April 11, 2024

I am off to the Raleigh-Durham area for a couple of days. I’m currently sitting in Tucson International Airport waiting for the first flight of two; I’m connecting through Denver this evening.

The gate agents keep asking folks to remain seated until their group number is called and she is basically being ignored. A woman in a wheelchair is making loud noises asking people to move out the way as her companion pushes her to the gate, as the gate agent called for “folks that may need some extra assistance”. I would say her wheelchair qualifies her for this category.

The budget airlines, with their herding-cattle-through-chutes-by-number shtick, have really destroyed any remaining semblance of class and intelligence when it comes to airline passenger comfort. It’s bad enough that everyone has a carry on the size of a small Subaru, which of course must either be hoisted by a man, because chivalry when it’s convenient and all that or shoved under a seat the size of table side coaster. Now we have to endure people fighting like it’s Black Friday at the Walmart to get to the seat they already paid for and no one else will occupy. Because as I understand it, on the budget airlines you just get a ticket to get on an airplane and then you scratch, bite, and claw your way to a window seat with no window or a seat closest to the self service beverage machine in the back. Buy yourself some M&Ms.

Capitalism really does suck in this regard and it’s just going to suck more and more because no one will do anything to change it. A selected few count their billions and the rest of us are treated like cattle. It’s that simple.

For some reason, the American mindset is endless growth. Everything must get bigger, everything must get better, and more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it. But the truth of the matter is, nothing natural undergoes infinite growth, other than some cancers. Even our sun, the one thing we all need to live, will only grow for so long before it collapses upon itself and becomes a mere speck of its former self, destroying all life around it in the process.

Wait your turn until your number is called.