- Chapter 1
- The life and times of Binkie Bickerton. A parable in real-time.
- (A short story about how nothing else mattered until it did.)
- Chapter 1
- Binkie was born to have it all. Daddy was rich, and mommy was good-looking. This had been going on in the family for generations. The rich are different because they are born that way. Rich has always been good, is now, and always will be. Privilege is a birthright bestowed on the born-to-be wealthy crowd. They can abuse it as much as they want, and nothing is ever lost to time. When cancer overtakes the poor, it takes them much less time to die. Money can only prolong suffering. More on that later.
- Boarding schools are born for the rich. Little Richie has always had his destiny paid for. Rank is always the privilege of the wealthy. How could it be any other way? Clever can only take you part of the way there. Every form of refuge has its price; more on that later. Boarding schools are where you get inoculated from the common. Little Richie never has to do his best. A striver, he will never be. Only the common do that. Another man’s system will never enslave Richie because his kind runs the system. It is a system of self-help for the rich and their common good. It is a form of socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
- Evil preaches tolerance until it becomes dominant and starts silencing the good. Binkie’s crowd invented this game. It amuses them.
- Rich and powerful are born as Siamese twins. Power is the most persuasive of the rhetorical discourses. Knowledge never trumps power. Leverage and truth are separate and unequal. Conflict resolution is of no concern to Binkie.
- Only the strong have survival skills, but Richie Rich does not need them. He operates outside the danger zone. His ticket to ride protects him.
- Richie Rich will grow up to become Binkie Bickerton with every step he takes and every move he makes. Look out, kid, they keep it all hid until you must finally decide. The poor are always on the killing floor. Even when a battle is won. The war rages on. The poor are never forgiven and never released. The tears of joy view for you are clouded in the smoke of a distant fire. Introspection isn’t something that Binkie needs to do. Richie Rich et al. are conditioned into the velvety and smooth world of specialness as soon as they walk upright on the ground. What, me worry? I think not. The banality of happiness is all that I am looking for. Self-doubt is a poor people’s thing. Consideration of other people’s opinions and feelings has never entered into the vacuousness of Binkie’s mind. Their thoughts are of no interest to Binkie Bickerton et al. They should stay in their lane, but they don’t have one. Pretending to care about others who are less than the superior ones causes the Binkies of the world to be uncomfortable.
- Separating the unequal has always been the game’s name for the dominating folks. Fifty years ago, the dominating Binkies of the United States allowed an affirmative action plan to be implemented. The less-than folks were matriculated and integrated into the Binkie schools and corporations. The Binkietes knew the less-than folks would surely fade away in the long run. Are the Blinkies right? I don’t know, you tell me.
- Recently, the powers that be have been aggressively canceling the non-conforming folks. They should never have gained entrance to the Binkie club, to begin with. They have been shuffled back into the “you should never have been allowed into the club anyway” deck. These sorry, marginal folks were pointless and useless candidates anyway.
- The Binkies of the world argue and judge you, but listen to you? No reason to do that. They are not interested in lesser ideas. Truth can’t be hidden from them because they already know it. Your truth means nothing to me.
- Love a god that I do not know, and I think not. I’ve got me, and that’s enough. Love my neighbor as my self? Self-love is all that I am looking for.
- Are you stupid, or what?
- This what
