I am going to start this piece with a little gift of five
magic words for you: “I CAN’T never did anything.” They are words that I heard many times
growing up. They were sometimes spoken harshly, other times spoken as
encouragement. They were never spoken to deride, diminish or demean. They were
spoken by a man that lived by them. That man was my father.
My Dad was a fighter. He lost his own father when he was 9
years old. In order to help support his family, he worked several jobs while he
went to school. He did his homework late at night after he got home from work.
In 1944, he graduated as class valedictorian then went into the Navy to fight
for his country. He was near the top of his class in radio school where he
learned the emerging technologies of RADAR and LORAN systems. He was on one of
the first hurricane hunter missions where the Navy flew a plane into the eye of
a storm. On that mission they lost an engine and nearly went down, but they
fought their way back.
In his career, my father advanced by solving problems.
Adversity was his friend and constant companion, and he used it to excel. As a
result, the young man who started out climbing poles for the phone company in
1946 retired from one of its executive offices in 1982. Along that journey, he
lived by his personal standards of fairness and hard work. He imparted those
standards to the people around him, and held them to account. I suspect that he
pulled many of those people along with him. Those of us who were privileged to
know him were taught a valuable lesson: It’s not what happens to you in life,
it’s what you do with it.
“I CAN’T never did anything.” It was a phrase that defined
my father, his generation, and many generations before his that had the benefit
of being born in this country. The term “American Exceptionalism” is often
confused with patriotism and nationalism. Those things do grow from it but we
as Americans are not exceptional because of some genetic trait. America is
exceptional because its founding permitted citizens to profit from their
dreams, to express what they felt, to freely create and produce, and to be who they
were without interference from a king, sovereign, or politburo. Americans by
benefit of our Constitution are free spiritually, intellectually and
economically. Liberty combined with free markets empowers all men and women.
That power feeds the human spirit with inspiration, imagination, and faith. It
makes an individual think “I CAN”.
Put more simply, when I told my father: “I CAN’T” do so and so because of such and
such his response was “I CAN’T never did anything” (often accompanied by a cuff
to the back of my head). The lesson was
that you won’t know what you can do until you try. You may try and fail, but
when you try and succeed you gain character and self-worth. Once that lesson is
learned, a person will try on their own to extend themselves and take risks
toward further accomplishments, and they will do so without a smack in the
head. Dreams and successes perpetuate
themselves, and when human beings are permitted to think in such a way,
Greatness often occurs. This is Who We Are as Americans.
So how, you may ask, did Donald Trump win a presidential
election running on the slogan “Make America Great Again?” It’s because Who We
Are has changed. Who We Are is beaten down and stepped on. Who We Are is
confused, depressed, angry and afraid. Anger and fear are the enemies of
creativity. Confusion and depression sap the foundations of hard work and
accomplishment.
The things that are changing us have been growing in this
country for decades. Consider that in 1930 we built the Empire State Building
in 410 days. In 1968, we built the two World Trade towers in three years; they
were taken from us on September 11, 2001. The Freedom Tower that replaced them
was not completed until 2013. It took us six years to build it and five years
before that to figure out how we wanted to do it. The Keystone XL Pipeline was
started in 2010 and it may never be finished. We seem to have developed an
inherent inability to move, to focus on what needs to be done, to isolate what
problems need to be solved. We have changed how we think.
There are two fundamental reasons for this change, and the
first one is our government. The government of our founding was an enabler. Its
job was to ensure our safety, enforce our laws and to hold an even playing
field so that we as individuals could grow. The government we have now is an
oppressor, here to tell us what we must and must not do. It stops us at every
turn to check in and make sure we are still doing those things correctly. It
stifles our ability to think freely and slows our ability to grow. It makes us think “I CAN’T.”
When Barack Obama had the unmitigated arrogance to tell our
nation’s business owners “you didn’t build that,” he was in essence saying,
“You pathetic little people. You cannot create anything without us. You cannot
succeed unless we tell you how to make your products, who you will hire, where
you will get your health care, and how you will distribute your profits.” This really
sucks the enthusiasm out of the old entrepreneurial spirit.
Facing such obstacles,
it’s easy to think “why bother?” Just put your dream aside and become one of
the 49.5% of Americans now on some form of public assistance. Public assistance
is not a bad thing mind you, but when it becomes a way of life it too saps the
basic human need for fulfillment and fosters thoughts of “I CAN’T.”
When I was having trouble getting my own business off the
ground my father gave me another quote. He said, “the only way an airplane ever
takes off is by running it flat out and straight into the wind.” I think of
these words often when in need of inspiration, but lately I am reminded that no
airplane can take to the sky with two tons of government on each wing.
The other problem we have with how we think is how we speak.
Your words are a reflection of your thoughts and likewise what you say changes
how you think. Just ask Winston Smith from Orwell’s 1984. Our current national lexicon is changing, and not for the
better. Our confusion and loss of self-worth is supported by our very language.
Less than two years ago, a person claiming that “All lives matter” was considered
to be fair and moral. Say it today, and you are labeled a deplorable racist.
We are continually fed euphemisms that obfuscate the true
meaning of things. Global Cooling became Global Warming, which then became
Climate Change. The underlying message is that whenever the weather is bad,
it’s your fault. That part is still the same.
The term “Sanctuary Cities” is a dangerous euphemism.
“Sanctuary Cities” are places where the local government protects illegal
immigrants (undocumented workers) from federal prosecution for violating our
immigration laws. It does this while providing these people taxpayer funded
services meant for its citizens. Previously, this activity would be referred to
as “aiding and abetting”, or “harboring a fugitive”, both of which are
felonies.
In December 2016, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser asked
her city council to deny shelter to homeless people if they couldn’t prove they
were from her city. It seems the district was spending $80,000 a day on hotel
rooms because their homeless shelters were full of outsiders who crossed their
borders. The mayor’s concern was that the city’s budget would soon be exhausted
and there would be no money to take care of their citizens. Interestingly, the
same mayor proudly proclaimed that the District of Columbia would remain a
“Sanctuary City”. Was she insane or just confused? It’s hard to tell these days.
President Obama was fond of telling us “That’s not Who We
Are” when trying to convince us to accept things that he thought were ok, but
we were too small minded, selfish, imperialistic or racist to agree. He used
this phrase 46 times during his presidency to support things like open borders,
Islamic terrorism in our homeland, or the takeover of our healthcare system. I
find this particularly distressing because I don’t think he ever had a clue as
to Who We Are, and after eight years of his leadership WE no longer know Who We
Are. We don’t even know which bathroom to use.
In 2016, Boston, Chicago, and New York were among many major
metropolitan areas that saw a surge in their rat populations. Health concerns
became serious. Rat abatement budgets swelled. People even began using feral
cats to help with this growing problem. Then someone came up with the idea of
putting dry ice down the rats’ burrows and covering their holes. When dry ice
melts, it turns into Carbon Dioxide (CO2), which is actually used in
laboratories to humanely euthanize test animals. CO2 is also heavier than air,
so it sinks to the bottom of a burrow and kills the rats underground where they
die peacefully and don’t even need to be picked up. Carbon Dioxide is a gas
found naturally in our environment, it is what we exhale and what plants
absorb. It is not only better for the environment than rat poison, it’s
cheaper. Genius! The idea started in Boston, then quickly spread to New York
and Chicago which reported a 60% decrease in its rat population that summer.
Ideas like this are what used to make people rich in this country. But now…
In September of 2016, People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) began protests in Chicago claiming that rats do not deserve to
die from dry ice and instead “merit our protection.” Then in October, all three
cities were told to stop the use of dry ice for rat abatement because they were
in violation of federal law. It seems that the Environmental Protection Agency
does not have dry ice registered as an accepted rodenticide. As 2016 came to a
close the practice was stopped, and once again “Who We Are” was defined by
complicated federal guidelines and “I CAN’T” raised its ugly head. But wait,
stop and look at how obvious the solution to this really is…
When President Elect Trump made the deal to keep Carrier
from moving jobs to Mexico, he inspired a brilliant observation from The View’s
chief economic analyst, professor Joy Bahar. While trashing Trump’s idea she
noted that, “the problem is we’re losing jobs to robots not to Mexicans…we’re
losing it to technology.” I found this a fascinating example of where we are
right now, because if you turn this negative thought around, you will see
opportunity. If we have for decades been losing manufacturing jobs to cheap
foreign labor, and if new robotic technology replaces the need for that labor,
then why don’t we focus on becoming the leaders in high tech robotic
manufacturing? We could change the labor force from assemblers and laborers to
programmers and technicians. With the
help of some corporate tax cuts from an enabling government we could bring
manufacturing jobs back from all over the world and end the decades old problem
of losing American jobs to cheap foreign labor. It’s all in how you look at the
problem, how you think about “Who We Are.”
We need to be able to think for ourselves again and, in
doing so, realize that the repressive rules and defeatist brainwashing we have
been living with is, in the words of Sheldon Cooper “Complete Hokum.” Part of
what has been beating us down is the continual claim from those in charge that
nothing is “that simple”, that every problem is fraught with a complexity that
only our most esteemed intellectuals and brightest politicians (truly a
contradiction in terms) can figure out for us. This Hokum is what tells us not
to try.
Maybe it’s time to start looking inward and realizing that
we are not as stupid as our leadership keeps telling us. Maybe we should start
to realize that “Who We Are” is the product of what WE do and that WE are the
ones who once made this country great. When WE are the brains behind the
operation again, and government “for the people, by the people” starts working
for us instead of against us, then “Making America Great Again” really will be
“that simple”. When we change the way we think and believe in ourselves again,
we will start to see problems as challenges instead of insurmountable
obstacles. Pick up your dry ice people, and throw it down the rat hole of
self-doubt. Stop listening to all the Hokum and listen to yourselves again, and
say it with me…“I CAN’T NEVER DID ANYTHING!”
Once that is done, “Making America Great Again” requires
only three simple steps…
First, change government from an oppressor to an enabler. Dismantle
our onerous rules, taxes, and regulations. It CAN be done if the people insist
on it.
Second, give us some positive leadership that believes in the
American people for a change. Leadership that supports “Who We Are”, and what
we can do. We need leaders who acknowledge an individual’s inherent need to
achieve.
Third, get out of the way and let us, the American people do
the rest.
It Is That Simple!
I am thinking of sending this to President Trump to see if
it comports with his current agenda. While I’m at it I will ask if in 2020 he
can change his campaign slogan from “Making America Great Again” to “I CAN’T
Never Did Anything”. Maybe he will give
it some thought. After all, it worked for my father.
Buddy Walker
