The Right To Steal...

 "The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three..." -- George Orwell, 'Down And Out in Paris and London'

The Scene at a Local Store, Yesterday:

A ruckus manifests near the exit doors. A woman, of a particular racial and socio-economic status, is being manhandled by three large security guards, being practically lifted bodily from the floor, whereupon various items begin tumbling out from beneath the hem of her oversized coat.

From what The Overlord is able to see, he can identify a few of these items, straightaway:

Several stick deodorants.

A package of razor blades.

Several packages of baby wipes.

The Overlord internally remarks remembering seeing all of these things on the store shelves, stacked behind a 'thief-proof barrier', one of those new-fangled, sliding, clear plastic contrivances that is supposedly making it difficult for those with larceny in their hearts to simply swipe items off shelves.

Apparently, they don't work very well. Selling them to panicked store owners can be construed as a crime, all in itself.

One assumes the various pockets of the oversized coat (really, wearing a full-length duffel coat on a rainy, 50-degree New York day is probably a dead giveaway) were, likewise, jammed full of ill-gotten gains, to judge from the half gallon jug of milk removed from one of them.

This, unfortunately, is becoming a common occurrence in this sector of the galaxy.

What is even more-unfortunate is the dribble of derisive invective directed at the store security people:

"Go ahead, call the muthahfuckin' cops: I know my rights. I ain't taken $1,000 of dis shit. I be back dis afternoon ta bust out dis muthafuckah. Muthafuckin' pussies."

And here, Minions, is yet another signpost on the road to perdition. Within that defiant, threatening, illiterate sentence, delivered with the sense of entitlement that can only be felt by those whose entire life (probably) is a continuing act of theft, is contained all you'll ever need to know about the present state of 'Murica.

The breakdown:

1. This 'lady' is apparently under the false impression that she has a right to steal.

2. She is announcing to all the world that even if she is caught, no one in a position of authority is going to do anything about her thieving ways.

3. She is vocalizing the often unsaid, but all-too-obvious, circumstance that defines Modern Life: that when a problem becomes too large, too politically-sensitive, judged too difficult to fight against, society -- in the guise of government -- surrenders it's moral and legal authority and acquiesces to allow deviant behavior to continue, provided your crime took place within a getting-more-lenient-all-the-time framework (i.e. no criminal charge for thefts under $1,000).

You see it all the time in New Yorkistan.

Want to smoke weed in the open, something that used to be prosecuted?

No problem. So what if half the population has a contact high from navigating streets that are obscured by vast clouds of marijuana smoke? I can't walk down my own street, at any time of day, without my nostrils being assaulted by the malodorous aroma of extremely strong -- and probably very cheap -- pot.

You even smell it on the Expressway, whenever traffic slows to a crawl, so obviously people are lighting up while driving. It's strong enough to overcome all the exhaust fumes, even with the windows closed. You smell it at every stop light and bus stop. I recently had to take a city bus (bad fuel pump in the Nissan Tie Fighter) that smelled like Woodstock met Burning Man and had a baby named Mary Jane.

Want to make a career as a shoplifter?

Go right ahead! The New York Post routinely runs stories about the most-prolific shoplifters in New York City history, detained or even arrested (a miracle!) for plying their trade -- even hundreds of times -- and you get all the gory details about how these individuals are exceedingly predictable: they steal the same things, from the same stores, multiple times a week (sometimes multiple times A DAY), and they're free to continue doing so because there is no means, or rather, no will, to adequately punish them.

And what, exactly, defines "adequate"? 

Apparently, jail doesn't work. If jail were an antidote to larceny then no one, one believes, would rack up 100 shoplifting arrests. If prison is supposed to be a transformative event in a person's life, an opportunity at 'rehabilitation', even, then it is surely failing.

The fact that we only consider it a 'serious' offense if someone took something of a clearly-defined monetary value is a sign that surrender on more onerous criminal activity is just around the corner.

And I just don't wish to paint this problem as one specific to the people at the bottom of the economic and social barrel, either.

You can be a sitting President of the United States and (allegedly) sell out your country to enemies, both foreign (but mostly foreign) or domestic, and still command respect from all the other larcenous personalities that orbit politics.

You can be a Stanford- and MIT-educated doofus sporting cargo shorts and a 1970's jewfro trading in commodities that don't exist, lose billions of other people's money, and enjoy both a luxurious, hedonistic existence in a tropical paradise, and protection from media, law enforcement and politicians.

You can, openly and without shame, steal elections, do so in a manner which anyone with a functioning brain stem knows is fishy, and then crow about 'defending democracy'.

Society has abrogated its responsibilities to ensure fairness, equality under the law and good order for a variety of reasons, most having to do with sheer laziness, subjective thinking, inability to muster a fuck or two, and, finally, the inertia that ultimately springs from 'trusting the government' to do the things the average person has not the slightest inclination to do.

The results speak for themselves. From sheer apathy springs new 'rights' -- the right to steal.

The only mitigating factors involved are scale and position within the hierarchy.

Or the excuses you can trot out to defend the indefensible.

This 'lady' will defend her act(s) of inappropriate appropriation on the grounds that she's 'poor'. 

I have said this a million times here, and it bears repeating: no one in America is 'poor'. The American Welfare State and Capitalism are so efficient that we always seem to have 'excess' everything to just give away to those who are, in any case, legally bribed to remain in a state of virtual slavery to government in return for votes and the occasional usefulness of the threat of mob violence.

This 'lady' will defend her actions on the grounds of 'racism', and you're supposed to forget that the bigger thieves come in all colors of the rainbow. You're supposed to have sympathy for the 'victim' of the ancient slave trade that ended here nearly 200 years ago, long before this piece of shit was even an itch in her (most-likely absentee) father's scrotum, and that she has never experienced.

She will assert her 'right' to her hustle on the grounds that 'The Law' allows her to creatively acquire someone else's property in legally-apportioned, finite amounts.

She will also asset her 'right' to do it all over again tomorrow, so why did you even bother to stop her today?

The last great (sez me) American Liberal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once 'warned of the dangers of defining deviancy down'.

He was right.

He also fought against the Welfare State. He was right about that, too.

And for his troubles, his 'democrat' colleagues (the Clintons) destroyed him as a voice in American Politics and social life. What remains of the The Left that isn't totally dedicated to bringing about the Marxist Utopia -- where theft is made sacred by two people voting to steal from a third, assuming the vote wasn't stolen, itself -- has forgotten him.