I never thought I’d see the “bootstrap” analogy again. The last time I read or saw it in print was about 10 years ago. Since then, I believed people had become a little more compassionate. Apparently, I was wrong.

In the June 6 paper, I read that former MCI headmaster Douglas Cummings said to this year’s MCI graduates, “Everybody falls in the water once in a while, but no one ever drowned from falling in the water. They drowned because they didn’t pick themselves up by the bootstraps and pull themselves out” (“Former headmaster returns to MCI for graduation during its 150th anniversary”).

I challenge Cummings to put on a pair of strapped boots, row out to the middle of a lake, jump into the water and pull himself out by his bootstraps. After he has completed that task, I would then ask him to tell me how he enjoyed the experience.

On another page, in the same paper, there was an article about the price of the life-saving antidote naloxone jumping suddenly from $2 a dose to an average of $40 a dose. Quite an obstacle for those who are poor. It would be interesting to see how some poor person who overdosed on opioids try to save themselves by pulling on their bootstraps with a drug they could never afford. (As always, the wealthy do not have that problem).

It seems that when the poor even try to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps there are those who continue to push down on their heads.

Peter P. Sirois

Madison

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