A few years back, I rented a Z8 for my husband's birthday. He wanted to drive an "it" car. One he would never ever own. Just for a long weekend, to feel the power of that car, and zoom around the back roads of northern Cal. It cost a small fortune. At the end of the weekend, we walked away from that crazy car. We will never ever be rich enough to buy a car like that. But it's fun flirting with that life. We do it all the time.
My husband is a union guy. He has worked at jobs with an hourly number on the pay stub. I went to a small community college in PA on a small gift from a foundation and a grant from the Fed Govt. It was called a Pell Grant. Sure community college at the time only cost a couple of hundred dollars a semester. But money was tight and I didn't have to pay the grant back. The gift and the grant got me started. They opened the door to college and thinking and the opportunity to turn what I could do with my hands into what I could do with my head.
Questions long, unknowingly deferred surfaced. What are the rules and what is our role as individuals in creating a fair society, a society where a person regardless of their birth, their money - or lack of it - can find through whim or will a way to actualize their better self?
The gap between identifying as a social or economic progressive, liberal or conservative is mucky. And in that muck, maybe, there are answers. First, the questions, and this week, thinking people from David Brooks to Beverly Gage are, in their own ways, asking questions. Wondering? Take the quiz.
First and Beverly Gage's book reviews of 'Listen, Liberals' and 'Limousine Liberals' then there's David Brook's column, 'If not Trump, what?'