Eat the Rich; Part 1 in an Open-Ended Series
I keep telling myself, “I’m not a socialist, I’m not a socialist, I’m a libertarian-bordering-on-anarchist. Get a hold of yourself, Jim.” Although, I honestly don’t think that my loathing for the rich necessarily contradicts my personal politics. I think that all people are logical, rational, considerate beings somewhere deep down. I think that rational, logical, considerate beings should have no problem coexisting without some sort of intermediary. Do I think that it would work now?
No. No. A thousand times no.
Right now, people are selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate buffoons, at least en masse. I’d like to draw your attention to a particular type of this behavior that is limited to a certain type of person, the type of person whose ignorance and selfishness are as a result of never having to consider another person in their entire life; this type of ignorance is limited mostly to the rich, but there are occasional prima donnas from the lower classes as well.
As an example, I’d like to give you an anecdote about something I encountered yesterday.
My girlfriend’s brother offered to give us a ride to the store in exchange for helping him drop off his rental car and pick up his own car from the shop. We go and get his car from the shop, and I follow him in his car to the Enterprise rental office. We pull in, there are a total of eight non-handicapped customer parking spots, five of which are already taken. Or should I say six? You see, there was this middle-aged woman in a Lexus RX 330 taking up two spots, or rather half of each of two spots. This is not an isolated incident, not by a long shot. She just sat there and watched as car after car pulled in and filled the remaining spots, probably totally unaware that she was taking up 25% of the entire parking lot with her one car. Once my girlfriend’s brother and I pulled in, there was only one spot left, but it was actually two half-spots on either side of a Lexus RX 330, complete with moron driver.
Then an older Ford Excursion pulls in, and alas, there are no spots, except for that all-too-tempting half-spot (it was more like a three-quarters spot) between genius woman and myself. He pulls into this spot, giving my car as wide a berth as possible, since he can obviously see that I’m not the one taking up space like an ass. Apparently he was mighty close to her SUV though, as she looked at him, astonished that he would try to fit in that closely to her $37,000 (standard) baby.
Why do I hate people like this? Ignorance is one thing. But someone who obviously has the means to not be an ignorant ass, and still ends up being an ignorant ass pisses me off more than your average ignorant ass. Here she was, in a vehicle that she had no idea how to maneuver correctly – a vehicle whose asking price could have paid for my college education, room, and board – being completely ignorant and selfish practically in spite of herself!
Maybe it’s not her that pisses me off per se, maybe it’s just the idea that a complete ignoramus who’s not smart enough to keep inside the lines when parking can actually make enough money in this country to afford a prohibitively expensive vehicle that guzzles gas (18 mpg city, folks!), and keeps gas prices high for those who try to have compact, fuel-efficient cars (if you don’t think gas prices are due to demand, check this out).
Lady, you can’t tell me that you actually need an SUV. Anyone who needs an SUV, does not need a Luxury SUV. You’ll never take the fucking thing off-roading ( I wouldn’t take a $37,000 car off-roading), I’m sure you don’t have to carry a bunch of ladders or supplies around, and you don’t even know how to handle the god damned thing correctly. I hope you develop some sort of skin tumor and your husband’s insurance drops you and you bankrupt yourself paying your medical bills.
May 22nd, 2005 at 6:00 am
It’s even worse than it appears. It so happens that these rich folk are the ones who hire guys like McCormick to run the state schools for them. The job is to turn out plenty of cheap labor, which means the students have been put in their place, their self esteem stripped, their expectations of reward destroyed, and their compliance gained. Hopefully the school can disable the students ability to think for themselves and eliminate their self-reliance and initiative. Then they are ready to serve the master. And if you can get them to pay the ‘education’ themselves, then we truly have a great country.