Somebody on my Facebook posted it and I had to steal it. Sorry! I really am but I love it and I can’t believe an actual American actually recognizes this.
America’s embrace of cultural and intellectual egalitarianism has been a mistake.
I believe that the real purpose this cloying, fake egalitarianism serves is to conceal the inequality in the class relations.
Once again, I apologize for stealing the quote.
(But they would insist that they are in no way upper class. I mean, they suffered terribly…because their father lost his high-level government job after the coup. And another one was from a small, unimportant town…where his father was the chief prosecutor…and he got into to the same alumni-favoring elite university that his father went to. And one of them faced immigration issues…because he was here on his father’s student visa and had to leave when his father finished his graduate degree and returned to his home country to take a job as an aide to the parliament.)
But I am all for reduced inequality. There didn’t use to be as much of it, in fact — back when public schools fed you lunch and prepared you for college, and college didn’t charge tuition. In those circumstances you could actually be selective, give bad grades to those who earned them, etc., too.
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Everybody has the same entitlement to get robbed, or to go to jail/prison, or to have their reputation tarnished or trashed.
It’s the amenities where things become unequal and entitlement becomes disparate. The entitlement to the benefits of life that only select individuals and groups can access.
Anybody can be discredited and brought down by the system, and suffer legal humiliation.
But to have opportunities, the chance to travel abroad, make decent money, have good connections? Those are all awarded to select individuals—not for everybody.
This is why, for example, one never feels bad for celebrity types who die of drug overdoses, or for politicians who have to do prison time and register as “sex offenders” for the rest of their lives, or for lawmakers who get disbarred following DUI convictions.
Because individuals like those practically HAD their chances and opportunities literally handed to them without having to finagle circumstances, whereas someone with a lower status could find themselves more vulnerable to the whims of collective prejudices with less chance of defending themselves as they’re already judged unfavorably, especially if they’re a bit eccentric or somewhat of a reclusive.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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