FIRST CLASS PERKS?
Traveling First Class ain't what it used to be.
Ricky Gervais, more and more the most heroic comedian of the modern age, has a funny solid seven (as they say in stand-up world) about first class travel. The routine is about a year old, so he missed out on the current state of domestic and international flight. Too bad. Would love the acerbic comic's take on plunking yourself in a Tube of Claustrophobia and expecting it to work as it did prior to The Time of the Great Stupidity.
The Brit's take on first class accommodations is that he loves the warm, caramelized, salted nuts and decent wines served prior to take off. He also luxuriates in the concierge service he's afforded as a VIP traveler. A recent flight found him sitting awaiting the little appetite whetter to accompany his champagne.
It did not arrive. Finally, he called the attendant over.
"Excuse me, do you have any of those warm nuts I've gotten on other British Air flights?"
"Oh no, sir. So sorry. A woman in first class is allergic. She can't even be around a nut without going into anaphylactic shock."
Ricky asks the audience, "How is it that this woman, who was elderly, could get through her entire life, passing within range of nuts on more than one occasion, I'm sure, and still make it to her advanced age? She must have been in the vicinity of a nut at some point, and yet here she is, denying everyone around her the pleasures of premium travel."
He paused.
"For no reason whatsoever, other than an irrational fear and self-involvement. What is wrong with us?"
What indeed?
Applicable to today.
It's all around. Self-indulgent narcissism. The caterwauling of the entitled on our streets. The young people of today never conscripted and shipped overseas to shoot back at an enemy that would be thrilled to take down the American way of life.
Previous generations, who did have to shoot back at an enemy bent on destroying America, lived with ration cards. Food and clothing shortages. Depression era unemployment levels (Oh, what my grandparents would have given for 8.4% unemployment). Manual labor to keep the wolf from the door. Evictions. Loss of family farms. Japanese encroachment. Hitler run amuck in Europe with Stalin just behind. They did it willingly. They knew the importance of America and its place in the world.
Why don't we do it now?
Playing the blame game is easy, so let us do it. The Baby Boomers did this. They let their children relate to them as friends and locked discipline in the basement, you know, where they should have locked the screaming child. Mom and Dad allowed the teachers and administrators in their schools to inculcate seven-year-olds with sex education and a history of the United States not worthy of Cuba. Christopher Columbus became a bad guy. Military men denigrated as baby-killers, rapists, and murders. Genuine terrorists elevated to heroes.
Progressives destroyed the black family unit out of a belief of "knowing" what's best for them. The church, a flawed institution, is treated with more contempt than a mass murderer and pedophile. Our peace officers singled out as the cause of evil, despite their obvious efforts to eradicate it.
Distilled down now to a joke by Ricky Gervais is the analogy of a women so self-important and an airline so cowed by litigation that every other passenger on the plane has to be denied something.
Look around. On the streets people wear masks like it's a fashion accessory, too afraid to hug and shake hands. Our spineless leadership, and the soulless purveyors of panic in the media, magnify every sniffle and fever as though an oxcart will be coming to town near you to collect the carcasses of friends and family.
There's now no way out of this. When we complied and allowed the Curve to be Flattened but afterwards did not take our leaders by the throat and demand our lives be returned to where they were before St. Patrick's Day, we officially ceded the authority, control, and enjoyment from our day to day existence.
Unless a generational talent in leadership appears on the scene, we will never, ever get it back.
And that generational talent sure as Hell ain't Joe Biden.
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