And here’s that promised “rant” on personal accountability
I’m not young. I’m middle-aged, and maybe that’s a kind way of putting it. I’ve never pretended to be “hip”, “cool”, “with it”, “sick”, or anything else in the way of a label in any given era in which I’ve been alive. In fact, I grew up to more or less adulthood (let’s leave maturity out of it, okay?) in the ’60s - that era which supposedly defined freedom and “with-it-ness”. I was, however, very far from a “hippie”. In fact, I was then and am now a card-carrying member of The Establishment…. which is about as far from “with-it-ness” as one can get according to the anti-establishment, I think.
Regardless the disclaimers in the first paragraph, I have this to say about the state of personal accountability today:
No matter your age, no matter your preferred “label”, the state of your bank account, what car you drive, what watch you wear, whether a piece of paper defines your “joint” status with your sigother, whether your and your children (if any) are part of “mainstream USA” or not, whether you and your children (if any) have an education beyond high school or not, whether you pay your fair share of taxes or somehow get “by” them….
YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR CHOSEN LIFESTYLE, ACTIONS, AND DECISIONS. Period. No one forces you to make a particular decision. YOU do so.
Bottom line: don’t whine to anyone when something you CHOSE TO DO backfires. And should you choose to whine anyway, kindly tell me exactly why I should care?
And once you’ve finished justifying to yourself (though not to me!) why I or anyone should care, be sure you explain in detail why MY TAX DOLLARS should go to bail you out (believe me when I tell you I will go to ANY LENGTH to make sure that doesn’t happen, btw….)
