I am white. I am 56. I have a wife, two boys, two dogs and three cars. I live in a nice house. I have a well-paying job. I am entitled.
There are plenty of friends and relatives who, upon reading this post, will flip out openly or privately that I have skewed too far left again.
Screw it. It’s easy sitting in the comfort of my middle class American home, nodding my head in sympathy for my black friends, coworkers and neighbors. It’s equally easy to sit here and pass judgement on the protestors when a few instigators choose to co-opt the cause by looting and burning buildings.
What am I doing to help my black friends, coworkers and neighbors? Sadly, nothing.
Writing has long been my strong suit, so I am now flexing long-unused muscles to speak my mind about issues that affect us all. Yes, I could - and who knows, I might take part in a protest or other activities to raise awareness of issues. But, for now, I choose to wield my pen as a sword.
OK, that sounds rather extreme, but extreme times require extreme measures. For some, marching in a protest is their way of showing support. For me, I want the written word and its permanence to resonate with those who choose to read what I have to say.
It is not arrogance that drives me, but a sadness that has creeped into my life as I watch and read about how our society continues to crumble around us.
This is not a crisis that sprung upon us recently. It’s been with us for decades. Racism and school shootings are just two of the crises that we periodically rant and rave about and then get back to “normal” life until the next incident is caught on someone’s smart phone.
Heck, does anyone outside of Flint give a damn about their drinking water? Hello! What have we, as a country, learned about the tragedy of lead-tainted water? Are you asking your leaders for confirmation that the pipes in your community’s water infrastructure are safe? Probably not. Once the Flint water crisis faded from the national headlines, people and leaders likely lost interest.
Now, if you’re expecting me to go off on a rant about the media fueling these crises, I won’t. They are too easy of a target. Blaming them shifts the responsibility away from the rest of us.
See, the blame game is our National Pastime. Forget baseball. As Americans we love to place blame on others and skirt our personal and societal obligations.
We sit there in smug indifference and think we are superior to those who struggle to makes ends while working two or three minimum-wage paying jobs. We storm state houses with enough firepower to take out a platoon because we cannot go fishing or exercise our freedom to spread the corona virus to whoever we damn well please.
We think we are entitled to do as we please, when we please and without any consequences.
Well, we are wrong.
If you have made it this far in my rambling post, I have a little twist for you. I realize that being entitled is not a bad thing.
What!?
Rather than thinking we are entitled because we have all these good things in life (job, family, house, guns …), why not flip the script and frame our entitlement as an obligation to our society.
We need to accept the fact that we are entitled to do something about what is happening in our society.
So, yes, I am entitled. I am entitled to listen, learn and act.
I challenge my fellow entitled citizens to do the same.
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