God Bless the Child

By David Sherman

Americans have again upended children rearing, offering a welcome reprieve from the spineless offspring of the Dr. Spock revolution. The misguided philosophy espoused trusting parents’ common sense and showing children unconditional love and tenderness. The result? Hippies, yuppies and liberals addicted to BMWs, drugs and political correctness, women who behave like men and men paranoid about getting their bell rung on a football field.

But, thankfully, our Southern neighbours have not only gone back to the time-tested edict spare the rod and spoil the child, but they’ve improved it, conditioning children for the life that’s to come.

The most exciting development was a recent Supreme Court decision that was proof justice is blind. The high court, with its majority of right-thinking scholars, gave its blessing to border guards who shot a Mexican child while he was on the Mexican side of the border, waving aggressively.

This is in line with the altruistic government policy of putting children in cages. Not only do cages spare pain, bullets and bleating of those nattering nabobs of negativism, but also funeral costs for would-be immigrants too poor to be American.

Caged kids are freed from the tedium of soap, toothpaste, toilets or fresh drinking water. And they no longer have to worry about getting lost, kidnapped or being used as target practice in mass shootings.

And to our neighbours’ credit, this advanced child-care is not just for unwanted immigrants. African and Latino-American school children who have refused to go back to where they came from, are regularly body slammed, punched, kicked, handcuffed and arrested by police, an early education in the realities of daily adult life.

Stop and frisk, by any other name, is just living in the U.S. while being non-white. Being introduced to their friendly neighbourhood police officers at a young age paves the way for the ongoing relationship minorities are expected to have with those who protect and serve the majority.

With higher education reserved for the privileged or those willing to be strangled by debt, many black and brown people are funnelled into minimum wage jobs. The brilliant U.S. policy of aiding business by ensuring the minimum wage is not enough for anyone to live on forces people to work two or three jobs, keeping them out of trouble.

Better yet, with the new gig economy, there are no minimum wages, so as app designers and businesses dependent on apps and mobile devices prosper, those who deliver, drive or fulfil orders for goods and services that are just a click away can work endlessly and sleep in cars or tents.

All this polishes unemployment numbers while reducing demand for housing and medical care, since being a low-wage cog in the new economy doesn’t allow one to afford either.

For those who think crime is preferable to being subjected to a life of endless toil, hunger and homelessness, being caged, beaten, cuffed and later stopped and frisked, often at gunpoint, is preparation for entrance into the world’s largest and most welcoming justice system.

Yes, people of colour are not only more likely to find themselves behind bars in the U.S., but will spend more time looking through the bars than white miscreants, especially those blessed with white collars.

Also, early exposure to the “dollar store diet,” dumpster diving or eating out of garbage cans will prepare the digestive system for the varied cuisine of the incarcerated. So, early practice in the rhythms and cruelty of institutional life serve as a needed and generous warmup to adulthood.

But the world’s greatest democracy maintains freedom and choice for all. If young people are reluctant to join the gig economy or the minimum wage slave trade, there are still choices. The majestic armed forces offers a career and an education in exchange for an arm, leg or both and/or, as a bonus, a Traumatic Head Injury, also known as a Trump headache.

And, if armed forces green and prostheses don’t satisfy them, there is always Starbuck’s green, McDonald’s red, where wages are a few pennies more than minimum wage or private-penitentiary orange, which comes with three meals, a bed and a roof, all free.

The boon in the private penitentiary industry boosts the stock market, creates jobs, encourages new cost-cutting methods of incarceration as well as research into a growing field for academics – solitary confinement psychosis.

Dr. Spock’s time-worn ideas of child-rearing brought us a society of addicts glued to TV, glowing elephant glass and antipathy to automatic weapons.

Now, with more cages, cuffs and bars, Americans are raising new generations that will require not only less footwear and affordable housing, but, once again, America will indeed be great.