America is Different

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess, and enjoy early and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world, or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

F. Scott Fitzgerald


Of course now days that sense of superiority described by Fitzgerald can be applied to a couple of different demographics, besides the rich. You can see shades of it in both celebrity and race and in politics and faith.

Indeed, here in the 21st century, it appears being rich, even when you aren't, is simply a state of mind.

How else can you explain that millions of blue collar Caucasians believe a mega million dollar real estate developer with a sordid history, both financially and morally, speaks personally for them--that they have more in common with him than they do with minorities dwelling in the same decaying ruins of what used to be the greatest middle class in the world?

Or, that a couple of celebrities and others who rest comfortably in the top five or ten percent financially believe it is perfectly okay to make sure their kids, who are too stupid to be admitted to elite schools, get into those institutions through bribes and fraud.

Super patriots, fools, congenital liars, and vile cons have always been with us. As have used car salesmen who claim to speak for God. However, these days they have become, it seems, institutionalized, in some cases venerated. The rules don't apply to these perpetrators because they are better than the rest of us. You might be unemployed and living in in a trailer park, but because you are white you're somehow entitled to an entire nation people of color aren't.

It doesn't matter if some deserving student, who actually took his, or her own entrance exams, misses out at USC, or Yale so long as your child gets in. After all, going to a lesser school is for those other people.

It doesn't even matter if your health care coverage is a nightmare compared to the populations of other countries. Any change in the system, especially that one put in place by a black man, is an admission the United States--your home--isn't as great and wonderful as you've always said it was.

Yes, things like affordable health care, free higher education in public schools, paid extended maternity and paternity leave, although it's working just fine else where, is for the weak and poor. It is a plot to make them like us, or worse, us like them.

That's why we should never allow any of it here in America. We don't need it, or want it because we are, as Fitzgerald said, different.

Right.




3-26-19