My Thoughts for January 18, 2015

For this ole curmudgeon, the key to a more successful world is tolerance.  In addition to having the ability to endure physical pain (like a Navy Seal or Aaron Rogers, Green Bay Quarterback) it is also a willingness to live with customs, habits, or beliefs that are different than your own.  In this world of instant communication, tolerance is a key to calm living.  Try it, you might like it.

Tolerance will make for a better 2015, not that I expect much.  Change is the only constant and one change is the rise of the Millennials.  Yes, the dreaded Millennials!  It’s that group in their 20s and 30s.  They now account for about one-third of the work force, actually they’re everywhere.  Millennials have revealing characteristics: they are narcissistic; self-centered; they want everything now; many like their marijuana; and none of them seem to be able to count change.  (If you doubt their inability to make change, get served in a McDonalds when the computers are down.)

For the sake of tolerance, we must accept them, their legalization of marijuana, and their view on transgender rights, on religion, same sex marriage, and their willingness to quit a job that doesn’t offer them the highest pay, flexible work hours, paid work-leave, and promotions at the speed of light.  Millennials don’t believe the old rules apply to them; failure to satisfy a Millennial and they will quit a perfectly good job.

Jean Twenge, in an editorial printed in the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Pets will increasingly replace children as millennials face declining wages and delay entering adulthood longer than ever.”  Jean, I must take issue with that because research shows that people making low wages have more children.  How else are they going to get a fully funded EBT card?  Also, why should these millennials not delay entering adulthood?  The government has made it possible for them to remain on their parents insurance until age twenty-six. And in the name of love, parents allow them to live at home forever instead of giving them the boot, yelling, “GET A JOB!”

Being in-tolerant showed its ugly side this last couple of weeks and freedom of speech was sorely tested.  My heart and blessings go out to the people of Paris and Charlie Hebdo but I think we must have forgotten some things about freedom of speech.  To me, it was the terrorist Muslims that failed the tolerance test, but it was the cartoonist who failed to understand the limits of free speech.  If you’re going to lampoon something, tolerance demands that you damn well better know your subject matter.  In this case, they didn’t and unfortunately paid the price. 

Tolerance needs to be practiced in our newly elected Congress, particularly in the Republican Party.  It’s not a divided Party, it’s a fragmented Party.  You can evidence that by the number of Republicans that want to run for President in 2016.  Each one of them seems to represent a certain fraction within the Republican Party.  I’m not sure any of them know or are aware of tolerance; they’re too busy trying to make our present leader look bad.  They say they want more Hispanics and black folks to join their ranks, but their first bill to pass the House was aimed at crushing the President’s executive order that saved thousands of Hispanics from being deported to where drug cartels are killing people by the thousands.

Also, Republicans in many local precincts have constantly tried to block black people from voting.  Wow, that sounds welcoming!  Seems to me if the Republican Party wants to be a meaningful party in the future they better become more tolerant. Making it more difficult to vote and deporting people who have grown up in America is not the way to build a party’s membership.  Get a clue Speaker Boehner, get some tolerance.

Our ability for tolerance is in serious doubt, I think we can do it but then every time I think we’ve arrived something like Ferguson happens, or someone like Rudy Giuliani gets put on a talk show. Good grief!  My only hope can be found in an old farmer’s wisdom, “The cream always rises to the top.”  Thank goodness.

Seriously, folks, tolerance is the key to a safer and better world.