Posted by Bob Lord
I read this article by Paul Begala this morning…
… and can't get the first paragraph out of my head:
I have a wealthy friend who lives in a wealthy neighborhood. One day he was in his front yard, chatting with his next-door neighbor, a Republican, who asked him why he’s a Democrat. My friend said he’d grown up poor but had gotten a good public education, worked his tail off, and made it. Then he pointed to a gardener working across the street. “Don’t you want that gardener’s son to live the same American Dream we have?” my friend asked. His neighbor shot him down, sniffing, “That gardener’s son will be my son’s gardener.”
It's not like I"m stunned to hear about the Republican neighbor's attitude — I belong to a country club. But it's so unsettling to see it put that way. How many top one percenters think that way? If we continue to emasculate the public school system and make college less and less affordable, doesn't it pretty much guarantee the Republican neighbor gets his wish? And how many gardners are voting Republican because they believe same sex marriage will ruin their lives or they're afraid Obama is going to take their guns? And does anyone with a triple digit IQ seriously believe Mitt Romney doesn't see the world the same way as the Republican in Begala's story?
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The line, “That gardener’s son will be my son’s gardener,” is frightening and ugly on so many levels. Not only does it say a gardener’s son should have no chance of advancement, but it also says “my son” will grow up wealthy enough to have a gardener, just because he’s “my son.” This is about a permanent class stratification, where the well off will beget well off children, and the underclass will beget underclass children.
This is an incomplete quote. The fullsentence was “If Obama is reelected, that gardeners son…