Our conversations are... energized, I guess.
I am not liberal. I don't want to be a liberal. I have spent almost my entire adult life defending capitalism, military necessity and blue law style values. I want so much to be a right wing, party line ballot checking, loyal elephant...
But I'm not...
I'm against abortion.
I can't understand how one day the media is claiming a separate murder charge each, for a woman and her unborn child, but has absolutely no issue with unborn children of all stages of development before birth, being systematically killed... I can't get how they arbitrarily draw and erase that line, only to create and move the same line, again and again...
That said, I don't think the answer to this dark tragedy is in our legal system. I think it can only be functionally addressed by a change of heart, changes in our own personal, family,social and societal hearts. If that deep seated heart condition was truly addressed, no man made law would ever be necessary...
If people feel free to flaunt Gods Law, I'm not thinking that following mans law will be their major priority. And if man made law is placed above the respect of God, if our nation follows because we voted it, not because He Ordained it, I'm thinking we would be setting ourselves up for a terrible judgement, either way...
So, I pray...
Not for laws, but hearts.
I guess that makes me a liberal...
I always supported tax cuts for businesses that created jobs for our community. It seemed like basic common sense and could only bring good...
I grew up in a mill town, surrounded by mill towns. My mother walked down two streets to go to work in our little local factory. Jobs were everywhere, and most people had no need for a high school diploma to be hired; the local economy thrived, and small businesses crammed our tiny Main Street, in the town I went to school...
Bigger, better paying global firms employed many more, in the outlying, bordering communities... Then it began to happen...
One by one, they all started leaving. Fathers of friends were layed off, and the time between a new job and the old one progressively grew, as salaries and benifits inversely dropped.
Soon, our rivers were polluted, and the fish inedible...
Now, wells and drinking water are contaminated from these same factories and companies that drained our resources, destroyed our economies by downsizing to the point of ludicrousity and moving to any place that could give half a percent better profit by paying employees less and not enforcing environmental standards.
I am told we drove the industry out due to our oppressive ecological concerns. Dozens of local communities need to truck in bottled water, but we were to " strict"?
I think businesses should pay a living wage for most all jobs, and that corporations should not be able to destroy our natural resources. I think joining a local economy should be akin to marriage; there should be a long term commitment for the betterment of each other...
But I'm silly. I have unrealistic expectations.
My values are un-economical...
I guess that makes me a liberal...
What started this present run-on diatribe, was the workmate who I was conversing with earlier, explaining to me how a presenter of a safety conference that he'd went to, somehow proved that millennials reported more injuries than baby boomers.
Say that three times, fast...
Baby boomers "worked thru the pain" and had less work related injuries, this presenter said. She had all the statistics...
This fellow I'm talking to is a little younger than my half century and is bright as a whip. He loves numbers that prove his point.
We're a lot alike, in that...
Liking numbers, that is. He is much smarter than me.
But I'm a bit more white haired and longer in the tooth than him; I understand that numbers are important, but knowing how to read the numbers is paramount; that presentation can often skewe the results and dictate their outcome...
More often than not, there is an agenda behind all the numbers...
I forgot... Conspiracy Theorist. He also calls me a Conspiracy Theorist...
I have seen the majority of men I worked with, these last thirty years, suck it up and keep on trucking. I have seen broken bones taped until they got home and gashes super glued shut. I have watched guys who need the paycheck keep going with a hernia they obtained on the job not report it, for fear of being fired or demoted. I have watched these same guys tossed into the proverbial garbage, as the companies they bled for relocated to a " more receptive" workforce...
Most of these millennials have too...
Most of them, first hand witnessed the same things I saw on the shop floor, except they saw it from the view of a child, watching their fathers come thru the door broken and bandaged, trying to get by one more day. They not only witnessed their dads and moms unceremoniously being layed off, they watched all those things that happen behind the " numbers".
They saw the jumps from closing factories to closing factories, and personally paid the price of having fathers putting all they had into their jobs because they had to...
Because that is what that job cost to have...
Maybe millenials do approach work differently.
Maybe they know that that fifty year job, then retirement, is just an old folk tale these days, and that work is really only work, in the end...
That no matter how much you make for a corporation , they will eventually move a thousand miles away for someone else willing to work for a pittance less...
Maybe the " millennials " are smarter than all of us battered and bruised old geezers...
I hope so...
I hope none of our kids ever have to be afraid of losing their jobs because they don't want to trade their long term health for a paycheck...
I guess that makes me a " liberal"...
Go figure...
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