When people discover I have a 3-month-old, they invariably ask how I’m sleeping. Nobody has asked so far how I’m eating. As if the disruption of eating patterns was something to sneeze at.

I feel misunderstood and at odds with the rest of humanity.

P.S. This is a humorous post, by the way. Ha ha.

There is good news, too, however. On the way to the doctor’s, I passed a house with a sign in the front yard that said, “RAUNER IS WRONG.” It’s so nice to know that I’m not entirely alone in my very sane dislike of Rauner in this town.

So everyone was all like “Go to a different OB-GYN, go to somebody less religious.” So I did. And here is what the new OB-GYN came up with to make patients feel totally not judged for having aborted. Just in case you are not entirely sure how your doctor feels about your reproductive choices, lift up your eyes as you are laying on the examination table, and encounter this, you dirty whore.

I never aborted but even I felt judged because who knows what in my medical history might prompt the doctor to start praying for my sins. I’m worried that unless I’ve given virgin birth, I might not be pure enough. 

There are things people do without having verbalized or consciously accepted their intention to do them. The lack of conscious planning, however, doesn’t make the consequences of these actions any less devastating and doesn’t relieve anybody of the responsibility for them.

The elites – politicians, journalists, public figures – are probably not saying to themselves, “Let me thin out the competition that my children will be facing by holding back as many of their peers as possible.” President Obama was surely not thinking, “The joke is on you, losers” as he made impassioned speeches about the “mistaken” belief that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, all the while planning to send his daughter to Harvard. And it’s not like anybody is doubting that she won’t stop at a single degree either.

Nobody, I’m sure, is cynical enough purposefully to feed people crippling lies about the possibility of reversing the changes that have taken place since the 1970s. But the sad truth is that there is a whole class of people who are gaining huge economic advantages from perpetuating these lies. And I’m convinced that there is an unacknowledged, unconfessed desire to keep these advantages that lies at the root of the reluctance to say, “Folks, this party is dead. Time for you to move on because I already have.”

I don’t believe that anybody who is not saying this genuinely wants to reduce inequality. I feel queasy every time I see yet another weepy article about inequality whose author reaps the benefits of feeling all moral and caring while doing everything possible to ensure that inequality grows.

All of the presidential candidates are actively and shamelessly contributing to growing inequality. Hillary maybe does it a bit less, which is one reason I like her.

Inequality grows in proportion to how many people have accepted that the technological revolution is irreversible and how many are still hoping it will somehow magically go away. The former constitute a minority and are figuring out how to inscribe themselves into the present and the future. The latter are hiding from the unpleasant reality behind vapid fantasies that there is some law, some presidential decree, some decision that a benign, all-powerful authority can make to ensure that the world never moves past 1973. The longer they inhabit this fantasy world, the greater is the gap between them and those who have moved on, both metaphorically and literally.

I don’t believe that the presidential candidates are promising to bring back the past out of a consciously evil “let’s dupe the rubes” attitude. Rather, this is a result of inertia and indifference. “I’ll bring back the nation-state and manufacturing jobs” is just what you say for voters to like you. And since none of the candidates is young, their inclination to dwell on the future is limited.

Of course, history is stronger than politics, and the past is dead and gone. Voters will not see any of these promises fulfilled. They will only fall behind as they wait for fantasy to become reality. This will only make them more disaffected, lost, angry, and distrustful.