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Global Warning - Sep 8, 2008 - Printable Version
- A Nation of Whiners
by Robin Buckallew
It’s hard to feel too sorry for Phil Gramm. After all, for years he’s stepped callously over everyone that got in his way. He was among the lawmakers that pushed through the Enron loophole that made much of the lying, cheating, and stealing that Enron did fall within the letter of the law. He pushed for programs that would privilege business over human rights, and would make sure that his buddies went home with a fair share of the profits at the end of the day. After all of this, it is ironic that when Phil Gramm finally gets his comeuppance, it is because he has told the truth.
Phil Gramm recently made the now infamous statement that the United States has become “a nation of whiners”. As a result, he was vilified by the press, excoriated by the Democratic candidate, and deserted by the Republican candidate. He stepped down from his role as campaign co-chair and economic advisor, and was denounced by McCain for his comments. The phrase has now become sort of a buzzword for idiocy and unkindness, and everyone goes around shaking their head in amazement that anyone could say such a thing. I, too, am amazed that anyone said such a thing. Haven’t they learned yet, the surest ticket out of a political career is to tell the truth? It will get you every time.
The truth!?! How can I say such a thing? How can it be the truth that our nation of hard-working individualists who don’t look to anyone to solve their deepest problems for them, who have fallen on such hard times, who have bucked up and helped each other through this most desperate of times without a single complaint (well, maybe one little complaint here and there, but really…) – how can I suggest that we are a nation of whiners? Very simply. Because we are a nation of whiners. At this most crucial time in human history, when all the world is reeling from the events that threaten to overwhelm us, America is failing to do our part. We are, in fact, whining about everything that happens to us. All of a sudden, gas prices in America have neared a level that is beginning to come close to what gas cost in Europe a decade ago. This is unthinkable to the American mind. We cannot conceive of a world where we have to pay what everyone else has to pay for gas. Never mind that prices around the world have continued to climb, as well, so that in other countries, they are still paying substantially more for the precious fuel than our drivers at home. All of a sudden, I am seeing articles that bemoan the fact that sometimes people actually have to travel with other people in their car. For some unknown reason, this is presented in horrified, hushed tones, as though there were some incarnate evil at work here. The focus of most of the prolonged gas price scream has been the impact on the middle class. Never mind that there are people that are truly hurt by the gas prices, and that those people have been truly hurt by the car culture since its inception. Never mind that for the majority of the people, it would be much more cost-effective to car pool or take mass transit (should it happen to be available) than to drive, even if gas were $0.10 a gallon. The fact that the middle class might have to scale back their driving habits has led to one long, prolonged “Whiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnneeeeeee!” People who have gotten used to driving walkable or bikable distances are now angry that they might have to rediscover that feet have uses other than pushing the accelerator and the brake.
Then there’s the whole idea of living in general. The middle class, we are told, is hurting. They are having to shop at discount stores, and might have to scale back some of their lifestyle. For the past several decades, the vast majority of Americans have been living beyond their means. Debt has become mostly just a fact of life, much like the need to eat and sleep. I meet very few people who hesitate to make another purchase they can’t afford, because it will only be another $5 a month on their credit card bill. Many American families are now in debt on their credit cards by more than they earn in a year. As long as things are going along, and they are keeping the bills paid, they are fine with this. The minute something happens that shakes the foundations a little bit, they begin to sweat, and then they begin to look around for who could be to blame for this situation. Inevitably, they never look in the mirror. If they have a television in every room, they begin to say that is necessary. All the members of their family like different shows, so rather than work out the TV schedule, they simply accommodate the individual tastes of each person, so that the family is never actually together. If they have several cars, they begin to explain the different uses that each vehicle has, how they use the SUV for this and the truck for that, and the motorcycle for something else, and the….. the list goes on and on, but it is never a case that there could be another way of approaching the “needs” that have just been detailed. No, it is their right, and their obligation, to pursue their happiness through the acquisition of material goods. As Americans begin to fall behind in science, in math, in history, in languages, and in philosophy, they continue to lead the pack in shopping. Who else could possibly out-shop us? Who else could possibly be quicker in the credit-card quick draw contest? Who else could possibly have exceeded so many credit card limits, and acquired so many pretty little pieces of plastic? No one, of course. We’re number one.
Unfortunately, such a lifestyle carries with it a heap of debt of another kind. This is the debt that we are accruing in the natural world. We are living not only beyond our means, but beyond the means of the world that we live in. The human consumption of resources exceeded the ability of the planet to meet it as long ago as 1980, but because we all live on credit, anyway, we just sort of kept on going, drawing down the principal of the planet, rather than living off the interest. We are entitled. We are the few, the proud, the shoppers, and we are going to shop until we have everything we “need”. Nothing will stand in our way. Over the past few decades, houses have increased in size by more than double. Cars have increased in size. Restaurant servings have increased in size. Americans have increased in size. We are eating, driving, and sleeping our way through all the natural resources that have been billions of years in the making, and we are going to do it in merely a few generations. Now, there is something to be proud of! We can destroy much faster than Earth can create, and we are demonstrating our skill daily.
Now, the bills are coming due. We’ve been living above our means for too long, and now when the ceiling comes crashing in, we all point our fingers at someone else. It’s Reagan’s fault. No, it’s Clinton’s fault. No, it’s Dubya’s fault (actually, I rather like blaming Dubya – it feels good). It’s Enron’s fault. It’s Citigroup’s fault. It’s ConAgra’s fault. It’s Fannie Mae’s fault. It’s Phil Gramm’s fault. We whine, we cry, we stomp our little feet, and in general, we make a big nuisance of ourselves, in the belief that someone is going to bail us out. After all, we were forced to buy that SUV. We were forced to buy that large house that was more than we could afford, and furnish it on a revolving account. We were forced to turn our country over to Wal-Mart and Exxon-Mobil. Meanwhile, while everyone cries loudly about their declining lifestyle, the cost of all this excess on the environment has been pushed to the back burner. We can’t think of the environment right now, we’ve got to think about how we’re going to survive. Of course, we won’t survive if we totally destroy the environment, but that’s a conversation we’re just not prepared to have.
None of this is meant to imply that there is no real misery and no real poverty in America. In fact, it’s a disgrace that a country as rich as our country has allowed so many people to live in abject poverty for so long. In the current dialogue, however, I hear little mention of the poor. In fact, the entire dialogue is focused on the middle class. The plight of the middle class. The middle class, who have been living better than kings lived throughout much of human history. The middle class, who, even in their current plight, manage to have a life that would be the envy of the vast majority of people throughout the world. The problem isn’t that we have it so bad; the problem is that we don’t recognize how good we have had it for so long, and how good we still have it. The problems of the economy are indeed difficult to solve, and the current dialogue is unlikely to solve them, because it doesn’t take into account the total insanity of a country living so far beyond their means for so very long.
Accountability has been given a very bad name in the hands of the Bush administration. All too often pressed into the service of excusing rogue corporations for their very bad behavior, the word has become taboo throughout much of the center to left-of-center press. It is time for that to change. It is time for us to dust off this much-abused word, return it to its proper place in the lexicon, and begin to practice it. Much of the current mess we are in is as much our own fault as it is the fault of our corporations and our leaders. We ceded power to the wrong people, while we sat back and lived in relative comfort and luxury, buying our stuff cheap and demanding it be made cheaper. We began to feel we were entitled to have whatever we saw that struck our fancy, and to have it today, without having to delay gratification until we had the honest ability to pay for it. Much of our lifestyle has left us in massive debt not only to the bankers and the corporations, but also to foreign countries who may turn out to be impervious to even our most obnoxious, annoying whines. Once a strong, proud nation who could and would sacrifice to accomplish great things worldwide, we are now a spoiled, selfish nation that ignores real human misery and elevates mere inconvenience to the level of misery. We have become a nation of whiners. It is time for that to end. It is time to declare the United States a new nation, conceived in accountability, and dedicated to the proposition that, with sufficient determination and cooperation, we can all re-make ourselves into a nation that is once again truly great.
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