Choosing Beggars

The social media site Reddit features threads on an extraordinary range of topics from the practical to the irreverent and ridiculous. One I particularly enjoy is entitled Choosing Beggars—the inversion an intentional tipoff to the subject matter; individuals who believe the world owes them something and aren’t ashamed in any way to let us know it. A recent post showed a series of emails from a bride-to-be to invitees to her destination wedding in Thailand. When only four people sent RSVPs indicating they would attend, she moved the destination to Hawaii and the four who had said they would come subsequently declined. Her final email to the 70 invitees scolded them for their response and then suggested they should send expensive gifts to make up for their lack of attendance. Believe it or not, this was one of the least obnoxious posts.

While such behavior may cause a head shake and a laugh there is something deeper here worthy of further discussion. Entitlement is what choosing beggars possess, in abundance, and it is the same attitude that fuels the victimization expressed by many of our fellow citizens. Real victims suffer unjust often cruel treatment at the hands of others—that isn’t the case for those who feel injured by the mere existence of anyone with whom they do not agree. Nor is one victimized by those who practice religious or philosophical beliefs other than our own or engage in behaviors which cause us no harm but which we may find objectionable. We don’t have to like or agree with everyone and we probably won't, but we aren’t victims as a result of our differences.

However, it seems a lot of folks are not only intolerant but feel injured by the very existence of those who differ from them and feel justified in expressing and oftentimes engaging in inexcusable behavior toward them. Entitled individuals are quick to speak about the infringement of their rights but never consider the rights of anyone else. In fact, the mere suggestion that an entitled person is doing unto others what they claim has been done to them is of itself sufficient cause to unleash cries of outrage.

Reddit also has a name for an entitled person. They are called Karens. Apologies to any woman named Karen who may feel defamed, but I suspect we have all met or seen one of these people in action. And let me hasten to add that there are male versions but less agreement about whether they should be called Kens or Terrys. By whatever name they are known, Karens and Kens are easily recognized, even and preferably at a distance. They carry about them an air of simmering anger and self-importance, loaded and locked, ready to react to a perceived slight or infringement. Indeed, no action need be taken to occasion their offense; at the first sign they cannot have their way they will summon a higher authority—the manager, the police, the highest authority they can name, to uphold their rights and privileged status. The mere existence of anyone living their life in ways that Karens and Kens find offensive is sufficient cause to transform them into anguished two-year-olds in adult bodies throwing public temper tantrums.

Social media influencers are a special sub-group of Karens. Yes, there are such people who by dint of their YouTube, Instagram or Facebook followers believe they should be treated as celebrities and provided with free meals, merchandise, and attendance at VIP events in exchange for ‘exposure’. Heaven forbid a business declines such an offer, they will be summarily executed online with a scorching indignant review. While there is no doubt that social media can and sometimes does influence patronage, thankfully most members of the pander posse have so few followers that their threats are meaningless.

Sadly that is not the case with those who enjoy a particular kind of celebrity as paid professional victims. You may know them by under their assumed identity as hosts of political commentary programs. These folks actually do have followers, often in the millions, who watch and listen as they manufacture indignation from the very depths of their shallow psyches excoriating persons, movements, views and ideas they find offensive to their viewer's sensibilities. They engender a unique form of entitlement, group victimization. The truth about this kind of victimhood is that it not only provides a convenient cover for intolerance, it nicely skirts the real crime it perpetuates. All that mock anger and attention seeking self-righteousness provides a model for the less articulate Karens and Kens who consume it with a delicious, vicarious thrill. They too can share the sense of indignation expressed nightly by the peddlers of self-appointed moral outrage. They too have been injured.

To be clear these commentators are not journalists; we are told that journalists report the news which as we are also told is highly suspect and fake. No, these pot-boiling provocateurs are entertainers—at least what their lawyers have told them to say when anyone has the effrontery to call them to account for the sensationalist lies and bitter recriminations they dish up. It isn’t their job to report on anything or provide any form of objectivity—their job is to create viewership just like every other performer, except they do it by whipping up the crowd and creating that special form of shared anger that passes for political perspective. And it works, because all the Karens and Kens in the audience share one thing in common, they want to belong--to find their identity and their power in the narrative of a manufactured injustice. They are victims.

If only this phenomenon did not have such dire consequence, if all it provided was entertainment perhaps we could excuse it as yet another wretched human foible. But that isn’t the case, and we should do more than shake our heads or look away. As we have learned time and again. Unless or until we are personally affected by intolerance in whatever form it may take it is an abstraction. Real victims have no rights, no agency, and no defenders. Their voices are not heard but are drowned out by a sea of infantile wailing. It is long past the time we should have lost patience with these phony victims, refused to accept their righteous intolerance as legitimate. If we fail to do so we invite them to make us the victims.

Postscript: When I originally wrote this post the Supreme Court's draft decision on Roe v Wade had not been leaked and the ensuing turmoil was yet to unfold. Regardless of where one stands on the subject, this rule of law and others which the court has signaled it will seek to overturn came into being in our country as in much of the Western world out of a common recognition by an overwhelming majority of citizens that the rights of one group of people cannot be permitted to abridge those of another because they offend one's sensibilities or beliefs. The arguments in this instance devolve to questions of science vs. faith, and appear to stand on the assumption of victimhood. But we should not allow those abstractions to stand. If we permit the elimination of the rights of one group at the behest of another there is no longer a bright line, no longer any investment in the guarantees which our founders sought to protect, and any person or group is subject to repressive, prejudicial and eventually violent action by those in power.