Here at the blog, we weren’t raised by wolves, but we did grow up in the white, upper middle class suburbs.  Our schools had large gymnasiums and clean swimming pools and our PTA parents were quick to rebuke any teacher who didn’t realize how special we were.  We never rode the city bus.  No teachers or firefighters or police officers or garbage collectors or mail carriers lived in our neighborhoods, but we never imagined they wouldn’t be there when we demanded them.  They were like the clean water that always flowed when we turned the tap or the lights that always came on when we flicked a switch.  We all took college for granted and yet we were all fully convinced that our success was due solely to our individual genius and hard work.  Any stunted sense of community we developed came from parched churches or the barbarity of organized sports.  It never occurred to us to call anyone but our own biological siblings brother or sister.  We learned to roll up the window and look the other way when we saw homeless people with cardboard signs on street corners.  We danced like white people.

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We escaped this impoverished upbringing, but those numbing and insulating years within the womb of privilege have helped us a lot as we try to understand how anyone could watch the events in Wisconsin and take the side of the governor.  Or how anyone could plausibly claim that the people who teach our children, put out our fires, keep our streets safe, and haul away our trash are responsible for our economic problems.

Fortunately, our childhood on the suburban mean streets will not prevent us from understanding what’s going to happen here in Washington over the next few weeks.  On St. Patrick’s Day, the latest update on the fruits of the most regressive tax system in the country will be released.  Soon after that the Washington House of Representatives will release its 2011-13 budget proposal, followed by the Senate budget proposal.  Then will come the excruciating negotiation between House Democrats and Senate Republicans, in which Education will be pitted against Social Services.  Everybody involved in the Olympia inside game will be forced to buy into that death match and constituents will eye each other warily, arguing implicitly and sometimes explicitly that the other guys should be cut more.  The discourse surrounding the negotiation will include more bashing of public employees, more blaming of their unions, and very little discussion of record corporate profits.  You’ll know you’ve fully entered the desensitized twilight zone when someone tells you that the Speaker of the House “cares too much about poor people.”  Only in a meaner world can you take something we would all want to see on our tombstones and somehow turn it into an insult.

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On the same day that the state releases the revenue forecast, thousands of people, most of them union members, will gather at the Capitol to demand that legislators consider closing tax loopholes on such things as private jet owners, Wall Street banks, and elective cosmetic surgery rather than decimating education, health care, and services for poor people.  Outside the Capitol, there will be speeches, sign-waving, and chanting.  Inside, the protestors will be derided as out of touch with reality.  Hardball pragmatist politicians will roll their eyes, grumble something about the last election and turn back to their spreadsheets.  Everyone will agree that bills closing tax loopholes have virtually no chance of passing, so why bother?

And in the meaner world that ours has become, that passes as a legitimate question.  But in the better world we hope we can still imagine, the question shouldn’t be why are all those union members out there, but rather why aren’t you out there with them.  And why aren’t the private jet owners and out-of-state bankers and plastic surgeons out there with them?  Because, when we scrape off the ooze of received ideas and wade out of the knee-jerk ideological mud, the questions are stunning and the answers are obvious.  Are those tax breaks really more important than preschool or medical treatment or people having enough to eat?  Really?

Our brothers and sisters on the Capitol steps on Thursday will surely be on the losing side in the coming budget battle.  But they will not have lost touch with their basic humanity and they will surely be judged to have been on the right side of history.