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In reply to the discussion: This, my friends, is far too typical for my generation. [View all]brewens
(13,349 posts)would have a tough time getting or keeping any good job today. Of course they are exactly the type that consider themselves working class heroes and will tell you they built this country and want to take it back. Yeah right! The most many of them did was graduate from high school (barely in a few cases) and then take average Joe type jobs at the best time in history for guys like that.
Not that there was ever anything wrong with just an average guy showing up to work everyday, getting the job done acceptably and making it to a comfortable retirement. I kind of grew up expecting that's they way it should always be. My problem is all of those people like that who have done everything they could to go along with pulling up the ladder after them. Of course it's unwittingly for a lot of them. They were manipulated and lied to every step of the way for thirty or more years.
As long as they got theirs, had low taxes and cheap stuff, to hell with everyone else! If you expect to get the same deal they got, you have to be wanting to take what they have away. That's what they are led to believe or want to believe. Try and tell them any different and they react with anger.
I'd like to see some of these guys try and make it now. See how you do getting drunk at pool or bowling nights a few times a week and showing up hung-over at even their old job these days. A DUI used to just be a "boys will be boys" thing. Now even one can cost you your job. At our local mill, if something like that causes you to miss a shift, you're gone. A supervisor notices a problem and thinks your hung-over, you get tested for cause and fired. I knew guys that had numerous second chances in situations like that back in the 80's. I even know a retired beer driver that got a DUI driving his beer truck and didn't lose his job. Good luck out there today for those guys!
One example that is truly amazing is an elderly woman volunteer at the blood center where I work. If anyone should know better it should be her. Her husband was a retired union man who worked for years at our local paper mill. She herself finished her nursing career out there. She really has a heart of gold and will tell you she is pro-union to the bone. It's astonishing to me that she votes exclusively Republican, gets her news from Newsmax and hates Obama with a passion. I really think a lot of it is who she grew up being taught to trust. That would be older white authoritarian type men. Following that path did get her family raised and land her in a comfortable retirement after all. I don't think she is racist, at least not exactly, but I doubt she would really trust any minority in office, including women, if her leaders were telling her not to.