Posted on 08/10/2014 4:46:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Its a tradition as old as time blaming someone else for ones own problems. Its called scapegoating, and humans have a long history of it. We blame others for our own hardships because, well, its easier than dealing with the fact that most, if not all, our problems are the result of choices we made.
How many people do you know whove been fired from a job and said something along the lines of My boss hated me? People have been fired out of spite, but for the most part, it doesnt happen to great employees. Know any good carpenters unable to find work? I mean really good carpenters, craftsmen who show up on time, dont over-charge, do great work and dont leave a mess? I bet you dont, because they are in demand, no matter how bad the economy is.
I know plenty of people who are or have been out of work for long periods of time, and most of them have attitudes that make being around them for extended periods of time a difficult proposition. Not only do I know them, I was one of them. Ive had more jobs than anyone else I know, and I dare say anyone you know, or even any three people you know. At last count Ive held, for varying lengths of time (mostly very short periods of time), 63 jobs. No, thats not a typo.
You name it, Ive probably been paid to do it, for at least an hour or two before quitting or being fired.
Roofing, construction, concrete, electricians assistant, deli counter, softball scorekeeper, busboy, waiter, bartender, fast-food, slow-food, bulk-food, a boat radiator factory, aluminum brake factory, door-to-door sales. I could go on but you get the idea. And I was fired more times than I can count from many of those jobs because of my attitude. I hung around with people whose days revolved around having enough money to get drunk or high as many nights as possible. That was our priority; that was our lives.
I couldnt really afford college after high school, and it wasnt a priority. My parents didnt graduate high school, and my siblings (Im the youngest of five) hadnt gone to college, so it wasnt discussed. My high school wasnt exactly a conduit to great things, so college wasnt pushed on anyone. Id applied to one school, Wayne State in Detroit, because the application fee was only $20 and they were coming to my high school to give immediate admission to people who qualified. You needed only a 2.0 GPA and a few other people were doing it. And the idea of college beat the thought of working for a living, so I did it. They accepted me.
The government said I didnt qualify for financial aid, so I went for a half-year with the money I had saved (majoring in theater, if that gives you any idea of how aimless I was). When the money ran out, I was done.
I bounced from one hated job to another for a few years, until one day my girlfriend at the timewho had graduated college and knew the importance of itsuggested I try college again.
Mostly to placate her, I filled out a new financial aid form, and because of my age, my povertyId cracked the 5-digit income level only once, when I made $12,000qualified me for aid. I was shocked, and more than a little excited, to have a chance at something more.
It was just a chance, a shot, I would have to take it and make something of it myself, but I had it. But for it to work, for it to lead anywhere, my attitude had to change.
To that point, Id blamed just about everyone Id come in contact with for my poverty and misery. Not that theyd done anything to me. They were just luckier, either by birth or some other circumstance, than I was. I was angry at the world for pretty much existing.
It took me those lost years to realize if I wanted to assign blame for my crummy lot in life I need only find the nearest reflective surface. Sure, other people were born into different circumstances, more money, a family that stressed education and a place that planned a little more than you graduate high school, get a job, and thats about it. But they werent holding me back, I was. There was no grand conspiracy of the illuminati and chemtrails plotting to keep me down. It was me.
Once I started to shake off the chains of resentment and take responsibility for my lifeand I hope youre sitting down for thisit got exponentially better. Its not perfect. Its not all wine and roses. But I aspire. And thats the key.
After burning myself with hot roofing tar, drilling a hole through my fingernail, and getting a hernia from lifting cases of copper tubes, I made different choices in my life that brought me from Detroit to Washington, D.C., where Id always wanted to be.
Id always been interested in politics, but I went from volunteering on campaigns every couple of years to being a health policy analyst in a prestigious think tank, serving as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate, managing federal affairs at a powerful activist group, co-founding a successful news website, writing and hosting a talk radio show, to God only knows. Theres no logical sense to my career path, but Ive loved every minute of it.
And I wouldnt have had any of it had I not stopped blaming others for my failures, for my problems.
Many of my friends from those days are still angry, still looking outside themselves for their bouncing around from one miserable job to the next. One told me a few years ago that I was lucky to get out and do what Id done. That still sticks with me because it wasnt luck, and I told him so at the time.
He didnt like that, still doesnt. But sitting around telling the world what all you can do and counting on someone to hear you, believe you, believe in you and then pay you a lot of money to do it is not a plan. You have to do it. Then, and only then, will the world (possibly) recognize it and reward it.
This is why Im a conservative and always have been.
I support the idea of a helping hand a hand-up, not a handout I wouldnt be where I am without it. But I easily could have gone the other way too. I was earning enough to get by rent was cheap, beer was cheaper. I wasnt happy, but I was comfortable enough. Its the same for the myriad welfare programs that give people just enough to make it from one EBT Card direct deposit to the next.
A subsistent existence, with no strings attached, saps aspiration, drains the human spirit. Thats what the poverty trap of government life gives you just enough with the threat of it all going away should you try to improve your life by working and earning more.
The social safety net has turned into a cross between a hammock and a spider web comfortable and incredibly difficult to escape.
The question is how desperate are you to escape itparticularly when there is an industry, built around a political party and philosophy, designed to keep people in it.
Progressives benefit from poverty, from envy, from that anger. They stoke it. The 1 percent, income inequality, the rich, all are scapegoated by progressives to people like I was in the hope they think theyre not well-off because someone else is.
That it works so well is a testament to the power of resentment. Scapegoatings long history demonstrates what a powerful and evil weapon it is. Murder, wars, the Holocaust, much of historys greatest crimes stem from scapegoating.
Hitler blamed Germanys economic woes on the Jews, and the people bought it. Hamas blames Palestinian poverty on the Jews even as it squanders an untold fortune on offensive weapons and tunnels, and progressives perpetuate this slander. Democrats blame poverty in America on the people who lift themselves out of poverty, and they receive the votes of those theyve snared in that web.
Theres a pattern there.
No one is poor because someone else is rich. No one is trapped anywhere but in their own lives. But resentment and scapegoating works. Its not going to stop being the most powerful weapon progressives have to manipulate people around the world until more people find the person I found in my rear-view mirror on my way to my roofing job more than a decade ago the only person responsible for your lot in life you.
Good article! Thanks!
I was enjoying the article until he got to the part of getting to Washington - where he always wanted to be. Really? This is a key to success? Joining all the corrupt-o-crats who run that town?
Bingo.
Personal responsibility is so 20th century.
The American dream has morphed from "work hard, live right" to "win a lawsuit or the lottery."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.