War on Unchecked Privilege

In many ways, we live
in far more insidious times
than the Decade of Greed.

We live in times where we know
lots of people took a great deal
of advantage of others, and
our response is to continue
the erosion of the middle class,
so that privilege may continue
to indulge itself, privilege
not only in wealth but in
the idea of leadership,
the driving engine of the beast.

The symptoms of this disease,
this unparalleled calamity,
are an increasing presumption,
an assumption of rights
that in our modern times
believes it's just as right now
as when there were labeled classes
to believe other people can and should
bear the brunt of the work that's
necessary (or necessitated) by
this privilege.

I call it a society of butlers
because of course such people
cannot be expected to look after
the effects of their lifestyle
and manners, and these butlers
are expected to bear it with
good humor.

Good humor! Because that's
what we're supposed to do.

There comes a time when
this privilege defies the boundaries
of reciprocity, the ideal by which
all free societies should guide
themselves, the first rule
of democracy.