Mine are, a lot of the time. Because what I do is often very dirty. Not always- some of what i do is some high end computer design, but some of it is just get-your-hands-dirty work, and I like the variety just fine.

I’m no stranger to dirty work, because I am the child generation of survivors of the Depression. My father was born in November of 1929. His childhood- as you can imagine- was not pretty. He was lucky, though, because he had a roof over his head, and a family farm to live by, and live they did. Nobody in my fathers family went hungry, and they fed less lucky people in their hometown as well. A lot of people in that time did anything to find work, anything to find a way to make a living. And none of it was easy for anyone.

The depression ended, years late thanks to the offices of that supreme dumbass Roosevelt. And a lot of those people didn’t make it. Some made it but barely, and some, because they’d learned the value of hard work during their poverty, thrived. They continued to work hard and be thrifty and they did well for themselves, and succeeded.

And because they had a firsthand memory of that poverty, of the grinding nature of constantly having your belly and your backbone becoming too acquainted, they cared. They did what they could for people who weren’t quite so fortunate. And those memories were hard ones, and sometimes they were crushing reminders of that hard time, they chose not to dirty their own hands, but instead chose to give of their money rather than their time. THe money then went into the hands of people less than scrupulous about how it was spent- our government- and it was not distributed according to need, but according to the ability to garner political favor.

Eventually, the recipients got the feeling that the money was coming from the government. And that the source was endless. The members of the Government were completely willing to take credit for the cash, when it was actually those people who had worked through the grinding depression.

We are on the verge of repeating this very thing. If the healthcare bullshit passes, our economy is going to hit the toilet hard, and it will take an awful lot to recover.

Nothing about this will be fun.

People will perish.

Nothing could be better for our country than for this to happen, and happen hard. Once people have been hit hard by the lesson of a new “great depression” and the utter failure of socialism and all it’s iterations, once people realize that no social program ever benefited anyone, as much as it wasted money, once the lesson has been painful and hard, it may be the beginning, it may sow the seeds of a real change- a change that takes us back to the roots of this country. Burn off the weeds and chaff, and get back to the beginning. This would be horribly, painfully hard. It could easily cut our population by 1/3. During that time we will be vulnerable to many things- economic/political/theological upheavel among them. If we’re not careful, those things could change us horribly. If we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty, though, if we’re not afraid to make sure that the benefits of our work and our charity go where they are truly needed, we may survive. If not, we could go through all this shit, and in a hundred years, be right back where we are again.

Keep your powder dry, folks.