Regarding this incident here in Seattle on Tuesday. (Short version for those who don’t want to click the link: A woman sat on the rail of a major interstate-freeway bridge for over three hours, snarling traffic. She eventually jumped, but lived.)
It’s one thing to sit in traffic, get frustrated, and yell something mean because your fuse is short. We all have human failings, and some people don’t deal with anger very well. However, the overwhelming majority of those people, after calming down and reflecting on the situation, no doubt regret their boorish behavior.
But it’s something else entirely to think back over the incident and insist that being selfish and judgemental is the correct choice. In particular, I can’t believe that the writer second from the bottom is actually willing to have his name publicly associated with his incredibly cruel worldview. Clearly, he believes himself to be speaking from a position of elevated wisdom, and chides those who feel empathy with the distraught woman – and further, he believes so firmly in his wit and perspicacity that when the newspaper asked if they could run his comments, he said, “Sure, go ahead.”
Yes, his name’s in the article. I used an online directory and found his home address, and I wrote a letter expressing my disgust with what he clearly considers a more-enlightened position. I have no intention, however, of sending it to him, because I was merely venting spleen. Under no circumstances do I want to engage this bruised sphincter of a subhuman in any sort of dialogue.
Instead, I reproduce parts of it here for your reading pleasure.
From the link above, the last two sentences of his quoted comments are as follows:
Ahem. You, sir, are the epitome of the modern urban asshole.
Road rage is not on the rise because several thousand people were inconvenienced, some significantly, while someone’s life hung in the balance. No, road rage is on the rise because you and similarly selfish morons place your fleeting needs over legitimate life-and-death emergencies. Road rage is on the rise because the blinders of egotism and personal greed have caused you and people like you to lose all perspective and adopt personal priorities that would be deemed unconscionable in a more civilized society. Road rage is on the rise because you and your fellow megalomaniacs cannot understand that sometimes one doesn’t get what one wants, and that other people’s tragedies sometimes outweigh one’s own. Unfortunately, this requires you to consider the emotions of someone other than yourself – indeed, to concede their existence: in all likelihood an alien concept.
And thus the saddest part, no matter how many people take my course of looking up your name and berating you for your shameless self-absorption, is that you no doubt still think you’re right.
I have no doubt that if I had found myself entangled in that traffic imbroglio, I would have been similarly frustrated and angry at the delay. But the difference between you and me, you sniveling guttersouled cretin, is that once I learn the nature of the problem, I am able to realize that some people’s tragedies are larger than mine. Unlike you, I understand that I don’t sit at the apex of the Entitlement Totem, and I recognize when somebody else’s crisis takes priority over my own.
Maybe some day in the future some complex heartbreak will touch you personally, and you’ll have need to allow somebody else’s feelings to brush against your imprisoned soul. Perhaps then, against all odds, empathy will take root in the sterile soil of your cold, dead heart.
But until that day comes, please do keep spouting your callous diatribes, so we can all recognize what kind of person you are, and shun you accordingly.