High School Lows

The de-emphasizing (the mildest or most generous term I could think of) of the middle class in favor of the wealthy is in evidence at my high school’s alumni basketball tourney.  Once a crowded, boisterous, broadly supported fundraiser, it is now a ghost of its former self.  A wealthy alum, who gives to the school, has his wife (who didn’t even attend the school), run the tournament.  She banned all alcohol, including the beer garden, “for liability purposes,” and because “it shows a poor example to children.” She designs the brackets herself, but only releases them less than a week before the tourney, making impossible the return of those who must schedule flights.

The result?  It is minimally attended, gets few spectators or non-players, doesn’t even raise a tenth of the money it used to, the sense of community and camaraderie are hollowed out, and even general contributions to the school are down (forcing the school to rely more and more on a small number of wealthy donors).

Oh, the school now has a new gym and a new football field, compliments of this wealthy donor.  Yet has far less “glue” and community than when it had an old gym and no football field.  And far less enrollment.

I wonder how much people think about the second and third order effects of emphasizing one class and dismissing another.

I guess with the hollowing out of the middle class, and their resultant fewer and fewer “spare” resources, maybe there wasn’t much of a choice.

Tarred and Choked

The next time you hear the self-serving, letting-oneself-off-the-hook, powerless-fomenting, justifying assertion about highly polluting tar sands oil that “the oil will go someplace; it will get drilled regardless,” there is another statement you need to put with it:   “Pay, oil-slaves.  Choke on your planet.” 

Lazy Is Rarer Than You Think

Traveling across the country, what I find far more than not is how much people not only want to have a meaningful job at meaningful/livable pay, but WANT to work.

As Chris Rock says, something for ignorant haters to need to realize is that black people with 2 jobs hate lazy black people too.  It’s just that there are far fewer lazy ones than there are hard working people who want good work at good pay and can’t find any, especially where they live.

Something for all of us to think about the next time some simplistic demagogue tries to blame a group unfairly and manipulate us in the process.

The Richness of Our Knowledge and The Impoverishment Of Our Actions

It is hard to see how we could be more utter failures about poverty than we are.  We KNOW what to do about it, we HAVE the resources, we UNDERSTAND the second and third order effects of poverty, we COMPREHEND WELL that reducing poverty actually REDUCES overpopulation.

And yet we throw up our hands every year.

Or attach some ridiculous precondition on any real effort.

We could not be much farther away from Jesus’s words and actions.

The privileged should have to trade places for a week with the markedly unprivileged.  Much would change. MUCH.