In a country occupying North America, the best tutors money can buy prepare its rulers’ children to run society. They teach them that their country is guided by the ideals of freedom, democracy, sympathy for the underdog and charity for the unfortunate. The tutors avoid harsh reality until the year of the child’s fifteenth birthday. They then bring the youths for a month of training to “Summer Reality Camp.”

At this camp they learn that they belong to the elite class of society and are destined to rule the world, that their country was founded on the enslavement of African and genocide of Indigenous people − which they must never admit — and they must serve their class by defending and expanding its wealth and power.

They must abandon the ideals of their naïve youth, wielding these ideals only as propaganda to mislead others. They must keep the poor and unprivileged confused and divided, and lie, cheat, plunder and murder if necessary to protect their privileges.

The children of the Confederacy grasp these concepts quickly; many choose military careers. Any youth who resist must repeat the camp. Offers of additional privileges seduce them into running universities, publishing houses and media empires.

The handful who refuse these offers are assigned to run charities and mocked.

That summer of 1942, Ramsey Clark’s tutor died in the Pacific war. Ramsey contracted measles and was quarantined at his family home. He missed reality camp, but no one noticed. For distraction, he read an essay in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes advised that a human being “should share the passion and action of their time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

As Ramsey matured, he was constantly amazed that his old friends, now at the pinnacle of power in every field, had all become murderers and scoundrels.

Among the poor, the oppressed and persecuted in every part of the world, he made new friends.

December 18, 1927 — April 9, 2021. Ramsey Clark lived.

− John Catalinotto, International Action Center, April 29, 2021