Utopia is beyond us

Sun 8.21.22

Why isn’t the world like university communities, I wonder, where idealistic people pursue an understanding of the world, its people and their history, these people who are not tainted by the sordidness of “earning a living,” who meet friends in cafés to chatter the night away, who are open and friendly, and believe there is goodness in all of us?

Instead we have created a world where millions upon millions of people go to work every day to jobs they hate, and who feel cheated by a system that is indeed cheating them, robbing them of their youth, their power, their virility.  It has always been possible to create the world I speak of; there are enough resources to take care of all of us with a modicum of work, perhaps 8 to 10 hours a week, to clothe, feed and shelter us.  

But utopia is beyond us; rather we are pitted against one another in a cockfight where winner takes all.  New York Magazine ran an article some years ago about rich people and their offspring.  It was disheartening to read how rich parents are so ungenerous with their kids.  Heaven forbid that their children have a good time with the money that they have worked so hard to accumulate.  Their ideal is to see their offspring follow in their footsteps and also devote their lives to accumulating money.  Having a good time is for fools and wastrels like you and I who will never advance in life, and quite frankly will never have the money to have that good time.  Notice how having a good time is such a hard thing to accomplish.

To the French writer Celine who wrote in the late 30’s, early 40’s that, “The new world . . . has only two anxieties: ass and bank account,” in the 21st century, I would add consumer goods.  The cell phones, DVD players, computers, tablets, laptops, printers, fax machines, scanners, digital cameras, sound systems, and I’m not even touching on clothes and footwear yet, with huge designer names plastered all over them, the hideous pocketbooks with chains thick enough to haul a Mac truck out of a snow bank.  These are the rewards for working most of one’s life at hated jobs.  With all these needs to fill there is no time to while away the hours at the café with friends or learning something of the world imprisoning one.

I wanted to write about Hillary today, because the democrats have become disenchanted with Joe Biden and  she’s the only viable candidate at this point (Bernie is just as popular among the ruling democrats as Trump) and believe it or not the subject is not so far removed from previous paragraphs.  It has to do with prejudice.  Shirley Chisholm once said that she encountered more prejudice as a woman than she ever did as an African American. We’re all subject to it; some are able to roll with the punches others feel cheated and are angry all of their lives.  I’m going to show them I’m just as good, or just as strong, or maybe even stronger or smarter than they are. Thus our capitalist system  advances.  Hillary said, I am not some Tammy Wynette standing by her man, at home baking cookies and having teas.

It’s not true; we all stand by our man and serve him.  How could it be otherwise, they rule the world.  Unlike boys and men who are taught very early to separate themselves from girls and women (i.e. he throws like a girl; the man’s a pussy, those are girl’s toys, etc., etc.,) we have no such training.  Hillary, who denied her dependence on men, perhaps more than a lot of women, was more enchained to them.  To be honest, I doubt she would have been able to run a serious campaign for the presidency without her husband’s prior accomplishments.  It’s commonly said that in person, she is a warm, charming, funny person, but she never dares show that side of herself.  She has to show us she’s tough like the guys, even refusing to pose for Vogue because she didn’t want to appear “feminine.”  In debate, she treated her opponents like they were not worthy to be on the same stage as her.  She had been, after all, the First Lady!  

There is a bit of Hillary in all of us, the insecure dogmatist, who must keep achieving, keep proving their worth.