There are no superheroes. We need to do it ourselves.

When I was in grade school, we had to learn all the --isms and other words that were associated with them. I know that it was training us to "spot" Communism-- I am a child of the cold war era. That said, the word "oligarchy" had been associated with corruption in Soviet Russia, and we all knew that it was a bad thing for a select group of powerful people to run the show behind closed doors. An oligarchy was a bad thing.

At least, I thought we all knew that. From the looks of things, some people took it as a challenge, as a way to run a country like their own private supply of money. In fact, I would have thought that most of the people who are my age or a little older-- even 20 years older or so-- would not want to be associated with those manipulative policies that we were all taught were evil. Unfortunately, it looks like I was wrong. The oligarchs of the social studies lessons were cruel, heartless, and abusive to the common worker. We also learned that the Robber Barons and Industrialists were not to be trusted, and that they exploited everyday people to the point of wreaking havoc on the economy and on people's lives. 

Those tenets were ingrained in me, from school lessons to the songs I grew up listening to. My dad, ever so patient, explained to me what the folks songs and protest songs were telling us: greed is bad, war is bad, hurting the environment is bad, corruption that leads to abuses of power were evil. 

And now, we have a band of almost caricature-like people who will be sitting up on the dais on Monday, gloating and plotting. It seems like one of the starkest divides, at least for people of my generation, is not necessarily about money and that sort of thing. It's what we did with the lessons we were taught in grade school. Some of us-- many of us-- learned that we have to share the planet and its resources responsibly, and that each human being has value. That other cultures are to be treasured and learned about. The others succumbed to the allure of the dark side. 

My friends, we are once again locked in a battle of good versus evil. I don't like living in a Marvel Comics episode. There are no superheroes to rescue us. We need to save ourselves.

C