Just some stuff

I am coming to believe that I suffer from the Cassandra Syndrome. You ask what is the Cassandra Syndrome? Wikpedia defines it as follows:

The Cassandra Syndrome is a term applied to predictions of doom about the future that are not believed, but upon later reflection turn out to be correct. This denotes a psychological tendency among people to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial. The person making the prediction is caught in the dilemma of knowing what is going to happen but not being able to resolve the problem without the cooperation of others.

That defininition fits the way I feel. I feel as though I see the future of this country in ten, twenty, thirty years and it isn't pretty because fat, lazy, apathetic Americans let our country get taken away from us by corporate greed, illegal immigration and corrupt politicians. I walk down the street and, instead of the kid who saw dead people in the Sixth Sense, I see ignorant and apathetic Americans. I want to slap every one of them and wake them up.

Ignorance can be cured by educating people. Apathy on the other hand is terminal.

With that being said, let me tell you three stories that all happened to me within the past week.

1) Just today I took my neighbor to a lumber yard to buy some 4 x 12 lumber because he did not have a truck to haul them in. We got to the lumber yard and he told the young cashier that he wanted four 4 x 12's 52 inches long. She first off asked 'How long is that?' I immediately told her four foot four inches. She looked at me like 'how did he figure that out so fast.' Then she asked how many inches total that would be. I said 208 inches. I got the same look again. Then she asked me, not my neighbor, whether a 10, 12,16 or 20 foot length would give us enough. I told her right off we needed 20 feet. She could not perform simple math tasks in her head. Is that the kind of education our youth are getting these days? Boy are we in for it if that is the case.
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2)The other night I was shopping and there was a Mexican couple in front of us. They had two shopping carts full of groceries. They seperated the two carts on the belt by one of those dividers and when the first section was done the husband pulled out a stack of bills from his front pocket almost 3/4 of an inch thick. They were all 100 dollar bills. Wow, I thought, this guy is raking in some cash. Then when it came time to pay for their second part they pulled out WIC coupons for low income families. The guy was carrying around more cash than I make in a month and he can qualify for low income foods? Plus he couldn't even understand the cashier when she spoke to him. His wife had to translate it into spanish so he could understand.

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3)There is an East Indian guy who has been working with me for about a month or two now. He seems kinda slow in the head but I have to try and train him. Yesterday in two hours he spilled enough fruit, (we were running diced dates) off the belt to fill two baskets. It takes 2-1/2 twenty five pound boxes to fill one red basket of wasted fruit. So that was 100 lbs already he spilled. So after lunch I took him aside and showed him how to do it properly explaining that he needed to keep an eye on the fruit coming off the belt. He had a big stupid looking grin on his face and was shaking his head up and down to the affirmative the whole time. So I let him try it again. We opened another pallet of dates and in the half hour it took us to dump it he had again filled up two more and he was grinning that stupid grin the whole time. I again asked him if he understood what I had showed him. He said yes. So I asked him why the red baskets were full again. He said the fruit just wouldn't hit the basket. I felt like slapping that stupid grin off his face.

I asked someone later why they don't get rid of people like him who can't do their job. I was told it was a twofold problem. First they said it was hard to get rid of anyone due to the union. Then, and this is the part that gets me mad, they told me that since he was East Indian we were expected to make exceptions for them.

Every job opening in that plant has the requirement that you be able to follow verbal and written instructions in English. Why then are we expected to tolerate a lack of ability to do just that. I was told it is because they are different and aren't expected to be fluent in English.

Rubbish! If you want to get by in this country how can you do so if you can't speak the language? My wife is Filipina and she speaks 3 Philippine dialects and English. So don't tell me people can't learn. If these people want to stay in this country I suggest they learn English or go back home. Our country got by fine without them before and if they leave it won't hurt us at all.

That is it, done ranting....for awhile anyway.