Student loans

So I get an email on Sunday from one of the various lefty organizations that are always bugging me to save the goddamn world.

I brought it on myself, I know.  Each one of the gaping, insatiable maws that regularly duns me for sudden and selfless acts of conscience knows about me only because I signed some petition, gave some money, marched down some street in the rain with a smeared and illegible posterboard sign, and variously attempted in my feeble, futile, pathetic little way to do some good -- albeit in a form entirely free of risk, cost, and the necessity of actually spending time with other such like "folks" and talking about the "issues," which is probably on the list of the top five things I really hate to do, a list that includes looking at Dick Cheney's ugly ass face for longer than a nanosecond and scraping an almost unbelievable amount of shit off my demented father's naked body in a public bathroom thoughtfully provided by a car rental place at LAX.

And so as Dantesque punishment for my pusillanimous gestures, the sole purpose of which has been to prop up my sagging sense of identity, I am set upon at regular intervals by these hordes of well-meaning Tweedledums who are practically frothing at the mouth like insurance salesmen to tell me just what an exciting opportunity they have for me, or what a disgusting and heinous thing the Republicans have done now, or how deep is the suffering I simply must drop everything to help alleviate.

For this reason, I am neither surprised nor outraged when I receive an email from MoveOn.org absolutely giddy with righteous zeal over the latest movement we simply must support.  And what is this new movement?  It is a movement to forgive all student loans.  Move On bills this cause as an economic stimulus package, presumably because without a student loan payment to make each month, the average American won't be feeling the pinch of our in-the-toilet economy quite so deeply.

Let me admit at the start that my first reaction was not favorable.  Nor was it low key.  No, my first reaction was: What. The. Fuck.  My generation, those without trust funds or oil wells or sugar mamas, was able to fund our higher education at least in part with student loans.  I happen to have been pretty lucky in that I got a lot of free money in the form of grants and fellowships, but I still ended up with an albatross of around $17,000.  And for years and years down the many dreary years of time, I had to make those monthly payments.  I had to find the little coupon book every month, I had to find my checkbook, I had to grit my teeth and mail the check.  And these were often lean times, I can tell you. And I am not the sort of person to know where his coupon book and checkbook are at any given moment.  And I am not the sort of person to remember when my payment is due.  I wasn't then, and I'm not now.

Yet somehow I did it.  Yes, I got hit with late fees all the time, and once the State of New York sued me because I'd missed some payments.  Sued me!  And I would have had to actually take a Greyhound to Albany and hire a lawyer to defend myself from what was evidently an imprisonable offense if my brother hadn't been a lawyer who could speak that lawyer gibberish and talk the authorities into a more reasonable course of action.

Now I am 55 years old.  I went to college and graduate school.  I finally paid off my student loans about five years ago.  It took a while, but I survived.

So, no, my initial reaction was Bugger Off.  You spoiled, entitled, illiterate, politically apathetic, musically vacuous, arrogant little generation, you.  What do you need loan forgiveness for?  It's not like you've opted to sacrifice material comfort for the sake of art, true love or a noble cause.  You're all becoming fucking assistant vice presidents and corporate tools!  Fuck Off, I say!  I paid my damn loans, and you will too.  Life sucks, it does (said with a Cockney accent), and we should all be getting educated for free, but this is not that world, and there are a lot of things like that, and why should you get a free ride?  What makes you so special?

Then I calmed down.  I took several deep breaths.  I considered a more compassionate approach.  I asked myself, What would the Buddha do?  Would he be so mean-spirited and bitter that just because he felt ripped-off by life's suffering, he would ask the next generation to suffer as he had?  I contemplated this for a good long time, and my heart began to soften.

But thankfully, I came to my senses.  There is no way on earth I'm going to sign a petition demanding student loan forgiveness.  It’s a bullshit movement, and it only solidifies liberals’ reputation as whingers deluxe.  But I do thank God, Allah and the truly innumerable Nubian deities that this generation is going to have to confront the destruction of the planet, the melting of the ice caps, the disappearance of clean air and water, the exhaustion of petroleum resources, and all the calamities that will reach their full potential at just about the time I plan to slip off this mortal coil.  Because they're going to need a cause, a job, a disaster – something to pull them away from their X-Boxes and iPhones and stomach-turning self-absorption.  Something to distract them from the agony of having to pay back their student loans.  

And I think the threat of extinction will just about do the job.