Fate Expectations

Ahh the glory years! Those hopeful times between the years of ten and thirty, when all was possible, when turning around a misfortune was always possible, when that feeling in the gut told you that one day, you could be rich! You the reader are a relatively young American Conservative who supports all efforts to better the economic plight of the wealthy and corporations, because they are like you, or so you think. That feeling you could be rich, has set you apart from the crowd of coupon cutters below you, and that separateness was well justified because society seemed to encourage it. You’ve carried that destined feeling with you into your young adulthood.

To defend that feeling of promise of fortune, you find that ignoring the plight of the poor helps in maintenance of the egocentric ball of future-fantasy that is embedded behind your daily thoughts. Your coldness for those riff-raft, in a way, proves that you are very different. “Why I’m obviously country club material!” You may tell yourself.

Rhetoric from the principle speakers for the political right wing aid you in justifying your attitude, and you have used these one-liners whenever someone questions your detachment to the poor. “They lack responsibility for themselves!” “They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – like I did!” “Anyone in this great country can make it – they just need the drive and the discipline!” “Its all those government handouts, its weakened their ambition, they’ve all become complacent!”

You grew up watching movies and television shows that reinforced the fortune destiny. At least once a week you watched some portrayal of a poor kid making it big – like you were certain you would one day. An impoverished Arthur pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone and his fortune is changed. Willy Wonka turns over his chocolate factory and fortune to the young and desperately poor Charlie Bucket – because of his honesty. The King of Persia falls in love with and marries the modest school teacher, her fortune changed dramatically. The tattered and common Eliza Doolittle is sculpted into a society lady and marries her mentor into a charming and wealthy life. Poor Aladdin finds the treasure of gold and a genie to grant his wishes.

Criminals also appear in these portrayals of poor gone rich. Steve McQueen in the Chase, escapes with a large cash booty and the pretty girl. Clint Eastwood kills off his competitors, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to win the buried cash fortune. In Oceans Eleven, Frank Sinatra robs casinos and escapes with millions. Of course there are dozens more examples to find. This genre’s theme is that a likeable criminal character (who must also be handsome or beautiful), is identified with by the viewer or reader, and he or she makes good in conflict against the odds of society.

As you, the American Conservative, travel through your life, recurring clues maintain the destiny myth within you; like the nice looking used car your grandfather just gave you with no questions asked. Or that four hundred dollars you won in the lottery, just one number short of the big multi-million dollar jackpot. That twenty dollars you found on the floor of the grocery store. Certainly these are signs of the fortune to come, right? It is a form of superstition, no doubt. It is so engrained you wouldn’t recognize it as such if a psychologist strapped you into a couch and worked-you-over using everything in the book.

It will take defeat for you to lose this self aggrandizing characteristic of destiny of fortune. Not just any defeat, but a type of which you clearly see that you controlled the conditions from the beginning. You’ll have to take responsibility for the defeat. If you don’t you’ll just continue expecting the pot of gold to fall in front of you, and mentally spitting on the poor when they come into sight.

If you reach the age of forty, and you find yourself in big house, with a big car, and a country club membership. You’ll meet with your friends at the club and bark derogatory criticisms at the poor and liberals and the ACLU, and mostly you’ll complain about taxes. You’ll have an ego as hard as steel what’s origins are buried in your brain behind a dense foliage of nerve bundles. That ego will be fortified with certainty that you were destined to live like this anyway, that it was just waiting for you.
On a summer night by your backyard pool, at a cocktail party, someone you know will call you a “world class asshole!” right to your face. It is likely to be your wife. They’ll be absolutely right.

Now its thirty years later and you are on your deathbed. You had a carpenter engrave the headboard with the word D-E-A-T-H, just to verify the bed’s purpose. You are alone and starring at the ceiling and thinking while the morphine is doing its work.

“What was the purpose of my life?”

“It must have been collecting all this crap. Yes that’s it, all the crap, good crap.”

“I knew I would make it good.”

“Stinking IRS! They’ve taken me for a ride!”

“Now I’ll have to pay that wretched Estate Tax after I’m dead. That’s gonna hurt!”

“If I hadn’t collected all this crap and money I wouldn’t have to worry about the stinking IRS.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have to worry about the IRS. Huhh.”

“The purpose of life . . . was not to collect a bunch of stuff and money. It was to contribute to everyone else. To take a roll in bettering lives as my own got better. That’s where the satisfaction is . . . . was.”

“I’ve wasted these seventy years on myself alone. The world could sure do without me.”

Then, bitter and disappointed, you shut your eyes and your heart stopped.