Boo hoo

On the same day that the Dow plunged 2 percent and the Nasdaq 2.6 and gas shot close to $150 a barrel, Phil Gramm, one of John McCain's economic advisors, had a message for Americans: The recession that so many of us were worried about was only a "mental recession" and Americans had become"a nation of whiners."

Gramm is a former Republican Senator and a vice-chairman of the Swiss bank UBS. In his former position, he sponsored legislation that melted through the traditional firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms, creating the conditions that led to the current mortgage crisis.

As an executive at one of the world's largest investment banks, he is better paid than all but a handful of the people he calls whiners, this even though UBS took a severe hit for its investments in subprime mortgages-- investments that Gramm, in his previous capacity, had made possible. (One of the ways in which the bank may have recouped was by selling tax-evasion services to wealthy clients. It is now the subject of a federal investigation.

Gramm, at least, is consistent in his opinions. Witness the rhetorical question he is supposed to have posed during his first Senate campaign: Has anyone ever noticed that we live in the only country in the world where all the poor people are fat?

Now it may be true that America has become a nation of whiners. I'd say it's whining when insurance salesmen feel entitled to drive vehicles designed for the use of the military or the forestry service, and are put out when it becomes too expensive for them to continue doing so. And it's probably whining to rail against illegal aliens while expecting to buy your produce on the cheap and pay less than minimum wage for landscaping. "I want my MTV!" is a whine. So is, "I want my DVR!" or "I want my Blu-Ray!"

You can use the same rule of thumb you use with children. A child who grouses because the Pizza Hut doesn't have the stuffed-crust option is in fact whining, and if the habit is not discouraged he will likely grow up to be an unpleasant human being.

A child who cries out of hunger, or cold or sickness, or because he is being beaten, is not whining.

Simone Weil writes that every time someone cries out in the depth of his being "Why am I being hurt?" we are in the presence of injustice.

By this reckoning, the cry, "I want to keep my home!" is not whining.

Whining is one of the slanders commonly leveled against suffering people by those who on investigation often turn out to be the authors of that suffering. At the very least, they are its apologists.

In Belfast in August 1971, at a time of heightened unrest in Northern Ireland, British soldiers and military police, acting on instructions emanating from the highest levels of government, rounded up a group of Catholics on suspicion of terrorism. They were held without charges and subjected to practioes that were not yet being called "coercive interrogation techniques." At the time they were known as the Five Techniques.

They were handcuffed and hooded.
Noise-- surviving prisoners describe it as sounding like a hissing pipe or a roaring engine or the whirr of helicopter blades-- was pumped into their cells unabatingly, so that it was impossible for them to sleep.
They were deprived of food and water.
They were made to stand for hours with their hands braced against a wall, a position that over time became a torment; if they lowered their hands, they were beaten.

Years after their release many of the prisoners were still traumatized.
One had become hypersensitive to the least sound, for example, that of a comb being set down on a bathroom shelf. Another was tortured by fears of illness and had to be checked into a psychiatric hospital. Physical exams found nothing wrong with him, but 4 months later he died of a heart attack at the age of 45.

When the London Sunday Times reported on these abuses, the British government denounced it for printing "the fantasies of terrorists."

And when General Harry Tuzo, the commander of the army in Northern Ireland, was interviewed about the case in 1982, he remarked that the victims had not been tortured but only suffered "acute discomfort and humiliation" and had been "very well compensated and looked after."

He concluded, "I personally would have thought that they had got over it by now."

In other words, the victims had been whining.