Mugged

Mugged

I was talking to a 37 year-old woman I know who is due to have a baby in six months. We will call her Mira. Mira met a man, had the hot affair, and within a month she became pregnant. Mira and her sperm donor thought about getting married but decided against it because they felt they could never really live together in the idealistically blissful fantasy of marriage each had so dearly harbored since childhood. Mira had always wanted a baby anyway, and, as that biological clock relentlessly ticked away, egg by fruitless egg, and, while she can barely take care of herself, she decided to keep the love child. "So I'll raise it myself," she proclaimed with the same determination of early American pioneers who tamed a hostile continent. Very touching.

I used to think that it was normal for a child to have a mother and a father, but society has permanently changed that definition for me. Society has its new, more politically correct definition of normal, and I am left with an obsolete fantasy in my head. I must keep reminding myself though, that normal is simply a mathematical average of a very large number of individual cases, and what was normal a generation ago is abnormal today.

Mira has been in one form of psychotherapy or another for nearly her entire adult life. She is a recovering alcoholic and ex-drug addict. She is in a twelve step program. She has her AA meetings. She belongs to several group therapy groups. And she has individual counselling too. She is even in a support group for children of recovering alcoholics.

"How will you support the child?" I asked with the curiosity of those who first witnessed alchemists transform base metal into gold.

"Well, even though my parents are rich, they're not going to be any help, so I've already looked into food stamps and ..."

That's all I needed to hear. Apparently I was her benefactor. I was going to support her and her child. I had no say in the matter, and I was the designated fall guy--I, and millions like me--the fools who take responsibility for their actions, and work. The great hand of government was once again reaching deep into my pocket to feed Mira and her evolving zygote. Mira has the freedom to choose to have her baby without any visible means of supporting it, or herself, but I do not have the freedom to choose not to support her or her baby. I am being mugged by the government to support these humans. And if I don't pay up, that fetus tissue growing inside her body will miraculously transform into something that will probably mug me when its old enough to wield a knife or a gun.

Mira is very in touch with her feelings, though. With all that psychotherapy she couldn't help but be. She knows when she is angry. She knows when she is sad. She knows when she is happy. But apparently there is one feeling that is not within the arsenal of feelings she is so in touch with, and that is shame. She does not possess the shame that used to result in the old days, when a person failed to take responsibility for his actions, and purposely, deliberately, and with full premeditation palms off the tab on others.

But Mira is not alone. There are millions like her. And the insidious tentacles of a monstrously out-of-control system is not only condoning, but encouraging flagrant irresponsibility in mind-bogglingly large numbers of constituents, and mugging the rest of us to support this otherwise beautiful genetic imperative. And all those people have the same rights and privileges as me--actually more, because they even keep the right to vote for me to be mugged every April 15th, so that they can tighten the tourniquet of growing irresponsibility around the neck of a society infected with a catastrophic mental disorder it can no longer afford.

What started off as a well-intentioned remedial measure, long ago, has turned into a loophole to legally loot the system in the blackout of entitlements. And we're not talking about entitlements for the mentally retarded, or for people who have worked or put something into the system, or people with a temporary setback who need legitimate assistance before they get back on their feet. We are talking about people who deliberately plan to step from shameful stone to shameful stone as they cross what for others is a bone-chilling river of risk, magnificent possibilities, and excitement. And it is obscene.

As for all those feelings, I feel cheated. I feel like a fool. Why should I bother to take responsibility for my actions? Why should I bother to plan my life? Why should I even bother to work at all? What I get in return for my efforts is only a dwindling percentage of what I work for, while others not only get something for nothing, but with a full measure of self-righteous indignation expect to get something for nothing, and actually plan on something for nothing in the same way we used to plan for Junior's college education by putting money away each year. What is it that went wrong in my brain, that compels me to work and pay my way through the cold cruel world while others not only pay no penalty for their irresponsibility, but are rewarded? And if it isn't bad enough that their bag man visits me every April 15th, they add insult to injury by telling me that it is my fault they are the way they are, and do the things they do. Couldn't they at least have the decency to keep their mouths shut after I stuff food down their throats?