Franklin Graham thinks all you technical people, you computer programmers and IT managers and such, have nothing to be proud of in your work.
“This is terrible. I live in North Carolina where so much of our manufacturing base has gone to other countries,” he insisted. “And people are out of jobs, are out of work. And they say, ‘But we’ll retrain you, we’ll let you be a computer programmer.’”
“They don’t want to be a computer programmer!” Graham continued. “They want to do the same job as their fathers and their grandfathers. There was pride in the manufacturing and the building. And we’ve taken all that away and it’s sad.”
Gosh. I wonder what he thinks of college professor. We don’t build nothin’.
Well, I guess I could go back to my roots. My father pumped gas for a good long while, and then worked as a diesel mechanic. I can’t honestly say that I ever dreamed of doing that for a living, but he was good at his job and worked hard.
His father before him was basically a seasonal farm worker, I think. I could aspire to apple-picking in Yakima during the fall, and working in the canneries in the winter, I suppose.
His father before him was also, I think, a migrant worker. His father before that was a farmer in Iowa who lost the farm in the aftermath of the Civil War. I suppose I could join the army and get malaria and lose everything I own. There has to be some pride in being host to millions of Plasmodium.
Before that, I don’t know many of the details, but I get the impression my family comes from a long line of scalawags and ruffians, which certainly does sound like something I could aspire to.
I wonder what Graham manufactures? At least I know there were no worthless, no-account, shameful, lying preachers in my ancestry.