BLAMING "THE HELP"

Blamers are immature people. You know the type. The person who drops and breaks a dish in the kitchen and blames the person who happens to be closest for distracting them. The person who blames a caring partner who is a good cook for making them fat. The person who spins into a rage after a car accident and blames the other driver, even if the rager is at fault. The person who blames a person bitten by their dog when the victim of the bite was simply trying to pet it. 

Immaturity in adults may result from any number of possible developmental sources. Aside from organic mental illness, most adult immaturity results from lack of teaching experiences provided by parents or society. Immature adults are often referred to as "spoiled" or "entitled" or "narcissistic". 

Two recent generations of Americans have been raised with unprecedented prosperity. A combination of government economic policy and an acceleration of American materialism to fit a consumerist economy, has decreased mass poverty and increased the gap between rich and not-poor-not-rich. Available credit is largely the method used to achieve this. Unfortunately, most of the not-poor-not-rich are debtors whose lives are floating on credit bubbles. 

These generations of Americans have learned not to deny themselves materialistic pleasures, even if they cannot afford to pay for them fully. This tendency away from postponed self-gratification has filtered down to child-rearing. Saying "No!" to a child of any age as a disciplinary method is frowned upon in social settings. I have witnessed this in many public situations over the past forty years. And pity the unrelated older person who says "Stop that!" or "No!" to an annoying small child of a young parent in a supermarket or on the sidewalk. 

The current indoctrination by political interest groups would have you believe that this privileged upbringing has been limited to White people. This is nonsense. Welfare benefits, school vouchers, food stamps, subsidized health care ... these have boosted the standard of living for most people of color as well. Those who have striven to break free of generational poverty have done so. Those who have not worked to leave generational poverty and have indulged in drugs, alcohol and uncommitted sexual relationships have reaped the same fate, regardless of their skin color. 

These two generations of entitled and narcissistic Americans have been easy prey for advertisers, banks and tech firms. Electronics have become as indispensable as groceries. Credit debt has allowed banks to reduce their services to savers while preying off the bad spending habits of spenders. They have pushed capital into the risk-laden stock markets and have succeeded in eliminating a large population of homeowners. Corporate landlords have an endless supply of mobile renters willing to pay inflated rates as they move from job to job. Everything associated with information technology makes money for the investor class. 

But the two generations of entitled narcissists do not see themselves as economic pawns. Social media, bad education and corporate propaganda have convinced them that they are important and infallible. Intersectional status, based on sexiam. racism and ethnocentricity, has been contrived to bolster the inflated egos of the most gullible and least respectable, who assert their victimhood as a badge of honor and a ticket to unearned deference. 

This is the population of mobs, manipulated to feel indignation over a fabricated narcissistic injury which challenges their feelings of invulnerable superiority. Blind to their own reverse racism, reverse sexism and reverse ethnic hatred. Mobs of White middle class drones mouth slogans about White privilege, when, in fact, it is a push for Black privilege that is being threatened: It is Black immunity from arrest. It is Black immunity from accountability. It is Black immunity from equal competition with other groups for achievement and compensation. It is Black immunity from being arrested and potentially harmed for being an addict, a wife-beater or a convicted criminal at the scene of a crime. 

When the immature take to the street in mobs to assert the privilege of those who break the law to be treated with extra care by police, they are blaming "the help", the people who work to protect and serve their communities from the very people the mob turns into icons. Defunding the police means punishing those perceived as punishable, the inferiors of the entitled  and narcissist-laden mob. 

I write as one of the helpers. I spent two decades working nights, evenings and weekends as a registered nurse. I have been bitten, spat upon, punched and kicked by those who were too wrapped up in their own immaturity and pain to care about "the help". I delivered hospice services to homes. Inevitably, the clients and their families would treat me as a servant. They would push against the boundaries of my role as an educated professional. As "the help", I had no right in their minds to assert my professional boundaries if it interfered with their sense of authority over me. 

Isn't it ironic that so much venom is being unleashed on society's helpers of all backgrounds by young people who themselves, by and large, are not engaged in helping anyone. Many of the organizers of disrespect against police, firefighters and public servants come from generations of domestic servants. Their ancestors were victims of blame for anything their employers or masters wished to blame them for.

A friend of mine frequently said, in reference to my trying hard to please, "Too good is no good." A large group of today's young Americans have indeed had it too good. The current pandemic has caused the tap to dry on their endless consumerism. They are learning that large unemployment eventually leads to employers having the opportunity to deny employment to the unskilled, arrogant and lazy. The competition for employment in better jobs has just gotten harder. 

Perhaps this time will eventually bring about some balance after the mob tantrums subside. My generation were forced into helper careers and innovative occupations by a massive recession as we graduated from high schools and universities. It was that pressure to develop a sustainable living which ended the flaky period of hippy culture. It brought my generation back to Earth. 

Marxism, as advocated by some organizers of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, would indeed appeal to those who feel they deserve everything for doing nothing other than burning buildings and flags in the name of peaceful protests. They are the new version of the Bolshevik mobs and the mobs of the French Reign of Terror. The stunning difference is that they are a small minority of American society. They are magnified by a corporate media driven by clicks. They are the freak show used to bring people to the tent of cable news. 

The helpers will persist. I am one, and I am aware it is just part of my personality. And so it is with the best doctors, teachers, cops, firefighters, researchers, etc.. We recognize the character trait in others. We respect it, even when the rest of the world, those who always choose to take rather than give, blame us for their own self-created misery. We draw on that recognition and support, even though it may be hard to see at times. Part of being "the help" is learning to help ourselves and one another when we are not appreciated.