The “Dope Club”

Since many “news” stories today seem to resemble short stories, I thought I would tell a short story of my own. It’s a a true story and one of the formative experiences of my early life. I have only memories to go on, no records. But it happened when I was in early grammar school, about six years old.

I was always a “smart” kid, impressing my teachers with my intelligence, precociousness and knowledge. My parents—a novelist and Hollywood writer and an artist-homemaker Mom—valued “smarts” highly. They were unabashedly elitist and encouraged me to be so, as much as I could understand what that meant at such a tender age. My teachers, too, did much the same, insofar as I can recall.

In my class there was another similar kid, whose name I still remember: Kingsley Bellows. Not only did he have high intelligence. He also had unusual athletic prowess for a six-year-old. He was the fastest runner in the class. His nickname “King” led all us kids, just getting used to the meaning and mystery of language, to think of him as some kind of superior being.

He and I became friends, although my athletic prowess, while passable, was nowhere near his. He was also more mature emotionally than I: he once explained to me, quite calmly, that our Sun would burn out a few billion years hence, and that all humans would die. I burst into tears and felt terrible until my Dad (who had an unusual interest in science) explained to me that that scenario, while realistic, was, like my own natural death at age six, a long way away.

King’s and my friendship developed over what seemed a long time to a six-year-old but was probably just days or weeks. It soon evoked a hostile reaction from the rest of the class, which formed a “Dope Club” in response. The name had nothing to do with marijuana or drugs, or today’s “wokeness,” all of which were worlds away from our school. It had everything to do with a majority of the class feeling somehow inferior, like “dopes.” The Club’s explicit purpose was to resist our elitism by ostracizing us two and making us feel unwelcome.

The next thing I remember was how we “had it out” on the playground. King, who also knew how to box, stood in boxing pose in the middle of a circle of boys, who ventured at random to run in and try to hit him. I ran around the periphery of the circle, smiting anyone I could, and mostly getting away with it, because everyone’s attention was focused on King at the center.

By the time we all laid down on our mats for a nap after recess, the Dope Club’s hate and ostracism seemed to have dissipated. Its name was heard no more, and life in our class quickly returned to normal for six-year-olds. At least I remember nothing about the rest of that school year.

In the ensuing 71 years, I’ve often recalled that story as a metaphor for national politics, especially today. I wondered whether what I then thought of as standing up to bullies had saved me and King, or whether the camaraderie and mutual respect that often replaces enmity when young boys fight took hold. More likely, our teachers became aware of what had happened and made a special effort to nurture self-esteem among all the kids. (Our school was part of UCLA’s teaching-training program, and operated much like a Montessori school today. It even had its own full-time child psychologist, whose name was Mr. Franco. I suppose that I saw him not infrequently, which is why I still remember his name.)

It doesn’t take much imagination to see the analogy between the Dope Club of my tender years and today’s Republican Party. Its driving force and electoral success derive largely, if not primarily, from resentment, even hate, of coastal elites, minorities, the rich, desperate immigrants, and even just the well-educated. Denial of science, vaccine resistance, and even election denial follow from this prime directive of anti-elitism. And poor Hillary unknowingly played right into it with her unfortunate “deplorables” remark.

But here’s the thing. My class’ Dope Club arose in early grammar school, among six-year olds. You could expect children, even today, to belittle, resent and even ostracize self-conscious intellectual elites, just as you could expect boys that age to tease and torment little girls for being mostly weaker and smaller and “different.” Six-year-olds have no way of knowing that resentment, even if justified, is not a plan, let alone a solid basis for forming a useful social organization. In that respect it’s like selfishness, the other mainstay of Republican ideology since Reagan.

Apparently these points have failed to reach our current crop of Republican leaders. Led (if reluctantly) by the Demagogue, they readily confess that they have no plan but resentment and blame, plus the occasional tax cut for the rich. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader was quite open about it. When asked what he and his crew would do if they take control of Congress next January, he replied, “I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

My own early-childhood Armageddon produced no lasting harm because six-year-old boys, unarmed, are too small and weak to do lasting damage to each other. Not so the heavily armed men who conspired to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and are now going to jail. Not so the grown men who deride and ridicule Speaker Pelosi’s husband, hospitalized by a resentment- and hate-filled attacker with a hammer. Not so the grown-up pols who deride and ridicule Speaker Pelosi herself for being female, old and frail (while nevertheless being one of the most skillful and consequential House Speakers in our national history).

We all know what happens when a Dope Club takes power in an advanced industrial democracy. That happened in Germany, some three decades after that nation had been universally considered (along with Britain) one humanity’s most advanced societies. It can happen here, too, and the odds of it happening have increased dramatically since 2016.

Grown men (and the occasional woman) who act like six-year-olds on a playground pose an entirely different level of risk, whether they carry or just push carrying automatic weapons, let alone when they seek control of a world-destroying arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Six-year-olds can base their actions on raw feelings. It’s what they do. If grown men and women who assume leadership do the same, the chances of our species surviving the nuclear age, let alone self-sustaining global warming, are not high. The easiest way of stopping them, with the least amount of human suffering, is to repudiate them decisively next Tuesday, by voting all blue.


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