The Eighth Sense

Ah, entitlement!  What a comfy world it is to live in.  I have in-laws and step daughters, who I dearly love, who complain about the entitlement programs of welfare, and not without justification.  An examination of British and American welfare societies may well demonstrate the inherent flaws of a system which does not provide equity for work done compared to monies earned.  I am not not sociologist enough to intelligently and thoroughly assess whether such programs work over the long term, nor am I considering programs such as educational grants, housing assistance, or disability payments, which in and of themselves are a tar pit to wade through.  Speaking from professional experience from many years working in human services, I have seen folks who were extremely entitled to such payments, and from anecdotal experience watching the wise crone Judge Judy Sheindlin, I have seen folks clearly playing the dozens to get what they felt they were entitled to.

Then we come to the well heeled and their sense of entitlement.  An anonymously penned column from a “TARP wife” laments the loss of the lifestyle of conspicuous consumption the correspondent had become accustomed to,  like leaving every light in the house on.  She Who Once carried bags from whatever trendy fashion shopping temple was on the must have list now puts items in less chi-chi containers to not stand out in the (largely unemployed) crowd she moves among.  She calls watching ‘Law and Order’ reruns a “Guilty Pleasure” that sorta kinda makes up for evenings at the Metropolitan Opera.  She, to her partial credit, is adjusting to a newer fresher life that more closely reflects the hundreds of thousands of other people whom her husband’s business and social ilk helped to cripple economically.  If she didn’t treat her experience like a camping trip where one roughs it, it might be more palatable to feel some empathy for her position.  On the other hand, I live in an area where for the last decade or more, workers who made a living in manufacturing have been discarded as a result of business professionals (not unlike her husband), whose approach to short selling stocks bankrupted companies right, left, and center in thoroughly legal efforts to maximize profits and bonuses on the backs of workers who will never see the lobby of the Met, no matter how much of the score of ‘Carmen’ they might hum to themselves as they work.  I fret for poor Miz Biffy; really I do.

Politicians, or course, take the Gold, Silver, and frequently Bronze when it comes to a sense of entitlement.  Regardless of the political party or ideaology, many feel that they are free to carry out their wildest schemes or kinkiest dreams.  If I took the time just to note the Elliot Spitzers or David Vitters, Rod Blagojevichs or Larry Craigs of the recent past, my keyboard would weep from the stress positions.  Speaking of stress positions, how’s that for the ultimate sense of entitlement?  So convinced were the disloved Emperor Chimpus Maximus, Sith Lord Shotgunnus Dickus, and their Flying Monkey Minions that the baddie Saddam Hussein was connected with the eeeee-vile Osama Bin Laden, that even after their best intelligence experts informed them that, no, not so much, instead mentioning that, after all, it was Saudis behind the controls of the planes, even after all of that data was provided to their pointed little heads, they insisted that they were right, dammit, and that if legal interrogation wouldn’t give them the “facts” they wanted, then maybe something a little more . . . . extreme was called for.

One can only imagine the Sith Lord Shotgunnus Dickus, resting from his past time of deep frying live kittens, tapping his fingers together, stylin’ like Ming the Merciless, remembering his bedtime story collection “A Child’s Garden Of Fingernail Removal” and how totalitarian gubbmints from Soviet Russia to North Korea would entice false confessions from soldiers by using, ahem, extreme interrogation techniques.  Did his eyes gleam as that eureka moment struck him and he realized that here, once and for all, was the surefire way to get what he was owed, was entitled to, which was the smoking gun connecting his desire to skull fuck Saddam with the heinous crime committed upon the citizens of the world at the Twin Towers ( I would humbly remind dear readers that besides the thousands of Americans lost, hundreds were from other countries, a fact which seems to elude assorted right wing windbags).  This of course, does not include the other sense of entitlement that Sith Lord has regarding his Halliburton buddies and their KBR subsidiaries who are still getting government contracts to electrocute soldiers; again, there’s only so much space to numb dear readers minds in any given post.

In the end, who carries the burden for the intellectual and economic weasels who feel so strongly this sense that they are owed something that the rest of us schulbs can only either dream of or wake up in a cold sweat from?  I’ve got mine, where’s yours?

As a postscript, I note that the Ohio Militia plans a “Million Man Militia March” for my hometown, The Last Colony, on July 4.  They cheerfully note that “The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.“  This reminds me of a line from ‘Casablanca’, where Major Strasser asks Rick to imagine the Nazis marching through New York and asks him what he thinks.  “Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”, Rick says gently, if not a tad condescendingly.  As well, there are parts of DC I would not suggest dragging any camo-garbed asses into, dig?

I mean, what could possibly go worng?

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