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LibertyBob.com

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Jerk Blocked my View

2007-07-14

Category: philosophies

So, I'm at the intersection where a side street joins a larger thoroughfare. I'm on the side street waiting for traffic to clear so I can make a right-hand turn onto the larger street. I've been there about half a minute. That's when the moron shows up.

A guy pulls up in the lane next to me so he can make a left hand turn. About the only time of day when you can accomplish this easily at this intersection is five o'clock in the morning when traffic is almost negligible. The side street in question curves around, so persons wanting to go the left-turn direction can just go the couple of blocks the other direction and use the traffic light to get out safely. Of course, from that end of the street he couldn't have blocked my view.

That's right; he pulled up enough to block my view of traffic from the left. I slid forward just enough to see around him. Noticing this, he was compelled to pull forward a little more and block my view again. We alternated views a couple more times.

Then he looked at me and smiled. He was being a complete jerk and he knew and enjoyed it thoroughly. I would have said he was being inconsiderate, but he made it obvious that he fully understood what he was doing and the affect it had on others.

The first image was that of my car opening up a broadside and blasting his car to Davy Jones' Auto Shop. Unfortunately, my car is not equipped with cannons or any other offensive weaponry.

What the guy really needs, though, is to be dragged out of his car and beaten. It doesn't need to kill him, though that would not be a great loss. It would not even need to cause many permanent injuries. All it needs to do is traumatize him enough such that the next time he thinks about annoying someone, a little primal fear will make him reconsider.

You may be wondering why the concept of waiting one's turn is so important to me. In general it isn't. However, when you are behind the wheel of a ton of high-speed, metal death, following rules and being considerate suddenly becomes very important. You can see where those basic lessons of Kindergarten might come into play on the roadway. It's really sad that so many people never learned those lessons when they were children.

In our society, we have done away with the concept of negative reinforcement and consequences for bad behavior. As a result, jerks like the one I've described, know that they can do whatever they want with out anything bad happening to them. This guy knows that if anyone does anything to him for his behavior, the police will actually punish the other person. It is the wronged person who would be breaking the law.

Not to worry, though. Soon, the Baby Boomers and their hippy ways will die off. Generation X will take over the schools and start teaching about proper business practices and confrontation. In a generation or two, jerks who go out of their way to annoy others will find themselves sent to re-education camps where long days in the mines will teach them to be better behaved.


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