I recall a visit I made a couple of years ago to the home of a low income family with whom I had spent over two full years assisting as a social worker.  I was delivering a donated computer so that the family, which included a bright sixteen year old high school student, a struggling seven year old and their semi-literate mother, could get internet access.  I had promised them a computer because I found that even grade school teachers make the middle class assumption that there is a computer in the home, and high school teachers regularly give homework assignments to be done via the internet; yet, this family, like many with whom I worked, did not have internet nor even a computer.  I had recently received word that the younger child would be retained due to a lack of academic progress.

As I spoke I found myself, not for the first time, putting the burden of the younger child’s success on her older sister. I did not like doing that but the older sister was the only one in the home capable of providing the daily assistance the seven year old needed if she were to have any chance of academic success.  I had, by that point, been pressing this child to help her younger sister for two years.  It wasn’t fair, I didn’t like putting that responsibility on a teenager, but I saw no other hope for her little sister.   I knew full well that it was her mother’s responsibility to provide such assistance, but in this case, a single mother who is low functioning and semi-literate was simply not up to the task.

It is a trite cliché, but true none the less: life isn’t’ fair.

There was no villain in that home. There was no cruel oppressor who was harming this family. The root cause was that thirty something years prior to that day, the mother had been born with limited mental capacity.  Though she and her children were adequately supported by the government financially; that financial assistance did not give her children an equal shot at success.  The woman’s limited ability led to her being susceptible to unscrupulous men who impregnated her with no intention of supporting the subsequent children, emotionally or financially.  Thus that kindhearted seven year old who, despite the fact she received a great deal of special help at school, lived in a world of crisis and chaos at home, which undermined what little hope she had to keep up with her peers.

A generation ago, there was a dignified future for girls such as her in the textile mills; a job that provided not only income, but more importantly a place in her community.  But in the past two decades, jobs for those of limited academic prowess have largely disappeared.  The dismal world described by Dickens or Marx  of a proletariat toiling in dehumanizing factories 12 hours a day gave way to the highly paid, but minimally skilled, factory worker of the post WWII era, which has in turn given way to the highly paid, highly skilled automated factory worker of today.  Left behind with no place in the US are those who are not able to master the skills of the technical/information age.

We have a rising world of those born with little prospect of opportunity.  Just as in the mediaeval world one’s “Blood” determined ones station in life, we are rapidly moving to a world where one’s IQ determines one’s station in life.  This is new. In the past half century, hard work could keep all but the profoundly mentally disabled in the middle class.  But, that day is waning. Not just in factories, but in virtually all fields, success in formal education is a prerequisite.  Gone is the day of the self-taught auto mechanic, or semi-literate machinist.  Such jobs now require a high degree of literacy and technical computer skills that are prerequisites for the job.

My grandfather went to work in the oil fields of Texas when he dropped out of 3rd grade nearly 100 years ago.  He learned the trade from the ground up and retired comfortably as the vice-president of a major natural gas company in the 1970’s. That life-story simply would not be possible today, and unlike the seven year old I speak of, he was highly intelligent.

Equal Opportunity. It’s an empty and deceptive phrase.  The world does not provide equal opportunity to all and no amount of social engineering will ever change that.

What those of us who have been blessed with ability and opportunity can do is to strive to ensure our society treats all people with equal dignity and respect, no matter what their skill level.   Sadly the disrespect of the lower end of the ability curve is every bit as common by the political left as the political right. On one hand, those of modest ability are specific targets of the leftist academic and political elite who claim to speak for the poor and disenfranchised so as to gain political power; yet they do nothing to actually improve their self-value or value to society.  Their solution is not to provide them with meaningful work but with angry rhetoric as to why it is the fault of the “oppressors” who deprive them of success.  The same people claim IQ is a myth so as to justify their position that their poverty is caused by deliberate oppression not their lack of the necessary skills to compete.  A final lie of the left is to equate respect with income. Respect and income are not the same. A just and respectful society does not mean one with income equality. To suggest they are the same is to be more materialistic than the right wing.  Sadly this view is promoted by the Ivy League elites who dominate the left. Perhaps they think their wealth makes them better than Middle America, thus they think everyone believes wealth and human value are the same. But they are not.

On the other hand, the political right clings to the delusion that everyone has the ability to climb out of poverty by hard work alone.  Yet, they oppose a living minimum wage and supports such as child care and healthcare that would be required for someone with an IQ of 88 to provide a decent living for their family.  Though they don’t say it as directly, they too act as if raw ability is a myth. They want to believe everyone can become middle class if they work hard and government would stay out of the way.  In this they are sadly delusional.   For the 1/3 of the US population with the lowest intellectual ability, there are very few jobs that pay a living wage. The two exceptions are government work and unionized work, both of which are actively opposed by the right.  Thus, what we have is the right wing simply wishes away the fact the US has an intellectually based economy and that not everyone can compete.

As in so many things, the hard right and hard left actually agree, but their joint position is based on fantasy not reality.

It is not popular to say, but we do not have an employment problem in the US,  we have a problem with providing employment opportunities for those who are not suited to work that requires advanced cognitive abilities.   We have no plan to address this. I’ve yet to hear a political candidate even hint ant this basic problem.  Why? Because neither the right nor left want to admit these people even exist.  It does not fit their fantasy view of the world.

This is just one of the many reasons that we, the vast majority of Americans, who occupy the center of American politics must take back our parties (both Republican and Democrat) from those who make policy based on a world they wish exists, not the real one. There is no question that there is a concerted effort to disempower the existing political scheme this year. However,  in practice both the right and left wing populist movements are blaming a conspiracy of “others” rather than taking a serious look at the underlying problem that lacks a villain to blame.  We must reject their calls to join them because their opposites are so very wrong. That is a false choice that we can’t let them lure us into making.