What Happened?
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I was talking with one of my more liberal friends the other day. I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but I must have said something she didn't agree with (it happens a lot these days). She asked me, "What happened to you?"

I couldn't articulate an answer at the moment, but I've thought a lot about it the last couple of days. The polite answer would be that I realized that what I see happening in the world around me doesn't match with what I used to say I believed about the world. I started trying to explain this process (for my own benefit more than anything else) several months ago, but have never gotten around to going back to finish it. I thought I might try to do a capsule version now.

The shortest, plainest way I can say this is that I am sick to death of the victim culture in this country. I am a sociologist by education and I've come to realize that the sociological theories (or the pop culture bastardizations of them) that are popular with the political left today are all based on the assumption that someone is victimizing someone else. And at some level I don't have a problem with that. There are really and truly victims out there. Victims of racism, sexism, economic oppression and just general misfortune. What I have a problem with is people who actively seek out and seem to revel in their "victimhood." And I have an even bigger problem with those who believe that their "victimhood" entitles them to be supported by me and everyone else who is working for a living.

I used to buy into the whole "victim" thing; in fact, one of the reasons I got into corrections in the first place was a (misguided) belief that I was going to be helping some of the victims of an oppressive system. Now I have a client who is attempting to qualify for both mental and physical disability so he can collect a disability payment for the rest of his life and not have to work. He has openly said to other staff members that if he could get a job at one of the aircraft plants making $20 an hour he would drop the disability claims and go to work. But taking a $7 or $8 dollar an hour job is beneath his dignity, so he would rather lay around the house and let you and me support him.

Quite simply, he doesn't think it is fair that he apparently can't make the kind of money he thinks he is entitled to, so he thinks he is entitled to be supported by the rest of us for the rest of his life. I wish this were an isolated example, but unfortunately it is not. We've had dozens of these guys over the years, although I will admit that none of them has been quite so blatant about it. But all of this revolves around what people think is fair and what they are entitled to.

I've mentioned before the apparently common idea that in this country no one should have to suffer and if someone does "suffer" they are entitled to be compensated. The problem is that what constitutes "suffering" has changed from truly monumental adversity to the vague notion that other people have it better than we do. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the idea that we should have equal opportunity and replaced it with the idea that we should have equal results.

Maybe I'm jaded because I work in corrections. But maybe because I work in corrections and am confronted with blatant examples I can pick out the more subtle examples out in the real world. Nearly all of my clients are in the correctional system through no fault of their own. They are there because the cops had it in for them, it was the judge's fault, their attorney screwed up. etc, etc, ad nauseum. Never mind that they were caught red-handed committing the act they were convicted of, it's not their fault. They are victims of the System.

So, when I hear people out in the real world talking about how they are being taken advantage of, or how "it" isn't fair that they are in the situation they are in, I'm just not all that sympathetic, I guess. And when I hear the good folks on the left of the political spectrum explain to me how the System victimizes people (exactly what I used to believe) I look at the world around me and hear the whining about how "it's not fair" and it becomes clear what happened to me:

I woke up and looked around at the world as it is and not the world as it would be if all the pet theories of the Left were true. And the thing that I think is sort of amusing in a grim sort of way is that my friends on the left are waiting for this phase to pass, hoping that one day I will wake up and come back to the correct way of thinking.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, July 08 2004 09:41:55 PM

Keeping it in perspective
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I went back to work today. Things aren't going too well, although a couple of hundred unread e-mails isn't the worst of all possible fates. I've got personnel issues. We've got new staff to train. We have interviews later this week. Some of my key staff are/have been sick. Rat Jr. took my truck to go see a friend tonight and blew out a tire on the highway, so at 10:30 p.m. I was out on the side of the road changing a completely shredded tire. All in all, not a very good day.

Not however, probably as bad as this guy's day:

I took this on Saturday, July 3, 2004. This is the interstate bridge over the Snake River somewhere in south-central Idaho, I think near Twin Falls. The cab of the truck is actually in the water, being pushed under the bridge by the current.

And I thought my life sucked.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, July 07 2004 01:00:24 AM

Eulogy
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Three weeks ago I wrote that I was having difficulty writing, as I was having a hard time coming to grips with my wife's grandfather's death. I've been blocked like that before (I can't seem to write about what I want or need to write about and everything else seems trivial) but never quite like this. Since that time, my wife's grandmother also died. We've been back to Oregon for another funeral and to try to help, at least in a small way, with closing out their apartment. On the trip home, I had a lot of time to think, and realized that the reason I couldn't write about grandpa was that they were, perhaps, the quintessential couple. Although they were each unique and charming individuals, it is (at least for me) nearly impossible to speak for any length of time about either one of them without talking about the other.

I first met my wife's grandparents about 17 years ago. It was the last time they travelled back east, and they stopped in Kansas to see my mother-in-law, my wife and her sister and the great-grandchildren. It was one of those obligatory, round up the rug-rats and present them to the distant (in terms of distance) relatives for inspection kinds of things. They didn't know me from Adam, but they were nice to me and I liked them.

Not too long after that, their health began to deteriorate. They were never again able to travel back this way. My wife and I were not financially able to take big road trips back then. So for most of the intervening years, we talked to them occasionally on the phone. I didn't really know them, other than on that superficial, "hi, how are you?" level.

After my wife's mother died about three years ago, she felt the need to be closer to her remaining family, so we made the arrangements to take a trip out to visit them in Oregon. It is something I deeply regret not doing earlier. From the first moment, they treated me like I was long lost family. Being comfortable with people is not something I'm good at, but that's just the way they were with people, as evidenced by the number of friends and especially former neighbors who came, sometimes considerable distances, for their funerals.

At one level, they were just regular folks who made the best out of an often hard life by working hard, trying to have a good time, and trying to do the right thing by people. In their 80+ years on the earth, they did a lot of things, and had the most delightful stories about all of it. I got to hear about their childhoods, about him working in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Yellowstone during the depression, about how they met, about him being a truck driver and then about delivering meat to restaurants in Los Angeles, about her working at Von's in LA, about vacation trips, about my mother-in-law's childhood, about places they lived. I thought perhaps they were just being polite with me, but all of the people I asked about it said the same thing: they had a lot of hard times in their lives, but there was no bitterness in the stories. And I think that speaks volumes about them.

They were married for over 60 years. In her younger days, Grandma was "movie-star" beautiful and Grandpa was also quite handsome. They made a strikingly attractive couple. We inherited more than a dozen photo albums and stacks of other pictures. I've not had a chance to look at all of them in detail, but I've noticed one thing in particular. In most family albums I've seen, including some from my family, there always seem to be a few pictures where the people just appear to be going through the motions. I've yet to find a single picture of Grandma and Grandpa where they didn't appear to be in love.

In the end, Grandpa broke his hip, and died from complications with the surgery to repair it. The person who has been closest to them for the past few years and who did all of the things we would have wanted to do for them had we been able to be there spent quite a bit of time at the hospital with Grandpa. She told me that his biggest concern was getting home to be with Grandma. Grandma had not been well for some time, and after Grandpa died, her health deteriorated. In the space of three weeks, she just faded into death. It was as if there was no longer a compelling reason for her to stay, so she left us to join him. While I wish we could have had more time with them, I wouldn't wish either of them to have to live without the other.

As for me, I don't have anything flowery, elegant or eloquent to say. They touched the lives of dozens of people in truly positive ways and none of us will forget them. And none of us will forget that their life together was, above all else, a Love Story. One which I do not believe is finished yet.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, July 05 2004 11:29:53 PM