Hey, Life Isn't Fair

"It's not fair," she said.

There it is. I guess this is where I was supposed to agree with the student and support her grievance. That's what elected officials usually do when they're confronted with complaints at town hall meetings. They coddle their critics, don't challenge them and keep them happy.

Instead, I told the young woman what she needed to hear. "No one promised you life would be fair," I said. "In fact, you have it better than many of the other students that you think are better off. Life is unfair. Get used to it."

The student didn't get angry. Rather, she nodded. She seemed to understand. She may even have agreed. So where did the student get this expectation that life was supposed to be fair? Did she bring that attitude with her from Canada, or did she pick it up here?

Maybe she got it from listening to populist comments from liberal Democrats concerned about income inequality.

-- Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was recently in Northfield, Minn., to campaign for Sen. Al Franken. "The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it," Warren told a cheering crowd. The senator promised to stand up to banks and push legislation, co-sponsored by Franken, that allows young people who borrow money for school to re-finance student loans.

-- Janet Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, sounded like a politician running for office when she recently railed against income inequality. She said it was a trend about which she is greatly concerned, and which may not be "compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity."

-- Even Hillary Clinton, who has always enjoyed strong support from Wall Street banks, tapped into her inner populist recently while on the campaign trail for Martha Coakley, a Democrat running for governor of Massachusetts. "Don't let anyone tell you that, you know, it's corporations and businesses that create jobs," Clinton said at a rally in Boston. "You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly."

The underlying message of this kind of rhetoric is that the system is not fair.

Guess what? It never has been. And to some degree, it can't be.

In 2016, imagine how refreshing it would be if there were just one presidential hopeful with the courage to say so.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.