NOBODY'S FOOL

All it takes to spoil my day is an exposé on private prisons or Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Then it trickles down to big business and businessmen. Who do I think of then? It’s not the guy who has the Sherwin-Williams paint store in the strip mall. It’s not the part time contractor who installed my on-demand hot water heater at night because he has another day job. It’s not the man whose restaurant burned last month, who is rebuilding in another location. I know they have to jump through hoops, keep more records and file more paper work than a special education teacher. I know they struggle just to be their own boss and if they go broke, only their insurance company cares. I don’t think of them. I think of CEO’s and managers whose only purpose is to grow the business, regardless of who goes under the bus. I think of men and women whose business is better bombs, bullets and mercenaries who call themselves contractors. I understand national security and the home of the brave but they profit from other’s misery, just like Pay Day Loans and private, for-profit prisons. 

Once, JFK made an off the cuff observation; “Businessmen are bastards.” Businessmen were outraged; the bastards. Before that, my mother was either incredibly perceptive or she listened to someone who was. She said, “Business works two ways. For everyone doing business, someone is getting it, the business.” When I was a kid it was the union that kept us from getting the business. Times change and people forget; some don’t want to know. Stockholders are too important to lose money, much less fail. They are too important to make just a reasonable return; it has to be unprecedented. People are expendable. So much for the new capitalism. 

I live a charmed life with low expectations and a low profile. My secret is; I am sustained by Educated, White, Male, Christian privilege. Even though I shun the church, I have been steeped in its culture all my life and I can’t shake it off. I know smarter, harder working black men who struggle, day to day while I can coast. A well meaning preacher told me not to fret over it; my job is to live the best life I can. Good fortune (Privilege) is not my fault. But I do feel its weight. It’s part of our Puritan legacy. It is sinful to receive more than you’ve earned. It is very important to ‘Deserve’ a good life. Even if it's only a small privilege, we want to believe we deserve every morsel of the good life we enjoy. After all, we are the 'Work Hard-Work Smart' people who made this country great. God approved of slavery then; in southern cotton fields and in northern industry where white immigrants had to solicit their own masters and then work forever to pay off the company store - and we'll call it the Land Of The Free. The preacher was full of the stinky, brown stuff because he was riding the wave on somebody else’s sweat and he knew it. But then Joseph Campbell said, “We can’t fix the sorrows of the world, but we can chose to live with joy.” So I’ll stay with Campbell, if not a hero at least an honest scholar. Then there’s JFK, and not to leave out my mother, nobody’s fool. I’ll feel better tomorrow.