Jerk-Dads

"If you live under my roof, you have to obey my rules. It's my way or the highway." Every kid gets that line at some point in the haze between late adolesence and early manhood. The kid is feeling his oats, seeing how far he can push it and he gets The Choice: keep sucking off the teat or make your own way. But if you stay on the teat, you are subject to the rules of the house. If the relationship between Dad and Son is healthy, The Choice is a good thing and not as stark as it seems on the surface. There is a power struggle that is being resolved by two men who love each other and want to work it out. The Son is asserting himself, but he's basically an inexperienced dope. The Dad is protecting his authority, but he knows he's on the wane and the kid is on the wax, so it's just a matter of time really. The ultimate goal of both men is that the Son is an independant, free and strong man. He can't get there if he stays on the teat until he's 30. That's if the relationship is healthy. If the relationship is unhealthy, if the Dad is jerk, he doesn't share the goal of the Son's strong independence because he wants to live forever or something in some utopian vision that excludes God's natural order of things. He wants to keep his Son down, not raise him up. He'll start working his angle at the cradle and keep it up as long as he possibly can--probably to the grave. He'll try to keep the Son on the teat by convincing him he can't make it on his own. And the jerk-Dad will keep ramming those rules down the boy's throat the whole way. It's a power thing. It's sick. Under that sicko formula, there is no real Choice. The Son either rebels against, escapes from or is consumed by the jerk-Dad's manipulation. Mostly, I'd bet it's consumed by. The kid believes the bullshit and becomes a man/boy, dependant upon the teat and beaten down by the rules that go with it. Here's my contention: every political philosphy and governing system from the dawn of time works the same way. A bunch of jerk-Dads band together to run the place. They get control of the teat and convince everybody else that they can't live without it. The price for life-long-teat-sucking is of course obedience to the capricious rules of the jerk-Dad cabal. Their house, their rules. And they don't like it much when you take The Highway either. The Pharoah was not happy to see the Jews ride off to Canaan and King George didn't throw a party when he got the Declaration of Independence in the mail. It's a power thing. It's sick. In America, the jerk-Dads are restrained by the Constitution. The Framers knew that just knocking the King off would not keep them free forever. They knew there would be more jerk-Dads. They may not have foreseen exactly what we have now, that the jerk-Dads would be telling us how much soda we can drink and what kind of insurance we have to buy. That would probably be a surprise. They would also be surprised that the crew they appointed to make sure the Constitution kept the jerk-Dads from getting out of hand was turning the thing inside and out and not really being helpful at all. Oh well. That jerk-Dad impulse is pretty strong. We Sons of Liberty still have the same three choices: rebel, escape or be consumed.