Dear Mr. Rich Person

Dear Mr. Rich Person:

   I’m not writing to people who are just reasonably well-off, or to people who simply have more money than I do. No, I’m writing to you, the fabulously wealthy individuals who are in charge of our economy. I know, I know, it makes you uncomfortable to hear that, and some of you may not even understand it completely, but you are the straw that stirs the drink, if the straw were your out-of-all-proportion influence in politics and the economy and the drink were the fate of every American who does not share your incredible good fortune. You know who you are, you’re the multi-millionaire on your way to being a billionaire, you’re the person who needs to find ways around campaign financing laws to contribute to your candidate – of either party. You’re the person who is part of the one thing our Founding Fathers loathed more than anything else and tried with all their might to keep from growing upon our shores: an hereditary aristocracy. Multi-generational wealth, unearned and undeserved, has given you a kind of leverage and influence not seen since the Robber Barons of the late Nineteenth Century. It’s you I’m talking to.
   You’re treading a thin line, you have been for the past few decades, and you’re courting disaster. The thin line is the tissue-thin space between dissent and anarchy, and the disaster you’re courting is the breakdown of the very system that made possible the circumstance you were born into.
   You see, America needs a strong middle class. It’s vital to everything we’ve come to expect from our modern economy. A large, thriving middle class not only makes the goods that your company sells, they buy the goods other companies sell. For the most part people don’t need much, but when they feel comfortable in their situation they’re more than willing to part with a few of their hard-earned dollars and line your pockets with even more filthy lucre. A strong, large, vibrant middle class provides the grease that keeps the American economy turning, which provides you the fabulous wealth you in no way deserve.
   When you break down the middle class, as you have done in the past three decades by keeping wages stagnant and eliminating jobs and generally ignoring the fates of most of the human beings in this nation, you erode the very base of the pyramid you teeter atop. This is a lesson the French aristocracy learned too late back in the Eighteen Century – power to govern always derives from the consent of the governed. And if you think you’re not governing just because you haven’t run for or been elected to office you’re making another mistake.
   Mr. Rich Person, if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest, you absolutely must start paying attention to your responsibilities to preserve American society. It’s not all about you, despite everything you’ve come to expect over the past three decades. When the haves get most of the economic pie and the have-nots fight for crumbs, sooner or later the have-nots are going to realize there are far more of them than you, and they can just take as much pie as they want. Mr. Rich Person, you need to realize that we really are all in this together, and in a very tangible sense your continued safety and prosperity requires tending to and assuring the safety and prosperity of those less fortunate than you.
   Don’t worry, even though this newfound and unfamiliar civic responsibility means you’ll make less money than you did before, you’ll still make far more than you can possibly spend in your lifetime. But you’ll enjoy the added benefit of not being the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Sincerely,
-- your friend Don

Conversation With No Words

I was out on the road today, in a residential area with speed bumps and lots of lights. Which meant we were going slowly, even though there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. I was coming down a really long, straight street - Lake Avenue, if you must know - and I glanced in my rear-view where I saw a woman, probably my age or a little younger, gesturing and talking. She had a determined look on her face, like she was really trying to get her point across but wasn't sure it was working. On the passenger side sat a kid, no more than fourteen I'm guessing, who had his chin to his chest and was glaring sullenly out the window, away from his mother. He didn't say a word the entire time they were behind me, he just stared out the window as his mother talked and lectured and pleaded and threatened.
   It was like watching Spanish language TV with the sound turned off. I might not have gotten the specifics, but the broad strokes of the conversation came through loud and clear. The poor kid was screwing up, probably in the same way over and over and over, and his poor mother was at the end of her rope with him. It could have been anything, schoolwork, drugs, maybe even not picking up his socks from the living room floor, but his mother had enough and was putting a stop to it.
   Been there. I recall enduring a twenty minute car ride with my mother lecturing me non-stop the whole way. I don't remember what I did - probably something stupid and dangerous that would likely have gotten me injured or killed if I wasn't so clueless - but the ride back was absolutely not worth whatever I'd done to get in trouble. Agony.
   Funny thing is, not only have I been on the receiving end of this talking-to, I have witnessed the same scene played out many times, in many countries. I've seen it with little kids in Japan, with uniformed schoolboys in England, with tour groups in the Vatican, in the market in Germany, and in Rundle Mall in Adelaide. It's universal. The mother talks, making her point with gestures and a firm declaration that she's not going to tolerate that behavior any longer, and the mortified child looks anywhere but at her, though usually at the ground or out a window.
   It's amazing to me how universal this is. I'm certain little Roman children got the same talking-to from their matres, and little ancient Greek kids who got a dressing down in the agora stared at the boundary stones wondering when she was ever going to stop talking.
   So ladies, don't worry about turning into your mothers, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's gonna happen, it happens to everyone.
   And, if it's any consolation, you're not turning into your mother, you're turning into your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

Think back to when you were ten years old, try to remember your Christmas list. Mine probably had GI Joes on it, maybe an Evel Knievel bendy doll with a wind-up crash car you could sail off the curb, an SST car, probably Hot Wheels, maybe a game or two. But I remember I really wanted Micronauts, especially the Baron Karza figure, a pound or two of black plastic bad guy who could totally pound the rest of the Micronauts, even Acroyear. I really wanted the Baron. Bad. And his horse too, whose name I can't remember. You could make a centaur out of the Baron and his horse, for God's sake! And they had rocket launchers! What kid wouldn't want that? I know I wanted it. Bad. Really bad.
   I didn't get the Baron. Aside from a life lesson in learning how to deal with disappointment, that Christmas day was also the last time I really, really, really wanted something in that childlike, desperate way. Maybe it was the disappointment of not getting the one thing I hoped I would get – but I got underwear, of course – or maybe it was just part of growing up. I never really ached for a material possession like that again.
   Until now.
   See, back in 2008 Nike provided the shoes for the US Fencing team. The shoes were kick-ass and the US Olympic Fencing team kicked ass. Coincidence? I think not.
   Nike was supposed to release the Ballestra fencing shoe that year to the general public but it didn't happen. I even wrote to them, asking when the shoe was coming out but the customer service stooge had no idea what I was talking about.
   Fast forward two summers. It's 2010 and I see an announcement that the Nike Air Ballestra is finally coming out, on the shelves in July. Be still my heart. I got on the Leon Paul web site and watched the video, which included the shoe's designer. Yes, I watched a video about a shoe. And it was good.
   It was like a light went on over my head and someone punched me in the chest. BAM! My Damascus moment. The instant I saw them I wanted those shoes. Bad. Really bad. Ten-year-old-at-Christmas bad.
   Now I know what coveting is, because I am coveting. Coveting like a motherf*cker, and I'm beginning to understand why it's prohibited in the Ten Commandments. The fact that the shoes are $175 makes it a little easier to ignore that little voice in my head that squeaks 'buy the damn shoes.' But I'm not made of stone.
   You will be mine, Nike Air Ballestra. Oh, yes. Sooner or later you will be mine.

Where Did The Daredevils Go?

I was noodling around on Wikipedia the other day and I happened across the entry for Evel Knievel. I miss that guy.
   When I was a kid, every few months or so he would get on his Harley and try to jump that beast across something: buses, Caesars Palace, the Snake River (technically he rode a rocket, I know). And always he'd wreck. Always. The guy broke almost every bone in his body - multiple times - and he just healed up, stood up, and signed up for more. I used to have his toy motorcycle and bendy figure, which I would run smack into the brick walls of our house over and over and over again emulating what I'd seen him do.
   These days daredevils call themselves 'stunt performers.' Name one, and Robby Knievel doesn't count. Neither do David Blaine or Criss Angel, they just do tricks. Or tell lies, if you don't feel like mincing words. Still can't name one? That's because there aren't any. Not like Evel, none of them willling to take it on the chin for the sake of a stunt.
    A few weeks ago I said this country needed the Stooges again. I'd like to amend that and say we also need tough-guy daredevils again, somebody to metaphorically take one square in the nuts for the rest of us.
    Well? I'm waiting.