Entitlement: The New Social Disease Not Limited to Politicians

Entitlement: the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges).

When the word ‘entitlement’ or ‘entitled’ comes up in a news report, the most likely subject matter of the article are politicians. In Canada (I don’t know about the rest of the world), our politicians seem to think that just because they were voted in (or in the case of our wonderful trough of a Senate, appointed) they have every right to pillage and plunder the public purse for their own personal gain. They may say that they are doing whatever they are doing (trips overseas for trade, trips across the country to “connect” with the minions, stays in 5-star hotels that include $12 glasses of orange juice), for ‘the good of the people or the country’, what they are really doing is breaking into your house and stealing money from your purse or wallet while you sleep as you try to keep nightmares of your mortgage at bay.

I’d love to be a fly on the walls of their brains as they silently snicker and think that they’ve pulled a fast one over on the people who elected them. Drivers, expense accounts, posh hotel stays, $12 glasses of orange juice, bloated salaries, over-the-top pension plans, cushy houses, no mortgages – Canadians pay for every nickel. Once politicians get used to this lifestyle, something happens to them: they become entitled. They think that they should get everything for free and invent circumstances to get even more things for free. Guess what? These ‘things’ are not free. WE pay for them – not you. You work for us. We don’t work for you. The problem with entitled politicians these days is that they have it backwards.

We are in the age of the entitlement. It is not a generational thing. It crosses boundaries and professions. Politicians are the most infected. A lot of young people are infected too – the next generation of politicians, so watch out. ‘I deserve such and such because my daddy is so and so’. ‘If I scream and stamp my feet long and loud enough, I’ll get a new iPad’. Old people are infected as well. I just read an article about an old woman who had a letter sent back to her because there was insufficient postage on it. She had the nerve to have a hissy fit on a postmaster at a post office. ‘I deserve to bleed the post office dry of their income because I’m old’. Give me a break lady. If the post office shoved through every short-paid letter, not only would postage BE sky high, but there would be no letter mail delivery period. Get over yourself and stop blaming others for your own mistakes.

If it’s not old people or young people with bloated senses of entitlement, it is the everyday driver who carelessly changes lanes without signalling or just generally drives like a moron. ‘I’m driving an Audi so I own the road’. ‘I work in the oil patch and drive a monster truck that should only be allowed on farms, so I have a right to drive like a maniac while putting people’s lives in danger.’ ‘My daughter has a heart condition so that justifies me smoking, eating a bagel, talking on my cell phone and putting on lipstick while I swerve in and out of lanes and run red lights.’ ‘I never got enough hugs when I was four-and a half so I have a right to drive 100 in a residential neighborhood.’

It’s scary out there and not just on the streets and highways. It’s scary walking around. It’s scary standing in line at the grocery store. It’s scary filling up your tank at a gas station. It’s scary cycling next to a dog park. It’s scary going to the mailbox. You just never know what kind of an entitled person you’re going to encounter or to what degree of entitlement they have. Entitlement is a disease and as of right now, there is no cure.