Sunday Entitlements

Unlike my friend at It's a Booger, I revel in Sunday mornings. After decades of donating my Sundays to a local diner, making the owner incredibly wealthy and providing him with a small degree of fame, I feel like I've earned my right to fritter my Sunday mornings away scanning the Internet and sipping Diet Coke. The sheer joy of not having to be nice to people I'd just as soon spit on overrides any dread of Monday, even at this horrific time in my employment history.

Yes, I admit it: there are elements of human society that I loathe. I know it's not very evolved and that I'm likely to roast in hell for my lack of Christian charity. In this post by James Wolcott, he vividly captures one segment of the American population who, I believe, make Americans hated around the world.

If you've ever worked in the service industry you might have some idea as to the heinous nature of those who feel as though the world is owed to them because... You learn very quickly that you are a second-class citizen if you wear a uniform, apron, or name tag while earning your living. Those people who decry the decline of quality in the American service industry are more than likely the same people who snap their fingers to get a server's attention, arrive late the movies and insist on sitting in a center-of-the-row seat, and wait until they get to the front of the line before pulling out their wallets.

Sometimes I feel that my real job is working through the contempt I feel for certain behavior. Right now I struggle with people who seem to act as if they are morally or intellectually superior, if not exactly to me, to other people. And the real challenge in wrestling with these feelings is avoiding the danger of manifesting the type of behavior I detest. How do you be charitable to the uncharitable, and do they even deserve it?

Doesn't George Bush deserve our pity instead of our scorn?

Of course, given my liberal political leanings, and living up to the stereotype, my knee-jerk reaction is, "No, he deserves all the scorn we can heap onto him." But why?

Because whatever lack of intellectual capacity he may have...

...however limited his world view is by lack of intellectual curiosity...

...however shelter his life has been...

George Bush has quite simply abused his position of power. Whether he's been led astray by more nuanced minds with exclusive --- dare I say Fascist --- agendas, he has broken his oath to the American people by refusing to listen to the will of the American people and begin to bring the war in Iraq to an end.

I know this is just another modestly-informed blog stating the painfully obvious, but that last paragraph is an exercising of my American birthright. Objecting to the war, criticizing our president is my right. It's your right.

And that is what is a right, an entitlement, not making people crawl over your dog at a sidewalk cafe just because she's so comfortable sprawled out in the middle of the walkway.