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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
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Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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Monday, December 1st, 2008 IT'S TIME FOR A WEATHER BAILOUT Has anyone heard the “D” word uttered yet? No, not great “Depression,” I am referring instead, in this case to “drought,” but the two are related. For those of us along the western coast of the United States it has been a stunningly mild Fall thus far and with the official beginning of winter just around the corner, there has been little to no rain in sight in our past nor is there any in our immediate future. Having lived all of my 37 years no further east than Reno, Nevada, I know the drill. Any minute now some do-gooding, hand-wringing, drama queen, worry monger will announce that we are in a drought and it’s time to conserve, nay, ration water. By January we’ll all be discussing odd and even watering days, car washing bans and an end to civilization as we know it. The actual thing that winter ushers in is the season of hysteria; although hysteria, truthfully, has become a year round American human condition. The weather, however, is a perfect analogy to allow us all to take a step back from the lunacy we are being inundated with daily and once again evaluate just how stupid we are as a collective nation. Here we stand, we’re told hour after hour, at the precipice of allegedly the “greatest economic crisis of our time since the Great Depression,” while also faced with no rainfall of measureable noteworthiness for the past 10 months. What’s the correlation, you ask? We can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t fix either one. Never have, never will. The economy, just like the weather, will correct itself in due course if we allow it to. It will, for a time, be painful and perhaps even devastating in the short term to some (much like a tornado or hurricane) but such monsoon bursts of catastrophic consequences are necessary to restore things to their natural order. I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to establish the connection of these two examples all the way back to their beginnings. Environmentalist whackos have existed as long as human beings have. Whether you trace it to rain dances of the Native Americans, the praying for rain of the Greeks to their gods, or modern day silliness involving cloud-seeding and carbon footprint offsets, we have, forever, been incapable of accepting the fact that we cannot and will not ever be smart enough to control, fix or alter Mother Nature. Whether you believe in a God, a karma sheriff or random occurrences of events as it relates to the existence of the universe, one thing is for sure; you can’t even begin to explain or understand how and why it all works environmentally, cosmically, or atmospherically. Comical attempts to do so have been tried and failed miserably, falling at the feet of those of us willing to accept our insignificance in this universe. Get over it. It will rain when the Earth needs water. The Ice caps will stop melting when the atmosphere and the planet sit down together and decide there is enough water in the oceans and it is time to allow them to recede. No level of human activity, dances, emissions or attempts to alter that will change one damn thing. Sorry to be the one to inform you of this, but your existence on this planet means absolutely nothing to the planet. The planet is bigger, stronger, faster, smarter and more resilient that you and all of us collectively throughout the history of time; a point proven by the Earth’s ability to wipe us out as a species at anytime it deems fit. You are just mad that we don’t possess an equally reciprocal ability. Fire off every damned nuclear weapon ever created and guess what would be left? Not us, just the planet, and it would be better off for it. Meanwhile, economic geniuses of our time and long ago have forever sought to create the perfect monetary system, of which of course, there is none. Socialism and communism define equality as punishing the hardest working, while capitalism creates a clear chasm between society’s economical winners and losers. Alas, on a planet where people work so they can buy stuff (whether that stuff be gruel or Prada shoes) there is always going to be a sector of people left behind or not properly rewarded. Get over it. Similar to the lies we are told about the earth (like the whopper that man “causes” global warming, a total canard), we are being lied to daily about the country’s economy. It is laughable to watch people claim that we are facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, while simultaneously viewing 41 million people drive, fly and rail themselves across the country to spend a day with family gorging themselves on meals that cost hundreds of dollars to prepare. Some of us are old enough to remember the Jimmy Carter recession of the late 70s/early 80s and times are nothing now like they were when people lined up to get gas, unemployment was above 10%, interest rates were at 17.6%, inflation was at 14%, and the hardest working people in the country gave 70 cents of every dollar they earned to a failing federal government. That sucked, and it was far worse than it is now, but even it was nothing like the Great Depression. Go find your grandfather and ask him how silly and spoiled this nation is to compare today’s challenges to the actual hardships of 25% of the nation being unemployed, and another 25% of us having our wages cut dramatically. Imagine just for a moment how your life would change if during 2009, you had to spend 58% less on your family’s food, 48% less on your clothing and 31% less your automobiles (meaning you’d almost certainly drive at least one car less than you do now). That was the reality of America in 1933, and it is nothing like the reality of America today. Unfortunately, just as with the environment, we are loathe as a people to acknowledge how helpless we are (or how helpless we should be) to stop people from feeling some pain and suffering. We have seen this epidemic growing throughout the nation the past few decades. We have become incapable of telling our children that they lost a game or gave a wrong answer. We have found ways to stop teasing and bullying under the guise of protecting peoples’ feelings and we have restricted free speech and chipped away our fundamental individual rights by creating absurd “hate speech” laws and the like all under the silly, unachievable notion of never allowing anyone to feel any sort of pain, physical, emotional or mental, ever. The laws of humanity demand that we all fail and feel pain. It is only through experiencing suffering that we can obtain the proper perspective and motivation to propel us to new greatness. Any kid that ever played Little League and lost a close game learned that he never wanted to feel that way again. Imagine the lesson a few overspending, lazy, self-entitled, ignorant American families would feel if we allowed them to experience the pain of losing everything they had. If we did so, and told them to fight and earn their way back to where they had been, only one of two things would happen; they would either dig deeply within themselves to discover their God given talents and abilities and find ways to use them to become successful, or they would curl up in the fetal position and drool themselves into irrelevancy, poverty and despair. So be it. Get over it. It is time for America to fail. Too many in this nation know nothing of actual hardship, challenges, pain, risk, reward and achievement. We have become a people who presume that the most successful in this nation are greedy robbers of the poor, never acknowledging the sleepless nights and untold stresses that come to those of us who take risks to create businesses and jobs for the rest of you. Employed people in this nation feel they are owed their job, their cars, their credit and their homes. Let’s see how millions of them would feel if those of us who “gave” them their stuff, suddenly took it away by the necessary order of things. Allow America to fail; allow the strong to survive and thrive by saying to the weak and timid that now is your time to prove that you are worthy of what you have, not owed it simply for being born. Let those of us who have taken great risk say to the rest that they no longer have a place to work, unless they prove why they should have such. It’s time to weed out the ignorant, entitled, lazy and stupid. Jack Welch, the brilliant former CEO of General Electric said in his book “Straight From The Gut,” that all work forces have 10% dead weight. This applies to every grouping of people anywhere. In any workplace, team, army or society, there is a bottom 10% that is not pulling their weight, not as competent, not working as hard or achieving as much as the rest. If we tomorrow; eliminated that dead weight completely from the American workforce, unemployment would triple and we’d be well on our way to both a second great depression and a spectacular recovery, for the beginning of the process of restoring a natural order would have begun. It would be as though it had rained for 40 days and 40 nights after nary a storm cloud had been seen for years. While the floods and disease and famine that occurred during the 40 days would be devastating, the bounty of opportunity and beauty that naturally occurred afterwards would reap the greatest rewards the survivors had ever imagined. Let America fail; let’s seed the storm clouds and step back and allow the natural order of things to take their course. Those of us with drive, passion, intelligence and a never wavering commitment to overcoming and achieving are not afraid; we’re invigorated at the thought of it. Pain and suffering, to paraphrase the Marines, is nothing more than weakness leaving the body. Get over it…bring on the storm. |
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