5. Carrots & honey vs sticks $ poo - shaming anyone in to doing something never works.
Thanks for sharing....(my obligatory "carrot/honey" response grudgingly offered in a politically correct world created by my generation to cover our collective arses).
A quick story.
A friend of mine went to a meeting last night where a young lady was featured who has had the guts to stand up for her local water supply being poisoned by decades of past and even present (obvious) industrial pollution. Her town's well head was located but a stone's throw from a wastewater treatment plant on the banks of the most polluted river in the area and had a creek running over the well which is regularly polluted to this day.
The entire town knew that they were sitting on a ticking time bomb save a younger generation who never witnessed her river running every color of the rainbow. Those who could warn her were either dead, moved away or presently keeping their mouths shut to preserve their property values and not necessarily drinking the water.
This woman was brought to the point of wavering voice and tears over the reality that her newly born daughter had been exposed to what my generation still refuses to talk about. Why would we? A good share of us frankly having the money to
avoid what she and her child have lived through every single day!
Lay her story on top of our story and you have the exact same issue: A bunch of privileged nose-in-the-air 'enthusiasts' unwilling to even so much as POINT to a life threatening problem let alone SOLVE it due to this problem not being
'our' problem. Or better put:
"But by the grace of God (who wouldn't want me to help anyways)
there go I"
My generation created/nurtured 'snowflakes' due to successive generations of hardened
hail figuratively falling on us before judgment time being somewhat problematic. We are
masters of the Oz-like pay-no-attention-to-(anything) PC-correct-or-we'lll-destroy-you mindset with a specialty degree in the massive debt required to (barely) get us all out of here unscathed.
We don't need to keep sincerely thanking people for their sacrifice in bringing further attention to safety issues in our sport. If you further believe that ANYBODY is going to change without threads like this one given what we continue to witness our own suffer through you are just plain mistaken.
Carrots and honey (nor sticks and pooh) did
not motivate that EPA official to blink an eye or spring in to action when he was told
in front of a whole town that a visibly polluted river was running right over the town's water source to their river for literally decades. What I hear today (or more importantly not) is the same strategy that MY generation uses when our neighbor's well being is in the balance:
Don't talk about it.
Fix it
yourself (hey, i heat treated and mirror polished my entire car to separate myself from everybody else..why should i bother with throwing them
that mere safety-related bone?)
...and in keeping with an entire 'clique' running away from this site over simply discussing safety issues (period)...
Move just as far away from those suffering
anything in a community you no longer have any allegiance to or stake in as humanly possible.
Disclaimer: This opinion was delivered in a high temperature manner not conducive to snowflake or honey coated ears.
