When Did Americans Become So Squeamish? – OpEd

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It used to be, judging from those little time capsules known as movies and motion pictures, that Americans used to be a brave, tough, and resilient lot, with thick skin and an even thicker sense of self-confidence. 

Americans were known the world over for being brash, bold and even boorish at times. 

Think of one our greatest American Presidents, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who epitomized the American wild west, even though he was born and came into money, he fought long and hard to shed that image. 

Teddy Roosevelt later became what Vladimir Putin has become today on the global stage, a bare-chested half man, half animal, with the suave smooth sophistication to also know how to put on a good suit. 

Even the iconic James Bond characters have become more lukewarm and soft, coming all the way down from Sean Connery’s gritty (if not almost criminal) mannerisms and behavior, then lilting by the increasingly effeminate Roger Moore, and then landing at the all around pretty Pierce Brosnan, who was then finally replaced by the ruggedly ugly Daniel Craig, kind of like how James Bond always seemed to pull up his crashing plane before hitting the cliffs. 

Well, at least the British get it.

And this is also probably one of the reasons that the British Monarchy always makes sure that their sons serve in the military –  the Royal Air Force or whatever, in order to go through that man-making rite of passage as even the Native American Indians used to put their prepubescent children through, often banishing them for a few weeks or months to live out in the wild, cold, hungry, scared and alone, until what came back was either dead, or hard as nails. 

Because life is hard, and survival is hard. 

We lose sight of that reality in a soft and tepid society where no one really is worried about where their next meal is coming from, whether from their parents, their schools, or the nearest soup kitchen, or worst of all, jail. 

But there still are people starving in this world, in the poorer parts of the world, where they would pray for a stale peanut butter and jelly sandwich from their local penitentiary. 

Unfortunately, this is also part and parcel of the American working world, where employee rights have gone so high that now, that to even swear in front of another employee if one stubs their toe, theoretically creates a “hostile working environment,” where the communist infiltrators at the local Department of Labor (mostly New York City) jot that down and use it to shovel free taxpayer money at the eternally slovenly, lazy, and miscreant “quiet quitters” of the modern millennial age. 

Gone are the self starters, the bullet biters, and the lift yourself up by the britches type of American in corporate and mainstream America. 

Part of the blame can fall on the globalized society of today, where the soft handed, lotion using Europeans have come over to the Americas in droves, looking for jobs and easy sex, as their economies stagnate and tank due to the lack of the aforementioned grit, ingenuity, and creators of American industry and technology. 

Even American bankers and financial professionals have a much fouler tongue than their European or other older civilization counterparts, which are always dominated by generationally wealthy soft handed well educated professionals. 

So let’s not lose our American Pioneer Spirit, or the Wild Wild West that used to punctuate our every step and move in today’s reluctantly globalized America – because at the end of the day, that’s what made America great in the first place. 

Not “polite English.”

Rahul Manchanda

Rahul D. Manchanda, Esq, was ranked among Top Attorneys in the United States by Newsweek Magazine in 2012 and 2013. Manchanda worked for one of the largest law firms in Manhattan where he focused on asbestos litigation. At the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Manchanda was exposed to international trade law, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and comparisons of the American common law with European civil law.

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