A Nation of Whiners

I love Phil Gramm. He’s from that generation that calls a spade a spade. Today, if someone calls a spade a spade, he needs to apologize to those who might prefer shovels, give a token nod of the head to the other garden tools, and follow that immediately with an emphatic clarification that the spade in question is a hand tool and not a derogatory term, and a further explanation that the speaker in no way is referring to a card suit and has never been a proponent of gambling. I don’t agree with Gramm. I think things are pretty seriously out of whack at the moment. I’m reminded of an old saying, it sounds like it might be from Will Rogers, but I’m not sure, that went “When your neighbor loses his job, it is a recession, and when you lose yours, it is a depression.” In Grammland, everything is obviously just fine.

Senator Gramm was an economics professor at one time, so I’m sure he knows of what he speaks. Or in the very least, he has the credentials to voice an opinion. I don’t see why he needs to apologize for or “clarify” his remarks. And I certainly don’t see why he needs to resign from the McCain campaign. What is everyone so afraid of? Does Gramm calling us a nation of whiners make us whiners or diminish us in some way? Are we so fragile that we cannot look at ourselves and possibly admit, yes, maybe we do whine a little bit now and again. Even if McCain said we were whiners, which I hasten to clarify, he did not, so what? If my mother called me a whiner. I'd still love her. I would probably still vote for her if she was running for something and I was going to vote for her before she called me a whiner, and I’m fairly confident that I came away from that experience relatively un-scarred. I do not point to that moment as the source of my personal shortcomings.

Did anyone call in to work the day after Gramm’s original remarks and beg to take a sick day because of the trauma inflicted by Gramm’s opinion? Did thousands of people fall prostrate from the verbal lashing? Hundreds? Tens,even? No, I don’t get the whole tumult. Much ado about nothing, in my mind. I wouldn’t even care if Obama’s minister called me a whiner. In fact, I don’t think I would care if McCain called me personally on the telephone and said that I and I alone was a whiner. Though if that were the case, I’d probably whine about it in a blog.

By Myron Gushlak

Watching

It is important for Americans to remember that their election process does not exist in a vacuum. The process does not take place in a voting booth behind a drawn curtain. It takes place in the open, often under the far too flaw-highlighting bright lights of world attention. Particularly, I think, the candidacy of a minority man, Barack Obama, and a woman, Hillary Clinton draws international attention to the US process of choosing leaders. I’m certain the chaotic practice of caucuses, delegates and primaries seems quite insane to many people in many different countries. As Winston Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government in the world - except for all the others.”

The world court of public opinion is not swayed by jingoistic sound bytes about what America wants to be. It can see American protestations about human rights in China on a split screen side by side with Guantanemo. There is no spin doctoring of the pre-emptive war with Iraq with platitudes about self determination. There are no filters between the juxtaposition of monitors at remote third world polling places and the Supreme Court decision after the Gore-Bush Florida election. World public opinion does not concern itself with being politically correct. It does not have to worry about offending anyone. Value judgments are being made everyday about what the United States says it stands for and what it does. It is important that the United States does not preach one thing while doing another.

The world can also see that the United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the free world. It was forty years ago this summer during the Chicago democratic convention that the chant first went up. “The whole world is watching”. People in Serbia are watching, people in Palestine, Israel, and Venezuela. One vote says a lot to the rest of the world about who America is and what it stands for. So does one non-vote.

By Myron Gushlak