Revelations Of What The Rich Do To Maintain Order In their Lives

THE RICH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WITH US.  

YES, EVEN BEFORE THE INVENTION OF MONEY.

One of the problems with being rich is that it changes your EXPECTATIONS of what your life OUGHT TO BE LIKE.  

Above all, this sort of person expects SECURITY.  They tend to equate LOSS OF SECURITY with DISORDER in their lives...Which may be a correct way of seeing it.  Any loss of security would force them to CHANGE and ADAPT, maybe even START OVER FROM SCRATCH.  And it would indeed feel like CHAOS for a while.

The other thing the rich come to expect -- AND THIS IS JUST CRAZY --  is that because their lives and incomes have moved in a generally UPWARD direction, that anyone they care about needs to experience the same thing.  Their CHILDREN, say.  An oil tycoon would be HUMILIATED if his oldest son turned out to be a FRY COOK or BUS DRIVER.  Egad, that would be CHAOS!  A violation of the NATURAL ORDER!  No, they need to start out rich and move up even from there!  You know, like Donald Trump, the real-estate broker who started out humbly, as a multi-millionaire, and worked his way up into the billions with ONLY a one-million-dollar startup loan from his old man that he had to PAY BACK.  What an achievement!  Way to underline your old man's sense of the Order of Things, Donny!

And no matter how much LIP SERVICE the rich pay to the idea of helping the less fortunate -- no matter how much spare change they donate to Save The Whales or the End Homelessness Initiative -- they will put much, much more cash on the nail to keep their kids on that upward path.  You really think it was his flawless grades and cheerleading talents that got a guy like George W. Bush into Yale, and then the Harvard School of Business?

Nope, I'm guessing it was a big-ass donation from his old man to the colleges in question.  Probably a series of them.

The thing that astounds me about this is that this kind of manipulative shit is still TOTALLY LEGAL.  See, it's human nature to think that if you're rich or famous, you just DESERVE MORE.  And your kids must also DESERVE MORE.  Because they're your kids, and your whole family just DESERVES MORE.

And sprouting from this same diseased root is the SCANDAL OF THE WEEK, wherein a whole bunch of wealthy parents got busted for paying money so their kids could get into competitive schools like the University of Southern California.  Not the legal way, by making hefty donations, but ILLEGALLY, by falsifying SAT scores and having phony photos made up so the kids appear to be members of champion sports teams.  As a rule these are sports their kids have never even tried out for.  

Why would they even consider this?  Because...gosh..because ORDER HAS TO BE MAINTAINED.  My kids have to achieve like mad, and if they don't, they have to SEEM to achieve.  They have to MAKE ME PROUD, no matter how difficult that is because I'm at the top of my profession.  No matter how easy I have made their lives up until now, they need to look as if they are STILL DEFYING THE GODS AND CLIMBING EVEN HIGHER THAN I DID.

Even if there are no rungs left on that ladder.

Apart from the pending criminal charges, I rather wonder what happens when these kids get into the colleges they chose and then WASH OUT because they can't keep up in class, or have to come up with an answer when someone encourages them to get on the track team (because they got into school using phony track experience) or gymnastics (when in truth they can't walk on a flat surface without wiping out, let alone do a dozen back handsprings).  

Whatever then?

In the family's view, CHAOS INTRUDES.

In my view, ORDER IS RESTORED.

More Gun-Related Insanity, Courtesy Of The Middle American Helicopter Parents' Movement

DATELINE:  PARMA, OHIO, February 8, 2018

Joey Mertel was suspended from Greenbriar Middle School for failing to RUN SCREAMING TO AN ADULT and tell on the kid who pointed a toy gun at him.

A TOY gun.  

Never mind, peeps: It COULD have been a real emergency and they COULD all be dead now.  They were right to suspend 11-year-old Joey.  The rule must ALWAYS be:  IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.  

This error on Joey's part is NO DIFFERENT, either in quality or severity, from the usual reasons kids get suspended, like STEALING, DESTROYING PROPERTY or CLOBBERING OTHER KIDS IN THE RECESS YARD.  I'm sure we can all agree on this.

DATELINE: DAPHNE, ALABAMA, 
Friday, February 16th, 2018

A school bus was stopped and SURROUNDED BY POLICE after a kid riding in it overheard someone else talking about bringing guns to school.  He did what Joey Mertel should have done and CALLED 911.  Later that day, the county school superintendent released a lengthy statement to the effect that this phone call led to "NEEDLESS PANIC AND CHAOS" after it transpired that the kid in question was talking about those guns that shoot Nerf darts.  Like the DEADLY WEAPON shown above.  The superintendent, Eddie Tyler, summed up by saying that IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING, but only if there you're not reporting a bunch of IDLE TALK AND GOSSIP.  

Because kids can invariably distinguish between IDLE TALK, GOSSIP and SERIOUS BUSINESS.  Right?

Because kids on the school bus are ALL BUSINESS and would never indulge in IDLE TALK.  Right?  The kid who called 911 certainly thought so, the overreacting little whiner!

Because if this had been an actual emergency and the kid's call had headed off the next school shooting, the mayor would have given him the keys to the city.  Right?

That's why the SWAT team responded.  Right?

I just think it's kind of DUMB that kids are given their own private phone lines, instructed to use them in situations like these, and then penalized for it when they do exactly what they're told.  

Meanwhile, Joey Mertel is the real winner in this deal:  he's been given a 3-day, a 5-day, maybe even a 10-day vacation with the school's blessing!

A Holiday Greeting From Discordia

I was intrigued this morning when I opened my mail.  The biggest envelope contained one of those status reports from a mutual fund I invest in.  Needless to say, because I've put money in that fund more than once, they send me 2 or 3 identical status reports every month, apparently unable to comprehend that if the same person with the same name writes them checks from the same account, they really only need to send out one statement.  It's just another small reassurance that my money is being handled by a crack team of finance experts.

Or possibly a team ON crack.  But I digress.

The thing about the statement I opened this morning is that it's addressed to RESIDENT, as if it were a sales come-on addressed to a prospective mark customer.

So, among the multiple people with my name they are sending statements to at my address, they think there's someone ELSE whose name they don't know, who needs this information and can't get access to it, even though the statements are already being mailed to this address?

>> Do they normally send statements out blind, to people not invested in their accounts?

>> Do they normally forget the investor's name, or somehow get it separated from the home address, and have to send the statement out as if they didn't know who's writing them checks from a known investor's address?

>> How can they not know that they're sending more than one statement to the same address?

Honestly, the questions go on and on.  And I doubt I will ever have an answer to them.  But I admit I'm kind of having a good time not knowing.  I'm seeing this as my holiday greeting from Our Lady of Chaos.