I agree with you about everything, and enjoyed
the comments on your family life. They help to bring many of your other
words into focus. So why am I gonna argue with ya? Cuz yur worth it! (And we
have the Super Bowel on.)I’m with you on the grain, hay, fencing, and firewood; plus stones. I
traded the wood furnace for insulation and never looked back. I haven’t
seen the backend of an animal since I left the farm either. Mother had her
cows and I kept fowl, but no more. I got so sick of manure, I won’t even
href="http://homepage.mac.com/helenwells/.Pictures/2004/Garden/barbs.jpg"
keep fish now. Yes we have our chores (and <a >I can prove it</a>) but as
you say, they are our choice. There isn’t enough money printed to pay me to
do housekeeping for anybody else and I get plenty of help with my own.
Pardon me for gloating about not doing linens anymore.Yes every day, fewer people are willing to provide any kind of service for
others. I’m not going find fault with that. It’s a consequence of the
prosperity that comes from an ‘ownership’ society. I know immigration is
driving you nuts. It’s not visible here and I plead ignorance. It’s very
easy to say that immigrants have always provided our country with cheap
labor and have always been resented for it. Easy for me to shrug off the
negative consequences--I see the entire male gender as a source of cheap
labor, so what’s the big deal?Now moving beyond your valid complaints, I happen to have a certain issue
that didn’t go my way at the SotU either. Even so, Bush gave an Address
that I found [url="http://homepage.mac.com/helenwells/Sotu/0.html"]very
pleasing[/url]. So we can make a lot of noise, but we have a lot to show for 4
years of Bush--at least as much as the 12 years of our previous 2
presidents. With the Dems in full retreat, I’m hopeful that we will both
get more of what we want in the next 4 years. Or less, depending on your
perspective.Yul give us a peek at the renovation, right?
Commented by Helen [retrieved by e-C]
Posted by Claire on 02/11/05 at 02:26 PMI’m glad you enjoyed the cartoons, but I’m sorry that this is such an
awkward medium for discussion. The topic is worth another 10,000 words.check your taxes
Aww Claire, do I have to? I avoid thinking about money whenever possible. My
folks raised me to be the perfect housewife, and if it was legal and my Gf
would let me, I would be. But back to reality, you’re right. We are obliged
to see that our money is well spent, even after we give it away. Still, I am
resistant to your point. For every dollar I pay, Vermont gets a dollar and
fifty cents in fed revenue. So you have to make your ethical case more
purely.The boss hasta be able to do any job that she hires out—better than
those she hires.That’s a wonderful slogan, but Adam Smith would object. For example, I know
more about paint than anyone you are ever likely to meet. And more boldly, I
know more about paint failures than any paint manufacturer--enough to lead
day-long seminars. Still, I am a terrible painter. I can get it right, but
it takes me forever.And in a pinch, [url="http://homepage.mac.com/helenwells/.Pictures/1gh/tuff3.jpg"]I can
haul stuff too.[/url] But why would anyone hire me for that when there are any
number of huge males able to carry twice as much and willing to do it for
half the pay?More generally speaking, my working life has a nice fluidity. Sometimes I am
the boss. Other times I am the helper, the client, or the consultant. People
are willing to pay me only when they are convinced that I can do a better
than they could. Similarly, I would only consider hiring someone if they
were more productive than Me.And here’s the latest--last night a foot of snow landed in the driveway. I
left an envelope on the porch, and sometime in the early morning darkness,
the plow fairy came. I could have done that but ...Commented by Helen [retrieved by e-C]
Posted by Claire on 02/11/05 at 02:28 PMHelen - I’m afraid I missed your point about the taxes. Though I’m gonna include Vermonters along with the illegal aliens next time I complain about where my fed tax money is going....
I mentioned specialized jobs, and it sounds like your job is to know about paint—not actually slap it on stuff.
As to when and why to hire something done, hiring someone only when they can do the job better than I doesn’t make sense to me. I would hire the housework done if I could find someone who would do half as good a job as I. [the last one left a pile of sweepins’ behind the bathroom door—I guess she figgered I’d never close it… ?!?]
I would hire it done not only because I find it dull and redundant [ya do the dishes and 6 months later ya hafta do the damned things all over again.... *sigh*] but because it frees me to do things that are more productive toward my overall goals or that only I can do [decisions ‘n’ stuff] That still doesn’t address my gripe about Dubya suggesting that Americans are “too good” to do the scut work.
Now, as to those snow plow fairies—do ya think if I left an envelope at the bottom of the sink.......
Posted by Claire on 02/11/05 at 02:50 PM
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