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I worry.
I have two sons, 21, soon to be 22, and the other is 24 going on 25. Both are currently enrolled in college. Because of our present financial circumstances neither my ex-wife nor I have been able to provide either with any financial support in their endeavors. My youngest worked his tail off for two years, saving sufficiently so he could attend school full time without having to be employed while completing his undergrad, something he's hoping on doing this August. He's currently taking SEVEN classes at San José State University en route to his objective! SEVEN CLASSES; that is an incredible burden that I've never even heard of anyone else attempting. My other son, at Santa Clara University, a private school, hopes to graduate in the late spring of 2011. He's been working part-time and is multiples of thousands up to his neck in school debt. He also suffers from severe sleep apnea that requires he don a mask appliance while sleeping, has a slight heart murmur, and has been on his mother's health insurance; a benefit that will terminate abruptly very soon. And because of those preexisting conditions, he will be unable absolutely to secure health insurance, from any insurer.
Doing "everything right." What happens if, upon graduating, there are no jobs available? For my oldest, what happens if he cannot repay those loans and cannot, by federal statute that bars them from discharge, relieve himself of those debts through bankruptcy? Nor are my sons anomalous in the country. If not millions and millions, there are hundreds of thousands of our youth in the same predicament: In the words of LBJ, "Like a hitchhiker on a lonely Texas highway during a hail storm, there's no place to run, no place to hide, and they can't make it stop."
I want us to be honest as dirt with ourselves, to stay away from that top shelf where we keep all our self-congratulatory platitudes; "I'd never do that." If, after doing everything right, this country isn't working for me, the fact it may be working for you becomes a matter I truly don't care about. You're driving a nice new car, living in a warm house, have a good job and health insurance for yourself and your kids . . . and I just don't care. I'm every bit as important as are you. Have feelings and needs, same as you. So, what does any of your good fortune do for me?
Or much more essential to the very premise of this country, it's future and how we want it to be, rise or fall into ashes, why should I care? Let me be as blunt as a 16-pound sledge hammer to the skull, the mother who cannot afford health care or whose insurance just notified her they are rescinding coverage, or won't pay for the treatments the doctors say her dying child need . . . She doesn't care, nor should she; about whether your town or street or the place where you work is destroyed utterly in a riot. You don't care about whether her child lives or dies, and you think she has some obligation to care whether you get killed when a crowd gets out of control? Where you coming from on that?
We've all heard the old joke, about the Lone Ranger and Tonto. They're riding over a ridge when they see an angry whooping Indian war party headed right at them. The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto, to ask, "What are we going to do Tonto?" And Tonto replies, "What do you mean we, Kemosabe?"
As a society, not a single one of us has a right that we deny to others. Caring about those we don't know and never will is caring about ourselves. Period.
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