Don’t cancel on me. Unless your mother died or you got in a car accident, show up, live up to your commitments, otherwise I know I’m just not that important to you, and that’s fine, but why did you reach out to me in the first place?

Happens all the time. Always with someone higher up the food chain. Who believes their value is greater than mine. All cool, but you came looking for me, I’d never cancel on you. As a matter of fact, I had a car accident back in February and still made it for a TV taping. Because I live up to my commitments. Does anybody live up to their commitments anymore? In a nation where it’s a badge of honor to drop out of college? The value comes in staying the course. And if you think money is everything, you don’t have any.

These are the lessons you learn from your parents. But that was back when your mom wouldn’t write you a note so you could stay home and watch your favorite TV program, never mind go on a family trip. School was a sentence, kind of like jail, where you went for years to pay penance for being born in this great country of ours, back before we started arguing about whether evolution could be in textbooks and they removed the arts from the curriculum, when if the teacher sent home a note you shook as you handed it to your parents, today said mothers and fathers believe their child is flawless and march straight to the administration to complain, everybody in America is complaining, as they climb the greased pole, afraid to give up anything they’ve got. Hell, if we lived in their world we’d all still be using dial telephones rented from AT&T. Sacrifice is anathema in the United States, and so is living up to your obligations, coming through, being honest, doing what’s right.

But if the President lies about a blow job and VW cheats on emissions tests and the billionaires sell your data with impunity why should you play by the rules? We live in a cheating economy. And if you’re an honest, hardworking bloke, the joke’s on you.

I don’t say yes to everything. But when I do agree to meet, I’m there, on time. That’s how you know the person getting together with you doesn’t respect you, when they’re late. Even in L.A., where traffic is horrific, you can arrive on time, maybe early, just to show the other person that you mean business.

And so many of the titans running today’s corporations do this. You’d be astounded how many household names show up on time. But the entrepreneurial class, those who we revere so much, play by their own rules, they believe they’re gods. This is the same viewpoint that has them agitating for lower taxes because they’re the job creators. They buy the politicians and then start a disinformation campaign to convince the uneducated, who can’t parse the truth, who didn’t go to school, or didn’t go to a good one, that they’re right. Telling the unwashed how they made it on hard work and you can too, leaving out that their parents were rich and they went to the best schools and know all the right people. Yup, who you know is critical, which is why people set up these meetings to begin with, they’re afraid they’re going to miss out. I’m here to tell you you’re missing out every single day, you can’t know or do everything, but you can be nice to people.

Then there are those who are nice to your face but screw you behind your back. Because everybody’s afraid to be honest anyway, for fear someone won’t like them. I’ve got a whole bunch of people I don’t like, I don’t care if they know it. And then there are some who are hated in the press but are completely reasonable up close and personal, they’ve been denigrated because someone has an agenda.

Everybody’s got an agenda.

All but the rich and powerful, the famous, are expendable. They can lose their right to organize, as we lionize a long gone President who fired air controllers. If you can’t organize and stand up for your rights, you’re feeding at the trough on Maggie’s Farm. But you’re afraid, you don’t want to lose what little you have, while the man keeps taking more and more and telling you it’s for your own good.

And dishonesty rules. Hillary Clinton says she’s for the death penalty because she’s running for President and she’s afraid to piss some voters off. Even though trends say it’s gonna go bye-bye and when the wave gets stronger she’ll flip-flop, the same way she did on gay marriage.

And only in America can we have an entire news outlet billing itself as “Fair and Balanced” when it’s anything but.

I was brought up in a different era. When rich meant a million and status was a Cadillac. Where the corporation felt workers were family and you had a job for life. Where who you were was more important than how much money you had, or what job you did.

And if you don’t think it’s going to get worse, you don’t think it’s going to get better.

The left says manufacturing has to come back, not telling you that a flat screen will now cost two grand. A nonstarter if there ever was one.

The right says government is bad, as if government doesn’t fix the roads and enforce safe building regulations. Whenever there’s an earthquake buildings topple in the rest of the world, because they weren’t up to code. Rarely happens in the U.S. That’s what government will buy you.

But you don’t want this because you want to keep your tax money, because you think you know better, because you think you can win at the roulette wheel of life. You’re not so smart, no one’s that smart. We thrive on the wisdom of the crowd, we’re all in it together, and I’m willing to do my part…BUT DON’T CANCEL ON ME!