ATHOL DICKSON

Culture

American Success Story

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How to Go From Janitor to Corporate Executive
Future Corporate Executive?

“When you mop that floor, you make sure it shines and you make sure they know a Montañez did it.” When Richard Montañez went to work as a janitor at a Pepsico factory in 1976, those were his father’s words. According to Montañez, “I took that and have been living that statement ever since. It doesn’t matter who I work for, I work for my last name.”

That’s just one of many wise insights in this report about Montañez’s recent commencement address to the graduating class at Chaffey College, a two year community college in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Speaking to graduates receiving associate degrees and occupational certificates, Montañez shared the story of his rise from a factory janitor to PepsiCo’s director of multicultural sales and marketing across North America. 

Among his other pearls of wisdom:

  • When people tell him he started at the bottom: “No, I started at the beginning.”
  • Moral of a story about being marginalized in grade school because of his ethnicity: “Graduates, remember, you were not created to fit in. You were created to stand out.”
  • Although he dropped out of high school: “I do have a Ph.D.. I’ve been poor, hungry and determined.”

In addition to personal pride and hard work, Richard Montañez used his head and heart to succeed. School was difficult because he never heard English in his parent’s Spanish speaking household. He dropped out of high school. But as an adult he learned to read and write in English. And although he was “only” a janitor, when he had a good idea (Montañez invented Pepsico’s “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos” recipe) he had the courage to suggest it directly to the company’s CEO.

Would they let Richard Montañez speak at U.C. Berkeley?

Montañez’s rags-to-riches story is proof that the American dream still exists today for those willing to take risks and work hard, regardless of one’s roots. “He comes from a modest upbringing; his father and grandfather worked in the vineyards of what was then known as Guasti, near Ontario International Airport. He is one of 11 children, the eldest male.” He had no “privilege” growing up, white or otherwise, yet today he’s on the boards of some of America’s most influential institutions, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference where he is the first Latino ever to hold that position.

The “can-do” gumption and common sense advice in Montañez’s address to the graduating class of a two year community college stands in stark contrast to the pampered mindset of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” so prevalent in our major universities, where faculty and students would rather riot than listen to ideas that make them uncomfortable. Young people desperately need to hear from more people like Richard Montañez. What a pity it is when they won’t allow it.

 

 

Slave Labor Here and Now

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What slave labor looks like in America.
What slave labor looks like in America.

Is it really possible for slave labor to exist in American today? I never quite believed that could happen in our modern society. Then I read this story.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived.

She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been.

Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

Read the whole thing.

When Motives Don’t Matter

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Trump's Motives Don't Matter - Muslim Ban
Sometimes Even Fools Are Right

File this one under “even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Many on both ends of the political spectrum have concerns about the legality of President Trump’s executive order suspending immigration from seven countries with mostly Muslim populations. The most serious challenge rests on the fact that he clearly promised to ban “Muslims” from entering the US when he was campaigning for office. Over at Politico, they put it this way:

“I’d argue that even Muslims not on U.S. soil are protected [by the US Constitution]. Recent case law suggests that no act by a government official—no matter to whom it applies—can be based on disapproval of a race, ethnicity or religion. In other words, when it comes to Equal Protection, it’s the motive of the government and its agents that matters.”

Any government action motivated by discrimination against a person’s religious belief is morally wrong, not to mention unconstitutional, and not to mention foolish. After all, if President Trump were to ban Muslims today based on his alleged bigotry against them, what would stop him from banning Baptists tomorrow, based on the actions of those nasty people from the so-called Westboro “Baptist” Church?

But  a government employee’s personal motive doesn’t always matter, not even the President’s.

Many people believe FDR was personally prejudiced against Asians because of his WWII decision to imprison all Japanese-Americans while leaving citizens of German or Italian descent at liberty. Even the lefties over at the Huffington Post think FDR was a bigot. If they’re right, and if Politico is also right, wouldn’t that mean FDR’s declaration of war against Japan was discriminatory?

Stuff and nonsense, of course.

Sometimes ugly personal motives and righteous public policy align. And in a situation when we know that 100% of Islamic terrorists are self professed Muslims, it is illogical to assert that a more stringent visa application vetting process for foreign Muslims is discriminatory simply because Trump may be personally bigoted against Muslims. That’s doubly true when his policy is focused on a short list of countries with governments which are barely holding onto their own power, and are much too unstable to participate in a reasonably diligent immigration vetting process on their end. Given those facts, which are not about the practice of religion, Trump’s personal motive has nothing to do with the public purpose of the policy, which is sound and reasonable to anyone with common sense.

Might this explain how Donald Trump, a man so clearly filled with foolishness in so many ways, might nonetheless be getting so much right?

This is as good a place as any to mention that I think Donald Trump is a classic example of a Biblical truth. Sometimes God works through people who neither know Him, nor love Him. God does that many times in the Hebrew scriptures, using pagan countries like Babylon and Assyria to discipline Israel and Judah. For example, in one place he calls the ruthless Assyrians the “rod of my anger,” clearly stating that they are tools for his use, in spite of the fact that they oppose everything He stands for. And God sometimes accomplishes his plans through people who seem foolish by our standards. For example, Paul wrote this in connection with his own mission to tell the world about Jesus Christ:

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.   (1 Cor. 1:27-29)

Might this explain how Donald Trump, a man so clearly filled with foolishness in so many ways, might nonetheless be getting so much right? Might it explain how anybody gets anything right, since we all make fools of ourselves from time to time?

It’s certainly my theory, and I’m sticking with it.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Publish Them

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Did Donald Trump really lie?
Journalism’s code of ethics, apparently.

These days my first assumption when I see a report in the news media is that it’s a lie unless I can prove otherwise. Why would I make such a whacky assumption, you may ask? Well, we’re talking about an industry that promotes lying liars to the pinnacle of their profession, like Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Dan Rather. (If you don’t already know why I say they’re liars, please do click the links.) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, lying journalist-wise, so when they accuse someone of lying, I always assume the person is telling the truth. It’s a Bizarro World way of looking at the news, I know, but usually it works out because they’re almost always truly lying.

For example, take the dust-up over Trump’s claim in a speech to the CIA that the crowd at his inauguration was “yuuge!” The news media says he lied, so I decided to check out his speech for myself. You can see it too, by following this link to the Mirror, which posted a video of the whole thing. If you start watching at the 12:00 minute mark, you’ll hear Trump’s own words about the crowd size at his inauguration, instead of the Bizarro World version the media has been publishing. What he actually said was this:

“It looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington monument.”

Was that a lie?

Everyone in the mainstream media from CNN to The New York Times has piously proclaimed it was. To support their accusation they’ve been plastering a photo all over the place, which the photographer claims was shot at 12:01, while Trump was taking the oath of office. (I found a copy of the photo here, at the Daily Mail.) The photo shows a lot of empty space in the mall around the monument. But here’s the question you have to ask if you think most of these people are liars who are lying:

Was the photo really taken when they say it was, during the oath of office?

To believe that, you would have to believe the liars are not lying, which I don’t. But even if the photo really was taken during Trump’s oath, does that really mean Trump lied?

Umm… no.

Of course, nobody can get inside Trump’s head to know what he truly thought…

When you read the news media accounts of Trump’s CIA speech, most of them make it sound like he claimed there were a million and a half people at his inauguration. But look at Trump’s actual words again:

“It looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington monument.”

Notice what he actually said. “…it looked like a million and a half people…all the way to the Washington monument.” Get that? He didn’t say there were a million and a half people. He said it looked that way to him.

Of course, nobody can get inside Trump’s head to know what he truly thought about what he saw. So are the lying liars in the media willing to claim he’s lying about what it looked like to him? Probably, because you know, liars gonna lie. But here’s a photo which was also taken during the oath of office, not from the top of the Washington monument, but from behind Donald Trump, looking out toward the monument:

Lies about Donald Trump lying
What Trump saw.

Now, I ask you, from Trump’s point of view, doesn’t it look like the crowd “went all the way to the Washington monument?” It sure does to me. Whether that’s what a million and a half people looks like, I don’t know, because I’ve never seen that many people. And neither has Donald Trump. most likely.  Up to that day the biggest crowd he had ever addressed was probably at one of his many heavily attended campaign stops. Even the Quicken Loans Arena, where he addressed the Republican National Convention, only holds 20,562 people. So if Trump was mistaken in his estimate, it’s an understandable mistake because, holy cow, look at all those people!

And out here in the real world, a mistake is not a lie.