As a child, my family went to New York City for a few weeks. This was around 1968. Little did I know that there were many lessons to be learned on that trip. At one point we were exploring Times Square. If you are unfamiliar with the history of this location, at this point Times Square was a filthy, degenerated place filled with X-rated movie houses, drug addicts and hookers. My mother, pregnant at the time with Robin Deirdre Raymond, was not happy about being in this environment and was putting her enormous wifely displeasure on my father to quickly remove us post-haste. On one corner the was a huckster seated on a blanket, before him danced a multitude of clockwork tin toys cavorting, dancing, shooting sparks, and (in one unfortunate and scarring example) hopping while smashing cymbals. As we stopped before this tableau, my father rested his hand on my head, this usually denoted an upcoming lesson. He asked, "Can you tell me why this is a perfect metaphor for American politics?" I was about 4 years old, but I was proud of my answer, a Shakespearean quote, "it is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." He gave me a long, odd look, said, "Not bad, but not what I had in mind." then he lead us away. After walking through that depressing wasteland that smelled of frustrated desire, drug saturated urine, garbage and, for some reason, Indian curry, my father casually asked, "What so you remember about the toy seller?" I began rattling off all the different toys spread out on the dirty blanket, after a bit he held out his hand to stop me and asked, "But what did the seller look like?" I tried, I put forth Herculean effort to recall any feature of that individual but all I could dredge up was a hazy, shadow of a figure, seated cross legged on a folded, Mexican poncho. I didn't want to disappoint my father but confessed my failure. He patted my head and told me, "That's okay, you're not supposed to notice him." Then he tousled my hair and continued our trip out of this sad land of ruined humanity. After we exited the area and had entered the "normality" of Central Park on our way to the zoo he asked me another, probing question, "How will Times Square change in the future and who will change it?" I admitted that I couldn't foresee a positive future for Times Square, it seemed doomed to remain a torrid Mecca for the diseased, disillusioned and disenfranchised. We went to the zoo.
Like many lessons I learned from my father, there were two from this expedition that took decades for me to digest, well after his death. Here are my epiphanies:
The political lesson from the toy vendor was that the frolicking gadgets and gizmos were a fitting metaphor for those career politicians running for election while the purveyor of these automata represented the "shadow government", those non elected, non appointed bureaucratic puppet masters who actually set policy, make decisions and who's goal is the eventual domination of a fearful, disarmed population of serfs. You aren't supposed to see the hawker, only his shining, distracting wares. Those politicians paraded before our glazed eyes are as impotent as a Nevada gaming commission, their only job is to cause dissent and deflect attention from the real powers that be.
My lesson from the pit of iniquity that was 1970s Time Square was that government would never positively effect it, capitalism and greed would change it, transforming a seedy landmark you didn't feel safe in during the daylight into a fantasy of capitalistic greed written large.
Show your children the real world, the parts that are below our expectations, don't swaddle them in a protective layer of bubble wrap and a blindfold so they won't experience the realities that surround them, you do a disservice to them and society as a whole. All you will accomplish is to provide the world with another crybaby, socialistic idealist who can't face reality and who demands safe places, censored discourse and no ability to confront contrasting opinions without tears and cries of racism, sexism or fascism. Teach them critical thinking. Teach them that observing reality does not mean condoning it. That social change NEVER comes from government intervention but from the people demanding change. That human rights are inherent in the state of sapience and those rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and none are more important than any other. Teach them that it's never appropriate to initiate force against another sapient. Teach them that war, poverty, drug wars, terrorism, and financial upsets are not problems solved by governments and the media but issues created by them.