It's all about you

‘Dr’ Jack Monroe has been off on one. A heavily tattooed, unstable, former lesbian, state-enabled single mother turned transitional role model for non-binary gender identity... I don’t even know where this is going any more. She has decided, in her quest to be an eternal victim, to utilise the worst of all aspects of her multi-faceted mental illness, so that she can scream into Twitter as all the hatred in the world is directed at her... in her fevered dreams. As somebody on my timeline said, Laurie Penny’s people need to up their game.

What is it that makes some people think that the world owes them anything at all? A living? A nice life? Fame, money, happiness, success... not one of these things is even close to approaching a human right, yet there is a whole underclass of people for whom the world has no use who believe that the world is their oyster... but that somebody else has to shuck it for them. Behind those dull, sunken eyes lies a distorted world view at which we can only guess, although it’s not an entirely uninformed supposition:

You have a shit job. You have a shit life. You are uneducated. You spend the weekend off your tits on booze and skunk. You fight with your on/off girlfriend and have been arrested more than once because she has reported you to the police. Your temper is short and because you can’t win arguments with intellect you resort quickly to physical aggression. You are banned from several local pubs and at least one football ground and the local magistrates say you have anger issues. A small fortune has been squandered in just containing your belligerence.

You say school was shit and all the teachers were nonces, so you sacked that off pretty quickly and by the age of thirteen you were rarely in class at all. You left without sitting any exams and spent the rest of your teen years fantasising about setting the place on fire or beating an old teacher to a pulp and leaving them to bleed to death in a dark alley somewhere for once calling you lazy, or employing an insulting sarcasm you were incapable of comprehending. In your estimation you are a somebody on your estate and deserve better from life.

You did try for a job once, in a labouring capacity and as a result of one of your frequent court appearances, but you got pissed off with being told what to do and the last straw was when the foreman criticised your ineptitude. You lasted less than a week but you still tell stories when you’re high about your days ‘working for the man’. You now inform everybody you meet (who are exactly like you, because who else would deign seek your company?) that working is a mug’s game because while they will have to work for fifty thankless years or more to earn a state pension, you will have one waiting should you live to collect it.

You’re overweight, wheezy and frequently dulled by drugs and your self-induced corpulence and malaise is playing havoc with your joints; you have your eyes set on a mobility scooter because it’s not your fault you’re becoming disabled, is it? At least you have no trouble getting a doctor’s appointment – you’re in the surgery with some complaint or other every other week. But what do doctors know about shit anyway? The last one suggested you get about more, become more active, maybe even have another go at working. They are all in it together; your skunk-induced paranoia is ever-present

Nobody gave you a chance, you say? You’ve had nothing but chances; more effort and expense has been expended by a too-caring society in calming you, trying to teach you, restraining you, occasionally incarcerating you, monitoring you and keeping you alive, well, fed and housed than twenty other people will see in a lifetime, yet you persist in believing you get nothing. You get everything you need and more and what does society get in return? Your doppelgänger girlfriend is pregnant again...