Notes from the Front

Expired©2008 Robert Sommers


Yesterday I had dinner with one my best friends, "J", a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican. I asked him what he thought of my recent blog, The Capitalism Racket. He had an interesting response that set me to thinking and sparked this post, which may be all over the map. Now "J" is a rather wealthy individual who deals in investments and he made his money the really old fashioned way, by working his ass off for 50 years, dealing with the obnoxious public on a daily basis.

"J" said that his broker in Chicago told him that the current Fannie/Freddie bailout mess was actually the fault of the Clinton administration who wanted to spread home ownership across traditional default lines and who appointed corrupt administrators, etc., etc. Now I remember George Bush pushing the same line of "every American owning a home" during the nascent days of his tenure so I don't know if "J's" point is necessarily fair but I don't want to get into a finger wagging exercise so I won't start the blame game.

I started thinking about how much easier it must have been in the old days. Blacks knew their place and rode in the back of the bus. A friend of mine told me that a Mexican acquaintance recounted how that they could not make eye contact with a white person on the sidewalk in my small farm town in the 1950's. Jews were restricted by deed from owning properties in many areas of San Diego including Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla until the early 1960's. The 1960's crashed a lot of parties. Many yearn for the good old days.

My sister Barbara owns a very successful accounting firm in Florida. She is married to a prominent attorney. To this day they are not allowed at the "other" country club in Palm Beach. A six month suspension for inviting a jew to the club and expulsion for the second offense.

In Phoenix last month, a country club member was expelled for having the temerity to suggest that women dine with the men in the larger dining room and making his feelings public. Big national headlines. Now I guess that a private club that does not receive federal benefits can adopt any policy it chooses, I just question these choices on a human level.

We, as Americans, show a remarkable tendency to exaggerate the span of time that has elapsed from our transgressions. I didn't own slaves. Everybody has equal opportunity. Women can vote. I never lynched anybody. Tianemen Square - very bad, Kent State, when was that? Santa Barbara Oil spill, ages ago. That Allende cat, we took care of him aeons back. Three Mile Island, ancient history. Our teflon hands eversparkle. Perhaps that was why Lynn Cheney got involved with the new education curriculum, designing new textbooks that would minimize the contributions of minorities and glorify the forgotten white american male.

I know that I digress and so will try to loop back to my original point - that the right has objections to everybody sharing at the table that heretofore was reserved for the patrician class only. That opening up home ownership and power to the lower classes was a pandora's box that is responsible for the mess that we are in today. Along with that prick Roosevelt of course.

When we point fingers at John McCain or Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin or George Bush or whomever, our ire is misplaced. Our real enemy is each other. The last 10 years or so, we have been more evenly split as an electorate than any time in my memory or study. We watch media that tends to reinforce our point of view and inculcate ourselves from opposition views. The left (myself included) tends to view the right as religious radicals that want us to subscribe to antiquated rules of living or risk the wrath of hell. The right looks at the other side as copulating heathens that wants to drain their hard earned pocketbook. There has been remarkably little middleground and I don't know if it is even possible to find common ground anymore.

The right is ecstatic about a book banning ex cheerleader who wants to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality and restart the cold war. The left wants to reinstitute the nanny welfare state.

I think that this whole split is so deeply programmed and engrained in the protons and neutrons of our innermost psyche that any hope for appeasement with the other side is unlikely. I remember being in preschool during the Nixon/Kennedy election and the room dividing up between donkeys and elephants. I was one of three of the former up against about thirty baby elephants. And I knew... Nature or nurture, the old argument. I don't think that I talked politics much as a four year old, but I knew I was a jackass. (rimshot or drumroll please.)

I guess this is an internal forensic expedition to find out where I got the big class chip on my shoulder. Joined the old blame America crowd. My father was very rich when I was young. Unfortunately, I lived with my mother, near welfare, with 7 or 8 brothers and sisters, running around the country one step ahead of the Spiegel Catalogue Company and others that were always taking us to court for our unpaid bills. A poor jew who lived on the other side of the tracks with the irish and italians. And learned to really hate the silver spoon. The entitled. I was always the second smartest kid in the class. I had a full ride scholarship to a prep school in New York and remember trying to enlist the actually smartest fellow to the cause of the downtrodden and will never forget his response: "Robert, my family has always served the ruling class". I guess one figures out which side of the power grid to walk on.

Now I just talk. And write. Assuage my liberal guilt. My contributions to charity are minimal. At least the religious are out there doing charitable things for people. There, I said something nice.