The 2016 Reunion [View all]

[H2O Man]

Being a creature of habit, with a predisposition for using simple models to illustrate various “systems,” I found that my children were receptive to learning about society by considering their classes in school. It’s a method that most people can easily understand, and discuss politics, economics, and even the justice system. I think that it might even be useful for promoting understanding between people here. But, of course, I could be wrong.

Most of us have had the experience of going to public schools for K through 12th grade. In some cases, people went to one district; others moved around with their families. But, to some extent, we were in a sub-group of our community …..and that subgroup was fairly representative of that community. Obviously, not every family or individual in the community had a child attending school, but enough did that the last names of your classmates were representative of the inhabitants of your neighborhood or community.

In our classes in school, we sat in the same rooms as the children of the wealthy parents, the middle class parents, and the poor parents. And, although we might wish otherwise, these students’ experiences within the school system was influenced by their parents’ socio-economic status. This includes the student’s expectations for their standing within the system of their classmates.

Most of us knew some version of George W. Bush in school, for example ….a cocky, arrogant loud-mouth, with an obnoxious sense of entitlement. No one really liked him, although the “upper-crust” pretended that they did. The faculty and administration held him to a very different standard than they did the other students: if he was suspected of cheating on his homework, teachers looked the other way; if he got caught skipping class, the administration took the “boys will be boys” approach.

We likely encountered a Ted Cruz, as well. The self-righteous, bible-tooter, who took pleasure in being the class tattle-tale. We knew a Marco Rubio, who convinced himself that he was so slick, that he could out-smart anyone and everyone. Our little Marco’s tend to position themselves near the George W.’s, both for opportunity and protection. We had a version of a Willard Romney, the rich geek who took perverse pleasure in bullying the vulnerable kids.

Upon graduation from school and college, these characters provided proof positive about the nature of DNA, by rapidly morphing into their parents, as indistinct as the next generation of dandelions. Today, they are the establishment of our local communities, our state capitals, and Washington, DC.

We understand that the 1% are going to have most of the wealth in our society. And that is okay, because we see that money is their god. They worship the dollar. What we have a problem with, though, is that they are the primary recipients of the school’s free lunch program, which was intended to provide meals for the students from low-income families.

We also have a problem with the manner in which they believe that, to borrow a phrase, some animals are more equal than others. They are convinced that, as the 1%, they have the right to determine not only who will win every election, but even who is allowed to run. And they have been getting away with that type of behavior for far too long.

This has allowed them to stack the deck at every level of government. Hence, for far too long, government has simply served as a tool to advance their business interests. Their sense of entitlement is such that they feel justified in making decision that reward their interests, while damaging the quality of life for the rest of their classmates. It might be deciding to frack under your property -- say, for example, the farm that has been your family’s home for generations. That it poisons the water supply for your neighborhood means nothing to them, for they worship the dollar.

They may determine that their corporations might benefit from a military invasion of a country -- perhaps in the Middle East -- to allow them to control that nation’s natural resources. Obviously, they will not consider sending their own children to “serve” in harm’s way. So they send the recent graduates from the poor and middle class families. They mask their intentions with patriotism, and pretend to honor the military. Right. Hard to line that up with the disgraceful manner in which the needs of veterans’ are so often ignored.

Like Claire Standish in “The Breakfast Club,” they have convinced themselves that everyone wants to be part of the 1%, that everyone looks up to them, and that the school simple could not function without them. Indeed, this is the shared delusion of the dollar-worshipper’s club.

Today, of course, that delusional system they subscribe to is at risk of being shattered. It’s bad enough, in their opinion, that another loud-mouthed rich kid is challenging to be named prom king, and that quite a few students who the 1% had counted on to support them are backing this fellow. But even more outrageous -- and totally unacceptable -- one of the poor kids who reads books and earns good grades is convincing students that the prom is intended for everyone. The entire class is paying for it, and should have equal say in how their money is spent.

The 1% feel betrayed by the others listening to this trouble-maker. They have tasked a teachers’ aide, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, with putting Bernie in check, but that isn’t working quite the way they planned. Thus, their outrage has now gone beyond Bernie, and targets those other students who recognize that what he is saying makes sense. In fact, what he is proposing is exactly what is found in the social studies books they read in school, which describe how our constitutional democracy is supposed to work.

My kids are no doubt looking forward to my class reunion this summer coming and going, so that they don’t have to listen tome babble on and on about this topic.

Peace,
H2O Man