Rant: "People who work for a living; people who take a shower after work"...WTF is that?

[haele]

61. I'm retired Navy and worked shipyards; been the only woman in my workplaces most of my life.

I understand manufacturing jobs - before I f'ed up my back and right leg in a workplace injury, for 15 years, I regularly carried a 50 lb toolbox (and occasionally welding equipment) around up and down decks for up to ten hours a day, five days a week; I've done on-site demo with some pretty hefty HP tools, fabrication, ran heavy power cable and waveguide as well as running systems operational testing, because there was typically very few other engineers who could do both the on-site "change engineering" along with understanding the "grunt work" necessary to do shipboard weapons network and communications systems installations. And I kept learning while I was working.

Even though it seems I'm slamming on hard working decent people, I'm actually more insulted with the patronizing tone that politicians like Ryan make, isolating those hard working, decent people from the rest of society using pandering and stereotyping.
When I got injured - at the age of 51 - I had to realize what the future for me actually was and look at my options to go forward. I was lucky to both have had the training and live in a community, in a state where there were resources and the social support that helped me to start over, even at my advanced age. It took time, but I did it.

If my leaders, my representatives, had kept going on and on; implying that it was the work I did before was the only real measure of my worth to Society and that it was the worst thing in the world that I lost my job, because I *no longer meet the requirements of my designated task*, it basically would force on me the realization that I and my family were disposable and not worth an investment by society. That sort of backhanded patronization is an effort to infantilize me, and diminish my potential and worth as a Citizen.

So is my complaining about politicians pandering to "Working Class" by saying "those Elitists" are out of touch over their legitimate concerns is somehow more demeaning to them than that pandering fostering and reinforcing their fears they are disposable to society because they can't do what they're supposed to do according to the stereotype they've been living? That they should be expected to cling to "their traditional place in society" rather than work with those "damn elitists " to look to build other opportunities and solutions in a realistic future?


Haele