Far East Cynic

An attitude of gratitude……

I recieved one of those Glenn Beck inspired diatribes in an e-mail today. About how the country was going to hell in a hand basket, Nazis were at the gates of Birmingham and the hoof beats of the Apocalypse were just around the corner. 

Please-can we just all take a deep breath and calm down? 

Maybe if we Americans had an attitude of gratitude instead of an attitude of whining about what may or may not be taken away from us-we might get along better.

I drove home from work today with out getting blown up. True, I should have been able to take decent public transportation, but hey-one step at a time.  In three different countries today alone-that was not the case.

Right now, in my beloved Hong Kong,  145,000 Filipina maids will already be at work, scrubbing floors, cooking food, some of them getting beaten by their arrogant Chinese employers for having the audacity to ask for a Saturday off. Their reward for their labor-a whopping 600 dollars a month.  Some of them need the money so bad that they are willing to go to Laguna’s on Sundays and rent-to  a schmuck like me on holiday- the use of their bodies for a few hours thereby upping their income by 33%. How many American women have to do that?

A whole lot of Americans get to live in houses that by any objective standard, are HUGE.Especially compared to what people have to live with in other countries. We have yards,-I mean , Christ, I live in a house right now that is bigger than any house I ever owned before. And I was able to pay what I consider to be an obscene price for it. ( And that’s cheap compared to what people in DC and California pay for their houses.). Instead of whining about “socialism”, I should be down on my knees thanking God every day for the ability to make the house payment each month. Or praying to God that my heartless employer does not lay me off-solely so that it could make the stock price of my company go a up a few bucks. I don’t know about you-but I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. 

Even assuming, for argument’s sake, Obama is 100% wrong-it does not make him a Nazi, a Socialist, or any of the other names that have been conjured up for him. I looked back on all my old blog posts-as much as I hated Bush for the unforgivable sin of starting an unwinnable war for worthless Arabs-I never called him that.

I’m tired of the ungrateful bastards we seem to have become.  Try living the life some of the folks in : (insert third world country here), and then complain. We’ve got it pretty good compared to them. 

Maybe all of us-left or right-should try remembering that. 

Thus endeth the rant for the day.