McCain’s adviser had it about right

An important adviser to US presidential hopeful John McCain was reported last week as saying that the U.S. had become a nation of whiners. Naturally, there was a fuss and the guy’s remarks were disowned by McCain. And while that shows how politically inexpedient they were, it doesn’t prove that they were wrong.

If you follow the media and listen to people talking around you, I believe you’ll also come to the conclusion that the most typical sound in our society today isn’t muzak, or TV commercials, or the latest pop blockbuster. It is indeed whining.

We’re talking ourselves into a recession. Not just a ‘mental recession’ but a real one. One that will truly hurt a great many people. Some have already lost their jobs. Some have lost their homes. All this is undoubtedly real. But what got us here has mostly been a failure of intangible things: trust, confidence, willingness to offer credit, belief in the soundness of certain investments. In that sense, we are in a mental recession: a recession primarily caused, not by tangible problems of supply and demand, but by the panicky reactions of thousands of dealers and speculators in the world’s stock markets.

A feeble response at best

Given the pain all this is causing, to say nothing of the destruction of wealth on a massive scale, you might expect to find politicians and business leaders throwing themselves into the fight to turn things around. If so, you would be wrong.

All you hear are attempts to pass the buck and explain how helpless they are to do anything. It’s the Chinese (or the Indians, or the rest of Asia, or almost anyone they can think of). It’s too high a demand for oil (Whose fault is it that nothing has been done to improve mileage standards or cut back on oil imports for decades?). It’s market speculators (Who voted for deregulation of markets to allow them free run to speculate on whatever they want?). It’s silly people who bought homes they couldn’t afford (Who encouraged them to do so?). It’s globalization (Who’s rushing to outsource overseas everything from call centers to manufacturing plants to government computing?).

On and on it goes. Whine, whine, whine.

Blaming the other guy

Have you seen those daytime TV shows, hosted by some guru? They’re full of people who’ve messed up their lives by doing something so stupid you can’t believe they haven’t invented it to get on TV. Are they sorry? Do they admit they displayed the general brainpower of a dimwitted sea urchin? No way.

They whine. They blame their parents, their partner, society, the system, and the world at large for their own idiocy. They wallow in self-pity and avoid all reason. That’s what those in charge of the economy are doing today. They screwed it up, so now they’re screaming that it wasn’t their fault. It was the other guys.

You may spend from now to eternity contemplating your wretched emotional state, and blaming others for your own stupidity and greed, but nothing in the world will change. Spend an hour grasping the true facts of your situation, then taking the obvious next step, and you can transform the situation. Karl Marx claimed religion is the opium of the masses. As usual, he was wrong. It’s feeling sorry for yourself.

The ultimate substitute for action

Whining is a marvelous substitute for action. It allows you to feel hard done by and blameless, even as your world falls around you as a result of your own choices. Reality usually points to action. Reality is facing the facts and doing what needs to be done, not wallowing in self-pity and finger-pointing.

What’s the most fundamental problem people have — especially politicians and those who support them? They won’t face up to reality. They prefer to complain and ignore their own part in the problem, instead of apologizing, then acting to change the outcome.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
cannot bear very much reality.

     (T.S. Eliot: The Four Quartets: “Burnt Norton”)

Technorati Tags: whining, blaming others, finger pointing, lack of action, solving our problems, the uselessness of politicians, avoiding responsibility, talking us into a recession

Related articles by Zemanta

• Don’t Hope For A Better Life, Vote For One
• McCain Advisor: America’s a “Nation of Whiners”
• Barnes Defends Gramm: Americans Are ‘Whining All The Way Through’ The Bad Economy