When I was in 5th grade I was chosen for a summer arts program at the school. Ages ranged up to high school and kids were drawn from all over the area.
These two guys stood out. Slightly older, they were better-dressed, better-groomed, and sort of shiny rich kids who radiated confidence, if not exactly any artistic ability.
I was confident in my own artistic abilities and in my enjoyment of art, so I went over to them on a break and said hi. They instantly lambasted me, ridiculing my clothes, my poor-kid’s home haircut, and so on. Sneering, jeering snobs, the both of them, making it clear they hated being dipped into this “poverty program” and could not stand being near us. “We’ll get fleas, you watch,” and so on, they said.
Recoiling, I was both shocked and hurt. Naive asshole that I was, I’d figured everyone there would be as joyfully glad for a chance to use material and equipment and to create art, to be introduced to new things.
The trumpers, tea-baggers, the GOP types, they’re nothing new. The dominionists, the prosperity evangelicals, and the promise-keeper sexists, racists, and class snobs are nothing new. They’re all just wanna-be aristocracy who think they’re better than everyone else despite no evidence whatsoever for such a fatuous sense of entitlement.
Anyway, I’m reminded of that day way back in my own Pleistocene Era lately due to a few encounters with trumpers who also happen to be name writers whose work I had, perhaps naively, enjoyed. Masks came off and it shocked and hurt me. That they instantly blamed me and called me all sorts of things, well, that came as no surprise to me once I realized what they are.
Still, it’s difficult to deal with, knowing maybe 20% of us are people-shaped things, and that even knowing this we can be fooled, or lulled, until we’re attacked.
/ geste
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