As a youth, I was a fuckup, always in trouble (those of you who know me as an adult might find this familiar), and thus I was constantly barraged with instruction, guidance, and advice. 1

I was told to not do drugs, to not skip school, to cut my hair, to respect the authorities, etc. But the instruction that I was given more often, more forcefully, and by more people than any other was the simple admonition… 2

They told me: “Get good grades so you can go to a good college because if you don’t go to college you will be a ditch digger and your whole life will be shit.” I heard this every day of my adolescence. 3

I hated high school so much. Not because I wanted out, but because I saw what it could have been. At 16, I started a club in high school called “Teaching Dynamics Seminar” because I wanted to find a way to create an educational system that worked for me. 4

At 17, after 4 years of struggle, I finally dropped out of high school. I wept openly as I foresaw the certainty of my future life as a ditch digger living a life of shit. I got no sympathy from anyone. 5

My SAT scores were good, but not great. My GPA was 1.8. I applied to the University of California but was routinely rejected. Everyone said, “well, there you go.” 6

Without college, I was in a completely different class than my cohort. Raised in an affluent middle class family in an affluent white suburb of San Francisco, I was no longer on the right track of life. 7

My dad was an an electrician, a working man, and a staunch union supporter, grateful to the union for all it had done for him and his class. When I dropped out he offered to get me into the electrician’s union but I didn’t want to admit defeat. 8

Instead I declared victory and reveled in my life of shit. That lasted for a few years as I grew up and experienced life on my own. But I always knew that No College == No Life. 9

Okay, then life happened and I learned a lot and did a lot and educated myself mostly, but here I am today, finally realizing that the command “Go to college or else” that still echoes in my aging brain was actually a redefinition of middle class life and values. 10

“Go to college” was a gigantic wedge driven deep into the middle class, dividing it in two. The American middle class had once been a successful amalgam of educated people and blue collar workers, and as the civil rights era dawned, it included people of color. 11

Together, educated people and working people were a voting majority, and the Democratic Party won consistently. Martin Luther King saw the partnership of educated people, working people, and black people as a solid base that would create an egalitarian society. 12

Instead, that “Go to College” wedge blasted the middle class into two castes: The educated elite and the unfortunate mass of lower caste, uneducated, dirty-fingernailed workers. 13

The new, self-appointed, college educated elite came to see itself as better than uneducated workers. When industrial companies in America began to fail or their jobs were exported, the new liberal elite saw nothing wrong. 14

They seemed to say, just go to college and get one of the many wonderful white collar office jobs and just ignore those failures who build stuff and make stuff and serve us stuff. 15

And it was a short jump from that to imagining that working people just didn’t have the mental horsepower needed to lead and legislate. 16

And lots of those working people just coincidentally had darker skin and poorer language skills than the educated folk. It seemed like these educated people just naturally were better, an elite, if you will. 17

They didn’t fight for civil rights or for worker’s rights. They fought for graduate degrees and gap years and legacy admissions. 18

And, to a large extent, this is why trump is ascendant today. The coalition of liberal arts educated people, working people, immigrants, and people of color was abandoned by those who heeded “Go to College.” 19

Somewhere around 1982 I attempted to form a union for programmers. It was a joke, because programmers believe in a meritocracy and don’t want a union. Instead, we saw unions as a refuge for lazy, less-capable workers. 20

The tech industry grew up in that “meritocratic” white collar non-union world. Of course, not being organized, that world, after birthing the economic engine of the 21st Century, was kicked to curb by another elite, this one about money and power. 21

My boomer cohort, college educated & cubicle-bound, abandoned their roots: their working class, immigrant, brown, dirty-finger-nailed parents, and became a new, self-congratulatory elite. It is this “elite” that the trumpian base hates. Hates with the fury of a thousand suns. 22

They have every right to hate the college-educated elite. It was this elite that got us into Vietnam, Grenada, Panama. It led us into international meddling with the likes of Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Philippines, Iran, Israel, and a dozen more. 23

It was this same college-educated elite that abandoned and trashed our great national rail system to erect the socially and environmentally destructive automobile infrastructure that has so drained our resources. 24

It was this same college-educated elite that didn’t see the dramatic growth of huge economic inequality as a bad thing. We tech geeks were proud of our Gates, Zucks, Bezos, Ellisons, and Jobs because we imagined that they were us and we could be them. 25

But those tech billionaires aren’t friends with cubicle-dwellers. They hang with financiers and lobbyists, arms dealers and celebrities. The tech billionaires threw us all under the bus with their power and riches. 26

Those wonderful office jobs that my parent’s generation wanted me to achieve through a college education have turned out to be “bullshit jobs.” 27

The world of meritocratic tech jobs have turned out to be unpleasant for most people. Being a tech designer, developer, or deployer has turned out to be more of a job than a career. 28

And it turns out that the tech practitioner cohort has no organization, no coherence, no common ground, and thus has no power. Their “seat at the table” is a second-class seat, that exists only at the sufferance of the moneyed class. 29

In the 1980s, a smart, hard-working, ambitious techie could write a program & build a company & launch a dynasty. That doesn’t really exist anymore. Instead, today, smart, hard-working, ambitious techies get a job that might have the perks that union workers had in the 1950s. 30

Over the last few years I’ve struggled to understand how the trump base could vote against their own self-interest so enthusiastically. I now see that my white, educated cohort has done the exact same thing. 31

I’ve struggled to comprehend why the trump base HATES liberals with such an unrestrained passion. Well, it’s because the liberals created an elite subclass and put them in charge, while looking down their noses at the toiling worker class. 32

The lesson?

There is only ever one elite: money and power.

There is only one way to counterbalance that elite: solidarity, inclusion, organization.
33

Going to college is not a bad thing, but imagining that it makes you a better class of person is no different from white supremacy. 34

Beavering away in your cubicle on the 35th floor is just a job, no better than someone putting your dinner on the table in front of you, or soldering your pipes together, or putting a box on a conveyor belt. They all pretty much suck. 35