Lunch (Debt) Special

As most of you know by now, there is no limit to the number of things I dislike. I’m pretty sure the proverbial “one new thing” I learn each day is that there’s one new thing I don’t like. I mean, really, give me a topic, and I’ll find something not to like about it. It’s what I do. It is pretty rare though, as I get older, to find a brand new gem whose flaws draw my attentive ire. But I still try, and occasionally my efforts are rewarded.
Take this flawed little marvel, for example: school lunch debt.
Are you kidding me? It’s not bad enough that we can’t get these kids up to date and honest history books, or teach them how taxes and finances work, or figure out a way to judge them aside from standardized tests that show nothing, or pay their teachers an appropriate amount, or keep them from getting shot? We can’t even wait for them to go to college before we charge them extra for being poor now?
Here’s a quick run down: public schools are providing lunch for kids who can’t afford it, except it’s not free (which is a terrible way to teach an old adage), not at all. Instead, the school sort of opens a tab, and then holds the high school diploma hostage until the child can pay.
America. Home of the free.
So. We have money for our leaders to stay in expensive hotels - often owned by the Perpetually Outclassed Thoroughly Unprincipled Swindler himself - , we have money for those same leaders to have better healthcare than most of us do, and apparently we’re going to find money for a pointless and stupid wall. But not for feeding -or for that matter, properly educating- our children. I’ve heard a lot about how we’re going to win a bunch of trade wars that we’re losing, and how we’re going to bring back a lot of jobs in obsolete and deadly industries, and how good and smart and stable certain people are. Why am I only hearing about problems like this one when the parent of a child who was murdered while in school steps in to help solve them?
For that matter, why am I still hearing about children being murdered in schools?
Speaking of terrible things being done to kids in schools, hey kids: I know about lunch shaming too, you hear? I know some of you little rapscallions are bullying your fellow students because they can’t afford to pay for lunch, and boy oh boy is that wrong and pathetic and shame on you. With all the access you have to the world, you should know by now that your generation doesn’t have the luxury of infighting like generations past. You need to start working together yesterday if you all are going to have any kind of tomorrow. I think my generation and the one before it have made it pretty clear by now that we are not capable of taking care of things for you.
As to those other generations, members of which are the ones responsible for this whole situation: the largest of all shames on you. Isn’t this the opposite of your whole point? Your gig is to serve your country, the future of which depends entirely on these youngsters, and you’re setting them up to underdeveloped on every level. Shamed and underfed, with an education as useless as Tucker Carlson, and debts to pay before they even make it to college and earn their debt by taking unhelpful but somehow mandatory classes, like I did.
Some of you even tried to make it worse, by only allowing these kids jelly sandwiches for lunch, guaranteeing them nothing but refined sugar and empty starch. Blessed be the Buddha, someone found out about it and raised enough hell to shut that down. For now, anyway.
Listen, I’m not trying to tell you how run the country - except I am because I’m a citizen and that’s my job- , but I’m pretty sure having an overabundance of weak, stupid people running around is bad for us in the long run. Sure, it’ll make it easier for rich and greedy people to take advantage for a while, but all coffers have a bottom, friends and neighbors.
John