A fine whine? Uh, not really
Baseball’s attendance is in steep decline. Maybe the game is too slow, or too many teams stink. And maybe it’s too pricey, or the weather has been bad.
Then again, maybe it’s because Americans have found a new favorite pastime. Whining.
Because, without exaggeration, that’s damn near the only thing we do anymore.
We whine, complain, whine some more, boycott (usually in name only), grouse, grumble, gripe, and whine again – followed by, of course, blaming someone else for our own shortcomings.
It’s getting really old, really fast. Whining comes is all forms, and our children are the worse for it, since they follow our example.
• Our youth are more emboldened than ever to talk back to their elders and disrespect authority. In game after game, players, some as young as 7 or 8, get in referees’ faces about a “bad call.” Blaming refs has become a rite of passage for every losing team (and its coaches and parents), rather than players accepting responsibility for not practicing hard enough (playing Xbox instead), not listening to coaches, or being beaten by a superior team. Nope. Someone must be blamed. Just never themselves.
And not only do we blame refs, but for many, it’s a grand conspiracy against their team – the ultimate in egocentrism – because yeah, the ref in a grade school game is “on the take” for your opponent.
• In school, we whine when Johnny doesn’t get good grades or is disciplined. In prior generations, when a child got into trouble at school, they also got punished at home. Now, it’s the opposite. Little Johnny can do no wrong, as both he and his parents often blame everyone else, including teachers, for Johnny’s bad behavior. Whitewashing one’s mistakes is akin to condoning them, which reinforces the notion that actions have no consequences.
In reality, Johnny’s problems stem from parents not lifting a finger to help with homework or be involved, rationalizing that, since they pay taxes, that’s not their responsibility. “It’s the teacher’s job, and I pay the teacher’s salary,” we hear, leaving educators with no hope of maximizing students’ learning potential. When the teacher-parent partnership goes awry, students are doomed to mediocrity, or worse.
• People bereft of facts automatically blame police for “brutality” and “racism” after the arrest of a loved one – since after all, the “victims” are always angels. Rarely, if ever, is there an admission that the real reason for the arrest was that a crime was committed.
But perhaps the greatest volume of whining occurs in politics.
Locally, we have Republicans whining about their historic losses in southeastern Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of the election, they have been alternately blaming Donald Trump (who was a contributing factor, but the GOP’s electoral defeats were occurring long before Mr. Trump emerged), demographics, dirty politics and even Leftist financier George Soros.
Yes, the majority of those relocating to Delco may not be Republican, but many aren’t political at all. So where was the GOP’s outreach to them? Why didn’t Republicans on all levels – county, state and national – engage immigrant communities and new constituencies with a message of inclusion, citing the Republican platform as the best way to achieve economic and physical security? Why wasn’t door-to-door occurring in the years since the last election? Why weren’t ad campaigns launched touting the Republican record on jobs, lower taxes and a booming economy? And no, countless negative mailers at election time don’t count. Not only are they white noise, but they aren’t positive. Legitimate negative attack ads are one thing, but if you don’t offer an aspirational message, and instead rely on the ineffective playbook from decades ago, the outcome will almost always be undesirable.
And too bad I don’t have a nickel for every time a Republican whined that “George Soros funded the Democrats’ campaigns.” Yeah, and? “Well, he wants to destroy America.” Even for chronic whiners, that’s pathetic.
So a billionaire contributes to campaigns. Who cares? How is that relevant to anything? Should his wealth and ideology prevent him from exercising his freedom of expression? Yes, Mr. Soros is an unabashed Leftist who espouses liberal, and even socialist, ideas. Great! Here’s an idea. Instead of whining about him, maybe Republicans should have had more faith in their own ideas, and actually campaigned on them, illustrating how free markets and the rule of law trump socialism and open borders. That takes work, however, so it wasn’t done. Sure it’s easier to complain than to roll up sleeves and do the heavy lifting, but whining doesn’t win elections.
Where does it end? Democrats are the same, incessantly whining about right-wing billionaire contributors (such as the Koch family), the NRA, and pro-life groups. It’s become so intolerant that the Left not only organizes boycotts against businesses of Donald Trump supporters (such as Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus and New York developer Stephen Ross), but, in an attempt at “shaming” people, routinely publish names of those donating to the president.
Democrats should be advocating their ideas rather than constantly bashing Donald Trump on things about which most Americans do not care. But they don’t. Instead, they have been hung up on losing a race that everyone – most of all Hillary – thought was 100 percent in-the-bag. So it’s no surprise that Mrs. Clinton has been leading the charge that Donald Trump should not be president.
Instead of that Quixotic quest, Hillary and her party would face better prospects if they simply looked in the mirror, admitting that arrogance led to their defeat. By choosing to ignore the “safe” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Hillary set the stage for her own defeat. But blaming everyone but herself masks that fact – an error that, if not understood, could prove decisive in 2020.
It’s been three years, and the whines of the Left are louder than ever, which is really saying something. From Day One, liberals have been in a stupor, unable to get past the election, and wholly incapable of articulating any message other than “Donald Trump has to go.”
First, it was “Donald Trump isn’t my president.” Then they tried to delegitimize him by claiming the Electoral College disenfranchises voters, and that Hillary should be president because she won the popular vote. That was followed by calls to impeach Mr. Trump solely because they didn’t like him and his policies. That obviously didn’t work, so “Russian collusion” was invented to discredit him. After dominating headlines for two years – to the detriment of all Americans – it turned out to be nothing. Now, on the eve of the 2020 race in which Democrats have no clear frontrunner, with Mr. Trump looking formidable, the Ukraine impeachment hearings are underway.
To the Democrats, nothing else matters, and it shows. No solutions are on the table to stem rising college tuition costs, solve the student loan crisis, fix the border, overhaul immigration policy, reign in the deficit, or reform health care. Instead, it’s all impeachment, all the time – which, at its core, is nothing more than whining on steroids.
Once upon a time, Nancy Pelosi was a Speaker who got things done, like passing Obamacare. Agree with her or not, she was a highly effective leader. But now, her party risks implosion should its all-things-anti-Trump message backfire.
During a recent summit on activism, a leader criticized the blame-for-the-sake-of-blame culture, stating “… accelerated by social media, there is this sense of ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough.’” He added: “… if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
“That’s not activism,” he continued. “That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”
Well said, well said.
Hopefully both sides will be “woke” to that message. Otherwise, when the stuff hits the fan, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves – just as it should be.
President Obama,