A World Apart.
The exact definition of “privilege” depends heavily on the speaker. My wife’s brother married into a wealthy New Rochelle family. Liberal to the bone. To. The. Bone. He of course does not and did not get so much as a penny so he had to make his own pile. Nothing puts a smirk on your face like not needing someone else’s money. I of course have no idea what that feels like.
His mother-in-law, (I’ll call her ‘June’) an octogenarian with all her marbles is typical of her set. Vacations in the Hamptons, lunches in Manhattan, and the beneficiary of her husband having never missed a payment on his life insurance policy. She’s mostly pleasant to be around, privileged of course, and naturally has no idea where her money comes from. This was a family that could not boast a cop, a solider, sailor, marine, or a fireman – volunteer or otherwise. To quote Barrack Obama, “that’s not who we are.”
Protesting the “privilege” of those who string the power lines in the dead of Winter, take hammer to nail in the heat of Summer, and guard them while they sleep all year long.
June and I sat across from one other at family dinner a few years ago. I forget the occasion. Someone’s birthday? Just a gathering?
Someone asked how my older brother Michael was doing. My senior by 8 years, I grew up worshiping him. Brilliant, motivated, and supremely talented in ways that I only wish I could be, he remains to this day a bit of an enigma to me. In his early twenties, he built a computer from a Texas Instruments circuit board and an old television set. He is one of those fellas who can disassemble a Swiss watch or a combustion engine down to the nuts and bolts with nothing left over upon re-assembly.
Manning The Wall. (See What I Did There?)
Michael spent nearly 30 years working for the Post Office, mostly as an Inspector. He was and remains a source of enormous pride for me. So when someone at the table inquired of him, I smiled and quipped, “he still has his gun.” This drew chuckles from some, and puzzlement from others. I quickly explained that he was a computer forensic specialist, re-assembling the footprints of erased code and restoring hard drives.
I can’t blame June for what she said in response. After all she spoke as only one can when one has never pondered the correlation between that Marine manning his post at night and her ability to sleep like a baby in a clean diaper. “What does he need a gun for?”
To my credit, I held on to my self-command on this occasion. Still, my irritation must have shown because June quickly cast her eyes back to her plate. There were a number of sidebars going on at the table, so there was no awkward pause.
I sighed and returned to my meal. Then I felt a gentle hand on my knee. I turned my head to see Lois smiling. Not one of her brilliant smiles that lights up the room. This was one of her tiny smiles. There are so many ways of saying “thank you for being my husband.” In the past 30 years, she has found all of them.
I just nodded and smiled back.
But Yes, I Will Answer The Question.
My brother needed his gun because those who engage in the illegal drug trade do not volunteer to give up their laptops. Doors need to kicked in, suspects need to be subdued, and handcuffs need to be applied, face-down, on the floor, next to that stack of kiddie-porn. Yeah, in a drug den, there’s always a stack of kiddie-porn. Always.
Probably something they don’t want to know about in New Rochelle, the Hamptons, or the Upper West Side.
Selah.
In Athens and early Rome , to be a citizen and man had to fight for the state.Wealth did not grant citizenship in Athens. In early Rome, I think before about 500 BC only those who owned land could fight for Rome and this was a privilege.
In WW1 , approximately 20% of the British aristocracy was killed and of the private schools Harrow topped the league of deaths with 27%.
Malcom Muggeridge, the writer those those who lived off inherited money made in business afer three generations became socialists.
From oberservation where money is held in Britain in the form of land and where there is tradition of military service wealthy people still serve in armed forces. Where there is a military tradition, serving one’s country by being in the armed forces is more important than making money. Wealthy amilies are happy for their sons to serve in the ranks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Leakey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_Special_Forces
The Persians say ” A fish rots from the head”. I would say once the wealthy of a country are no longer prepared to die for the country, it starts to rot.
A wealthy person whose only distinction is wealth can be a coward. A pauper who is courageous and loyal to those he would die for, is a hero. Money turns a poor coward into rich coward : it does not turn a coward into a hero. Money does not turn the foolish into the sagatious, the cruel into the kind, the proud into the humble, the unfit into the athletic, the ungainly into the graceful.
Those who work on trawlers, mines, oil rigs and construction sites and other dangerous jobs will at some stage of their lives will be tested; when a wrong decision leads to death. Only then will the true character be shown.
The priviliged or in fact everyone, who take shelter from the challenges of life, resent those who have been tested and passed.
The greatest social injustice is to be a foolish , proud coward and the greatest privilege to be the sagacious hero who has passed the test. Sagacity requires humility: a knowledge of what one’s knows and the infinitely larger, what one does not. However, those who have a faith based upon practical skill combined with sagacity and courage can voyage into the unknown and if lucky , return safely. Many of those who survived extreme murderous conflict invariably have the humility and hence sagacity to admit they were lucky.
” They shall know them by their works”.
Good comment have you ever read AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service — and How It Hurts Our Country by Kathy Roth-Bouquet & Frank Schaeffer?