As a little background, I grew up on a farm in the Midwest. As a farm kid, my parents taught me it wasn't who you were but what you did that counted. You didn't have to be from a "good" family to be a good person, nor did coming from a "good" family make you a good person.
Needless to say, hard work on a daily basis was the staple of life. There were morning and evening chores before and after school everyday that I can remember and fixing fence was an ongoing activity.
Then I got a chance to go to college on an athletic scholarship. This was in the late '60s and early '70s. While there, I learned that we were going to reach "peak" oil by the '80s and have a dwindling oil supply after that point. I learned that DDT was causing predator birds' egg shells to be soft and they would soon become extinct and 7 types of hell would follow because of it. I learned that the earth was cooling and nuclear winter was just around the corner, and I learned that we were about to reach the worlds max food production level and that food would be able to be used as a weapon of war. Those with the means of production would be able to hold the rest of the world hostage, especially as the population continued to grow unabated.
I came out of college knowing so much and I could see how the majority of the country, to say nothing of the world, just wasn't as smart as I was and that everybody would be so much better off if they would just let us folks with all this knowledge run things.
I was an elitist, and proud of it, because I was one of the cool kids, if only the world would just recognize us and get out of our way. We would get this old world straightened out in no time. There would be no more war, all the countries of the world would cease to exist and we would all be brothers in the world of man.
Then reality smacked me up side the head.
We kept finding more oil, the predator birds didn't die out, we kept finding ways to increase food production, the nuclear winter never arrived, etc. etc. etc.
Not only did all the things I was told were facts turn out to be false, but I realized those spinning the yarns were getting rich off of those of us buying their fairy tales.
Next I noticed how this dream of an egalitarian world was a crock of something coming from the south end of a north bound horse. An egalitarian world would never take place because of many factors, not the least of which is that animal behavior says that there will always be a pecking order. Somebody is always trying to get a better station compared to the next guy. To say nothing of the fact that not all cultures are equal, I don't care what the cultural relativists tell you. As it relates to the human condition, western culture is far superior to that of some other barbaric cultures that want to subjugate various people's for various reasons. Their pigmentation isn't correct, they can't write their name in the snow (my Midwest readers will get that one), they worship differently, or any number of other idiotic reasons.
So you're probably saying, "why is the farm boy telling this tale?"
Well, the answer is, to say that I do understand the elitist mentality in the 20 something crowd. But I am totally baffled by the George Soros, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry's of the world. They have seen the same things I've seen. Can they possibly truly believe in the borderless society, or in the tales being told by the current crop of elitists? Or......and I think this much more likely.....are they the hucksters selling this latest pipe dream or apocalypse to enhance their own power or pocket? You choose your own answer and whether we should listen to them or treat them as the charlatans I believe them to be.
Yes, occasionally I still think "why don't they just listen to me?" Then I look back at some of my beliefs from the '70s and go, yep. I'm probably not the best soothsayer on the block. Age has at least taught me that my delusions of knowing all the answers belong in that crock I mentioned earlier.
Or so it would seem to an old farm boy.
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