The thing about witnessing a 7-year-old having their hot lunch tray yanked away and replaced with a cold sandwich — what cafeteria workers in the biz euphemistically call an “alternative meal” — is not just the obvious cruelty of the public spectacle, though there’s plenty of that.
It’s the bizarre normalization of the whole affair, as if we’ve collectively agreed that fiscal responsibility is best taught through the ritual humiliation of second graders. It’s watching the adults in the room — ordinary, decent people who’d never dream of snatching food from a child in any other context — perform this strange ceremony with the mechanical resignation of DMV employees, while around them life continues uninterrupted,…
