We speak of the need to trim entitlement costs from programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Food Stamps. We describe the effort to do so as a political third rail. But the current discussion about entitlement programs is a classic and cynical misdirect. What we call entitlements are in fact table scraps, what’s left over after the media/digital elite and their minions at all levels of government devour everything else. The truth is that true entitlement always begins and endures at the very top as an artifact of elitism and a tool of class warfare…
True and enduring entitlement begins and ends not with Food Stamps, but at the top in the hallowed halls of Congress, where Republicans and Democrats alike stop selling influence as career politicians with an 85% incumbency rate, only to start buying it as highly paid lobbyists.
True and enduring entitlement begins and ends not with Social Security, but at the top in the ivory towers of academia, where shameless administrators sit atop billion-dollar endowments and sports programs, and engorge themselves at the expense of middle-class parents whose children emerge with a lifetime of debt and few career prospects. All while students and tenured faculty champion diversity of everything except thought, and attack freedom of speech in tribal defense of some presumed and privileged right not to suffer the ignominious insult (real or perceived) of systemic micro-aggression and cultural appropriation.
True and enduring entitlement begins and ends not with Medicare, but at the top in the opulent cabins of private jets and convoys of armored Cadillac Escalades en route to global warming conferences.
True and enduring entitlement begins not with Medicaid, but at the top where the cult of celebrity deigns to inveigh against social injustice and income inequality while walking the red carpets of televised award ceremonies too numerous to count.
At the end of the day, the entitled scoundrels in high-tech, media and Wall Street, the entitled scoundrels in Washington, D.C. and the entitled scoundrels in academia are all the same entitled scoundrels at different stages of their careers…