The Smiths and Joneses (14 page)

              Before anyone can respond, Beth calls, “Holly, come. Holly, cookie, cookie.”

              Beth runs off to grab her dog who really wanted to remain hiding under the bookcase.  Holly tried to get away from the strangers in her home. She loved Beth, but like many dogs, she didn’t understand the invasion of the security of her home. However, she understood the word cookie.

              Sean and Wolf both laugh, Sean says, “Beth, I’m sure everyone can see you and is falling in love with you right about now. You can leave Holly where she is. She’s just a little scared right now. She’ll warm up to us in a little bit. It’s normal with dogs. How are the cookies?”

              “Very good, did you know I helped Mommy make them? We used the real chocolate chips because Mommy said you were ’portant people. Holly doesn’t want to come out and say hello, she’ll come out later when she gets used to you. What’s ’portant people mean?”

              Sean responds, “Beth, I think your Mother meant important.”

              “Same thing, can I have another cookie?”

              Before anyone can respond, a teenager enters the living room saying, “Hey, I thought you were going to call me when they got here. No fair, she’s hogging all of the air time and all of the cookies.” Turning to face the cameras, he makes a peace sign, “I’m Leon. Any cute girls out there who want to be friends can find me on my FB page.”

              Bob, motions for Leon to sit and be quiet.

              Sean and Wolf say, “Bob, we thank you for agreeing to be part of this program and for allowing us to invade your lives for a few days. Why don’t you give everyone an overview of who you are?”

              “Sure, we would like to welcome everyone into our home and family. We bought this house two years ago when I got my current job at the lab. Carol landed a job in a biomedical start-up shortly after we moved here. We moved to Burlington from northern Virginia. Frankly we were surprised at the low housing cost and the friendliness of the people. Our house was brand new. Its 2,500-square feet, which works out to 625 square feet for each of us. To give the rest of the country an example of the costs, the house cost us $200,000. The same house in Northern Virginia would cost of $550,000. We moved to be able to provide a better life for our children. We have four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a living room where we’re currently sitting; we have a dining room, kitchen and family room. In the back, we have a patio and gas grill. Upstairs are four bedrooms; we also have a large bonus room that’s over the garage.”

              Beth says, “One of the bedrooms and bathrooms is mine, please use the guest bathroom if you have to go number two. Don’t smell up my bathroom.”

              Everyone laughs at her statement.

              Bob continues, “We have a two-car garage, Carol drives a Mercedes-Benz C 300; I drive a BMW 3 Series, I guess my parents would have called us yuppies. I don’t care; we earn enough money so that we can afford a new house, and enough disposable income left over to both enjoy ourselves and put some money away for the kid’s education. We take weeklong vacations every year. Our next big family trip is going to be to visit Disney in Florida.” 

              Beth jumps up and down, “Yea, Mickey and Minnie, I’m going to Disney, why don’t all of you join us, we can have a party.”

              Bob tells Beth, “Honey, remember what we talked about, wait until you’re asked a question to talk.”

              “‘K, daddy.”

              “We work long hours, typically, each of us put in 50 or more hours which include work done on the weekends. However, the payback can be huge. If Carol’s company succeeds, she’ll stand to win big on her options. As the lab expands and acquires other companies my stock options also grow.”

              Wolf asks, “Bob, how do you feel about you having to pay for your children’s college and your neighbors in the LSA don’t have to?”

              “I don’t mind; I was raised believing on standing on my own two feet. I’ve never taken a handout in my life.”

              “Bob, did you takeout a student loan when you went to college?”

              “Wolf, Of course, I did, who didn’t?”

              “Do you realize student loans are government programs?”

              “Not really, it was a loan that I paid back with interest. It wasn’t a handout.” 

              “I bet there are other government programs, you’ve used too, did you drive on I-85 to work today?”

              “Sure, it’s the quickest way. Why?”

              “The interstate highway system was paid for by the government; they built it for people like you to use. Does Carol use the interstate to get to her start-up job?”

              “Usually.”

              “Well, that start-up that may one day payback big dividends to you is using the government paid for highway system. I’m sure Carol’s start-up also uses technology licensed from the government. Anything they develop will have to be approved by the government before it can be sold. The government, even here in the USA, isn’t so far removed from your lives as you think they are.”

              Bob turns to look directly into the camera’s red light, “Wait a minute there Wolf, I know the government collected the money to build the interstate roadway from my fuel taxes. So you can say I paid for it myself. The government may have issued the contract, but I end up paying for it, I pay for it with every tank of gas we buy. We’re using the roads we help pay for.”

              “Bob, many people think they can live very well without the government. However, they can’t. Let me give you some examples, without the FDA there wouldn’t be any food safety. Carol’s biotech startup wouldn’t be possible if the FDA didn’t work with such companies on the release of new drugs. Without the DoD, there wouldn’t be a military to protect the country. The government provides libraries, schools, roads, clean water and electrical power just to name a few. I hope you see that you can’t function without the support of the government. Even if you go back to the so-called ‘wild west’ the government supplied the sheriffs that brought order and protection so towns could grow. The government protected the land for the railroad crews. Without the government, there wouldn’t have been the expansion west.”

              “Is that why the LSA doesn’t have a national military, because they don’t care about protecting their people?”

              Wolf continues, “Bob, no, they don’t have a national military because they have no enemies.”

              “Wolf, I disagree, they hide behind that statement, and the truth is they can get away without having a military because the USA has such a strong one they know no one will attack them without us responding. It is no different with Canada when they were still a separate country. Many of us think the LSA should be paying a percentage of our military costs since you’re hiding behind it.”

              “Bob, there’s no reason to go down this old wives’ tale. Let’s discuss your family’s normal day, why don’t you walk us through a sort of a day in the life of the Joneses.”

              “Sure, we’re not much different from most families. We wake around 6:00 AM. Coffee is set on a timer, so it’s ready when we come downstairs; Carol is usually the first one up to make sure the kids have a hot breakfast before they leave for school. While the kids eat their breakfast, she makes and packs them lunch.”

              Wolf asks, “Leon and Beth don’t buy their lunches at school?”

              “No, they brown bag it. Carol likes to make them lunch.”

              “How do you know they’re getting the right mix of protein, carbs, vitamins, etc.?”

              Carol jumps into the discussion, “I know what my kids like to eat, I know what’s good for them, I don’t need the government to tell me how to feed my family, or spend my tax money on them. There are families in the area that are short of income; I don’t see anything wrong with the government helping those who need help. However, I don’t agree with the idea of the government telling me what I have to feed my children.”

              Wolf gets on his soapbox and asks, “But Carol aren’t you being party to a situation where the children know who’s needy and who isn’t? Aren’t you really helping to continue and expand class discrimination? The poor get free school lunches; the kids just have to look around and see who’s eating the school lunches and whose brown bagging it. By sending your kids to school with their home made lunches you’re putting them in a class above the needy, hence taking self-esteem away from the lower class. You think you’re doing right by your kids, yet you’re harming the self-esteem of the less well off. Those poor kids most likely also see your kids come to school dressed differently and better. This added to what happens in the lunch room, creates additional class stress. You’re encouraging class warfare. I bet all of your friends do the same, as such when the lower class comes home from school they are depressed. You think you’re doing the right thing for your children, yet what you’re really doing is building the foundation of a future class war. You blamed President Obsma for starting class warfare, yet here you are, an average middle class USA family laying the foundation towards a future class war and destroying millions of young people’s self-esteem. I really hope you’re proud of yourselves. Years from now when the situation in the streets has gotten out of control, remember the seeds you’ve sown.”

              When Wolf finishes, Carol and Bob look at each other and Sean, the camera operators wonder if some sort of secret communication is being exchanged between the three of them. Bob lifts his head and looks into Wolf’s smirking eyes, saying, “Wolf, thank for the left wing commercial. I’m sure none of the viewers has ever heard it before. If I remember correctly, these are some of the core arguments used when Obsma pushed his programs which increased our national debt, the same arguments your side has been using to standardize schools for years. It sounds similar to the entire standardization of the nation’s education and school lunch program that Mrs. O attempted to mandate.

“Let’s look at the First Lady’s school lunch program, it wasted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food. Students hated the food; it left them hungry, most of them complained they couldn’t eat the food, they went to their afternoon classes hungry; their grades went down; their test scores went down. The First Lady went on national television to say she had numerous college degrees and still had trouble determining what to feed her kids, yet she knew what to serve all of the nation’s school children? Before she and her husband had to leave office, she tried to mandate how people could shop for food. She succeeded better than she realized, we learned from her what doesn’t work; we gave control of our schools back to the local school boards. The USA no longer has a national department of education; President Brownstone closed it. Our states followed suit closing county departments of education and moving control over our children’s education back to us in the community. Our students’ test scores have increased year after year; our dropout rate has decreased, and our kids do better when they compete in international competitions. You came here to learn about our typical day, we hope you don’t plan to take every opportunity to preach or question our system. We volunteered because we thought we were being given the time to show off our system. We didn’t think we were going to have to defend it on air at every turn.”

Carol continues, “Let’s review how well some of those programs worked out. Your side mandated Common Core, which was, you said, required so that we, the country, could be sure all of our students were equal, all were starting from the same starting line, all had the same common education. The result of Common Core was it lowered the knowledge level of our kids. It discouraged reading and self-thinking. You confused children; you destroyed the ability of teachers to teach the children.

“Children have been getting help with school lunches for years, it’s only been when you on the left started using that data to tell those who are receiving the aid that they were entitled to more, they should be taught differently because of where they grew up.
You
created two different systems; you pulled the aid participants and pushed them above everyone else. You turned the pyramid upside down. Before you used the school lunch program as part of your propaganda, no one had an issue with it. Your policies damaged children's self-esteem, and you shamelessly used the very children you claim to want to help. You would use anyone and step on anyone to further your aims. I think you have what you wanted, it’s called the LSA. I suggest you take your ideas and keep them on your side of what you call the divide. You came to us to learn how we live, if you came to try to convert us, we’re asking you to leave our home.”

While the adults were talking, Leon and Beth quickly got bored and left the living room. Playing in her room, Beth hears the adult’s voices rising; she decides she wants another cookie, so she silently enters the living room to ask for another. Her parents are deep in discussion, not paying any attention to Beth. Beth decided that if her parents were too busy, she would just take the cookies. She worried about the angry tone of her parent’s voices. She grabbed the cookies placing them in a zip lock bag. She decided to go play with a friend versus staying home and listening to whatever her parents were upset over. Beth slipped out of the house with her bag of cookies in one hand and a doll in the other.