different strokes

Many of us have embraced in varying degrees the urban myth that the colossally moneyed find tedious their easy, vacuous, jobless lives; that they recline in some lovely setting or another envying the irresponsible workers our pathetic challenges, petty bickering, regularly renewed fight for solvency, our microscopic victories and perhaps most of all, yes, our Budweiser. It was a nice delusion and Donald Trump has left us without it. Per our intimate exposure to the new transparent president, we have been invited to view unadorned the social gulf between rabble and rich and contemplate how small might be the common ground.

To folks never burdened with a regular job, the idea of TGIF, the actual wishing away of 5/7 of life would be appalling. I now believe most of the 'One percent” never heard the saying and wouldn't quite get it if they did. In fact they probably have little use for the names of days, the very units that count down workers' lives. Those barons who can figure out what TGIF means cannot possibly look upon beings who live that way with any feeling of equanimity. Only pity and exaltation.

Our great literature is not the literature of the mighty. They may as well read tales of some alien life form as try to comprehend Steinbeck. They know nothing of the Grapes of Wrath unless force fed them by their parents to show them how lucky they are not to be Okies. And then the strong character of the Joad family would just seem pointless in its lack of upward mobility. Perhaps they read such as The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina. The President on-the-air encouraged radio host Howard Stern to refer to his daughter as “a piece of ass”, a face-punching slur to most lower class fathers. That made me wonder if the rich don't respect or care for their children as do the commoners. Strip the rabble of their children and little remains. Without children the rich still are rich, admired and plenty important to many people. In their overall scheme, they invest relatively little of themselves in their progeny.

The luxuriantly leisured don't watch tv dramas and sitcoms. Tv shows feature middle class Americans because viewers like to watch people they relate to. No sequel to the Honeymooners is airing, not because people like the Kramdens don't watch tv but because they don't buy enough stuff to attract sponsors. The impossibly well-healed don't watch because there are no shows featuring their ilk except maybe Downton Abbey. How can they get involved in the lives of humans calamitously mired in the abyss, pawns not players, bills their only demon, a trouble-free life for their families their lone, frail hope. Such a boring goal to one born into it.

As Donald Trump showed us with his ignorance of how to check out at the, how do we say? Cash register, the wildly wealthy don't attend the grocery store anymore than the ranch owner goes outside and slurps with the cows. That's our feeding trough. Apparently they match our ignorance of their lives with their ignorance of ours. At least they're benevolent gods.