Ordinary Americans

We hear and read a lot lately about the "ordinary American." Politicos wonder if they are Blue or Red. Greens wonder if they will ever stop driving SUV's. The President wonders if they'd mind owning an automobile company or a bank, or maybe a bunch of these. Banks don't seem to wonder or care about them at all. There is a sub-set where I live called "ordinary New Yorkers."

The funny thing about ordinary people is that you can't really find one. I asked five citizens over the weekend if they were ordinary and got five different kinds of denials. They seemed to think it was an insult.

Banking, insurance or hedge fund executives know that they are extraordinary people; that is why they can take a much larger piece of any pie than customers, investors or taxpayers. Congress-Persons are not so much extraordinary as they are uber-ordinary, since they lead the way as debtors, enable poor managements at banks and auto companies and are expert at double talking ordinary people into being Red or Blue in order to be re-elected.

If you have college-age children, you know that professors and college administrators are perhaps the most extraordinary Americans of all. Ordinary Americans borrow billions of dollars to pay a kind of ransom known as tuition. Some pay or borrow enough to buy a half-dozen SUV's to pay the ransom for their children's education. Colleges are managed pretty much like banks, auto companies and Congress, which means not at all.

Why do ordinary Americans pay $50,000 a year to colleges? So their children will not be ordinary Americans, that's why.

A lot of people are in transition in their lives right now, especially Boomers. I sometimes recommend that they take a ride on the Staten Island ferry. This is not because they will find a great solution in SI; it is because on the return trip they will have the same view as millions of immigrants who came to this country. It is a view that inspires you to achieve your dreams despite all obstacles. There is the Statue lighting your way, the magnificent harbor, the rivers forking around the island, the empty space where tall buildings once rose, the tip of the island extending to greet you.

The exercise is about pretending to be an immigrant. You're carrying a bag of clothing and your life's savings, maybe a couple of hundred bucks. You alight from the boat, touching down in America. You think, what will I do now, as millions thought and worried before you. You are no longer just a Boomer stuck in transition; you are still scared, but in an entirely different and compelling way.

Most importantly, you realize that nobody comes to America to be ordinary. The whole point of America is to be extraordinary.