Re: my post ealier today, comes a very impressive and accurate point from the criminally underrated Common Reader blog, that helps explains (to shocked non-Catholics) the “RFK found MLK’s preaching soooo frickin’ tedious” bit.
I didn’t make this point myself because I take this stuff for granted. I sometimes forget that not everybody went to Catholic school, where you had to — repeat, had to — “volunteer” at the rundown home for abandoned hydocyphalic kids with missing eyeballs who liked to show you their empty bloody sockets (I’m serious) etc:
BECAUSE WE HAVE ALREADY DONE HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE AND MET DOZENS OF “COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS.”
Before the age of 25.I can totally handle the coming American Nazi Party of Compulsory Volunteerism for myself and my children because I have put in my time stocking food bank shelves, discussing finer points of “Happy Days” with developmentally delayed adults, cleaning out the litterboxes of HIV+ drag queens’ therapy cats, watching the kids with hearing aids all look up at the sky five minutes earlier before anybody else hears the airplanes…
AND doing this all with a full load of college preparatory academic classes, twice weekly physical education requirements, a part time job and binge drinking on the weekends.
So I have the mad tyranny-survival skills. There were a whole bunch of people in 1984 offstage, you know, hanging out drinking Victory Gin and playing cards by positioning the fat guy in front of the telescreen and covering for each other.
We can handle it, but we sure aren’t going to vote for it.
