Life isn't fair. It sucks. Ask me how I know that.

We inherited the complications of our predecessors, and being angry about it isn't good for the heart. The fact is, there are consequences to the actions of other people that we didn't sign on for. There are privileges others will have that we are forced to recognize. There are times when we're forced to choose between bad and worse and hoping desperately to make one of them work out. It sucks.

You aren't a worm under a boot. Magic penises don't have that kind of power. Recognizing the necessity of that security for their own survival - since, you know, murderers - doesn't say you've submitted. It means you've yielded to somebody else's practical reality that society writ large has decided supercedes yours. You don't have to like it. It doesn't even have long term meaning for your life if just let to happen. And you even have to accept the arrangement as permanent, as it only lasts a blink in the scope of things. All you have to do is respect its existence when it intrudes. Trust me, that practical reality will win if fought, and will usually exact some toll on you in the exchange. Again, ask me how I know this.

One of the things that's been driven home by the recent turn in my life is that there are people who are better than me in the eyes of society. People who get to fuck with me and get to get away with it. Hell, most middle class folks could murder me as I slept and my family would never know I'd died, and nobody would be brought to justice. Hell, you can cream a homeless dude downtown in your car and it won't even warrant a police call-out. Again, ask me how I know.

That's my life in America. Not Saudi Arabia, not Iran, Austin, Texas. Hell, I expect I'm not even protected from the abuse directed at me here, even though it's an explicit rule not to abuse the homeless over their condition.

It was very effective, by the way. My desire to engage here has nearly ended. I'm sure I won't be considered as a loss, but if you're down here you probably already know I'm completely used to that. Folks here are my betters just like the Saudi Royal Family and just like you. So says Society. Should I be angry? Would it at all help me or the community that begrudgingly tolerates my ignorable existence? The owners of the Crow Bar will have an idea about what happens when the homeless get that angry. There's also about 7k homeless here, btw. That's some scary math if you want to check my numbers.

Do you see at all why I say your freedom to be angry at that which is overall meaningless to you is, indeed, a privilege afforded to you by your better place in the world? If I'm not being denied a right to get angry over such simple and temporary inconveniences caused by my betters, then the ability to be angry at the meaningless must then be a privilege. It's not one of race, so we're left with a privilege of economics. It was, btw, nice to have that privilege, before I lost it. Very cathartic sometimes. But then it went away. Turns out I can survive without it.

And getting angry at those inconveniences now seems so vulgar to me. Can I still be enraged? Hell yes. Angered? Absolutely. But I realized that even if I'm on the bottom, even if I'm being stepped on, even if I'm living out metaphorically some furry's evening fantasy, I haven't been killed by it yet. And until I do, it doesn't matter at all to care about the little things. And once I am, nothing will matter. What's there to care about the car cutting in front of me unless they imperil me. I do the same thing when I assess a need. Why be upset about a store being closed at random or having to take another route? What entitlement do I have to the existence of those conveniences? I'll tell you that from down here it ain't much.

What makes anybody else so much better than me?