You were born in Baltimore, Buffalo, Birmingham, Flint, Gary, Ferguson, Detroit or New Orleans.
Your city, once a piston of economic growth, middle-class prosperity and Made in The USA innovation and manufacturing, now ranks among the hundreds of used-to-be-great American cities rusted out from sea to shining sea.
You are one of five children born into a single-parent household. You don’t know who your father is, and your brothers and sisters don’t know theirs either.
Your mother is whacked out on crystal meth and, after spending eight years in prison for armed robbery, you kicked the heroin habit.
You barely graduated high school. You came from nothing. You were raised in constant chaos and chronic dysfunction. Dead broke, college is out of the question. With a criminal record, you’re a high-risk job candidate.
What are the odds of you living the middle-class American Dream? What are the odds of you striking it rich or running for president?
Lacking social skills and connections, for the American masses at the bottom of the ever-expanding lower class to the dramatically shrinking middle class, the odds of becoming a member of the 1 percent or the elite 0.01 – let alone a solid middle-class life – are slim and none.
Born on third
Reality TV star and real estate tycoon Donald Trump is now an official contestant in The Presidential Reality ShowTM.
On the campaign circuit, Trump promotes his credentials as a successful businessman and money man. Continually bragging about how smart he is, Trump, on the campaign stump in Iowa this past Saturday, told the crowd, “I’ve had big successes… hey, I went to the best schools; I was a good student.”
And unlike those down and out in America, or tens of millions of college grads saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, Trump boasted that right after college, “I got out and built a fortune.”
“Built a fortune?”
More accurately, Trump was heir to a reported $400 million real-estate fortune left by his father Fred — who never even merited an honorable mention on the campaign stump in Iowa. Nope, Donald “I’m Good at Money” Trump made it clear to the audience that he made it all on his own.
Unlike America’s average or below-average John and Jane Doe, who have no inside track to the top, lack cultural skills, social networks and political/professional/business contacts for exclusive membership in the White Shoe Boys’ Club, Donald Trump was born on Easy Street. His privileged path to the top was paved with gold.
And on the Presidential Reality ShowTM, where performance trumps substance, Trump has taken the Republican Party’s lead among a cast of contestants from the political world that, to date, have not matched the performance skills of this highly skilled reality-show champ.