Last week, I told you this country took a shoemaker’s daughter and gave her three degrees and a safe road home. This week, I want to tell you the truth: that same girl, starting over in 2026, might not make it. Not because children got weaker. Because the ladder got pulled.

When I was climbing, I didn’t know what nepotism was. I learned the word later. Some hand-washing-hand always happened, but it wasn’t the main road — merit was the main road, and a poor child could walk it.

Ask a young person today how to get ahead, and they’ll tell you plain: “You have to know somebody.” Connection stopped being a shortcut. It became the road. Merit became the long way around.

Here’s the pattern, and naming it is the beginning: a country that runs on contacts is a country that has stopped believing its own children are enough.

Two promises, one break

The two promises I named last week — opportunity and safety — fell together, not separately. The same year the ladder was pulled, the road stopped being safe. Our children don’t feel safe walking in daylight, let alone at 2am. These aren’t two problems. Opportunity and safety are the same promise. Break one, and both break.

The therapist’s view

When someone is betrayed by a person they trusted, they don’t just get angry at that person — they stop trusting the system of trust itself. Every rule becomes optional, because “the rules were never real anyway.” Every time an unqualified person gets the position, every time the contract goes where everyone knew it would, it teaches every young person watching: don’t bother. And they make one of two choices — join the game, or leave.

In my office, we have a name for the third group — the ones who stay and stop trying: learned helplessness. When effort stops producing outcomes, healthy minds stop making effort. That’s not laziness. That’s learning. Our young people learned it from us.

And here’s a therapist’s hard truth — the same one I give couples: the betrayer doesn’t get to demand trust back. Trust is rebuilt one kept promise at a time, in public, over years. No speech fixes it. Only behavior does.

What one person can do

Be somebody’s ladder this week. Somewhere near you is a young person with merit and no contacts. Make a call for them. Write a recommendation. Open a door. Ask for nothing back. That’s the difference between a contact and a ladder. A contact says, “Remember me?” A ladder says, “Climb.”

Come back and tell me — not their name, just: “I was a ladder this week.” Let’s see what this little corner of the country can build while we wait on the big people to keep their promises.

Dennise Demming, Almost Fearless