sifting out the hearts of men

The governor of our state came to the plant where I work to take a tour, today. For most tours, a manager or director takes the people in on the one side and then when they're done with that, they go in on the other side.

People work very hard and diligently on both sides, but the second side is the hardest and dirtiest. Grittiest. Most elemental.

So when the governor and the 7 or 8 people with him came out from the first side, they went --
straight out the door!
-- heading for the corporate building -- framed paintings on the walls, carpet, grand interior design, quiet, peace, High Incomes. ...

He skipped the gritty side. He remained distant from the hardest-working people.

I think that is the opposite
of what a Leader should do.

Was he squeamish?
Is he a sissy?
Is he all hat and no cowboy?

He may have simply been late for something.
(On the other hand, he came here later than the time we were told -- if he can be late for us, can he not be late for the Next Thing on his schedule...?)

Or maybe the decision to tour only the first side and not the second was made by a director in our company. At first I thought, in that case the governor should have said, "I'd especially like to tour the second side." On the other hand, he wouldn't want to seem to be throwing his weight around; in that case, that would be the right decision.

-------------------------------------
Thinking about this led me back to something else I was thinking about:
I have this idea --
our senators and representatives in Washington D.C. should spend two months (consecutive) each year they're in office
working in a regular job. They would trade places with the regular person in the regular job. The regular person would go to Washington and fill in for the representative or senator.

During the two months when the -- senator, for example -- is working as a -- mmh, teacher, let's say, he receives the pay that the teacher receives. During those two months, the teacher fills the senate seat and learns how things work out there, and receives the senator's salary.

A representative works in Washington for ten months, and then for two consecutive months trades places with an assembly line worker. For those two months the U.S. representative punches the clock, lives on the hourly wage, and if she gets sick and is out for two or three days, she loses pay for those three days.

(And they can't vote themselves a pay increase so that twelve months' of pay are condensed into ten and they actually end up making MORE by filling in for a person in a regular job. No, nononononono....Ah - don' think-so...)

The reason I think this, is because I think a big problem to be worked on and improved and removed is simply a lack of giving a damn about the people they're supposed to be representing. Having empathy, and fully realizing in a meaningful way that another person is -- A PERSON, TOO is something that all of our elected officials at the national level need to work on.

Just words -- listening to a working person speak, or reading a book -- isn't going to do it. They should go do the work and live on the pay. Physical experience is the key.

----------------------
When you read about what leaders in Congress say about the general population:
"the ordinary people"
"the everyday people"
....Go jump in the lake! I do not feel ordinary, the people I know and see are not "ordinary," they have extraordinary courage and intestinal fortitude to work for a living and battle it out in a society which has not selected them for pre-fabricated and agreed-upon fabulousness and free money, like the CEOs who bankrupt the business they're in and get rewarded with billions of dollars. That is the opposite of realistic. I am not an economist but it doesn't take John Kenneth Galbraith to know something's off with that system.

Maybe what is "ordinary" -- common -- is NOT a man who works for a living, a man who didn't start the 20-point game of life with 17 points, but rather with 0 -- that isn't ordinary, it's amazing.

Maybe what's common, ordinary, and un-amazing is a lying, name-calling, manipulating, oblivious self-promoter in Congress who "mysteriously" goes from being barely upper-middle-class when he arrives in Washington to being a millionaire. (Gee -- maybe he had a part-time job doing something that pays -- like -- really a lot - !)

---------------------------
When I worked with the state legislature, some of the representatives and senators would refer to their constituents, not as "ordinary" or "everyday," but as --
"the people out there"...

Out there. Ah.