I stumbled across this tweet by American Conservative editor Helen Andrews, in which she remarks on pausing her commute at the local Metro, in Washington, DC, and counting the number of fare-dodgers that could be spotted within a five-minute period. An exercise she repeated, with an average of 22 fare-dodgers and a peak of 40. In five minutes.

What stood out, however, were the tweeted replies, often from blue-ticked progressives and self-styled creatives with many flags in their bios, and ostentatious pronouns, and which conveyed a kind of pre-emptive disapproval of any thoughts along such lines.

“Do you literally have nothing better to do?” asked one film and TV director, adding, “Why don’t you stand outside a bank and interview business owners who steal wages from hourly employees?” Some insisted that an escalation of fare-dodging has no victims or unhappy social effects, and that fares are a “classist, racist” assault on “poor and BIPOC folks.” Others, including lecturers and lawyers, added “who cares?” or deployed the terms “narc” and “snitch,” again suggesting that certain observations are not to be aired. One “Oscar-nominated screenwriter” expressed his “exhausted rage” at such things being noticed at all.

The general theme of the replies, and the air of annoyance, reminded me of Ms Claudia Balducci, a woman responsible for Seattle’s public transport network. Faced with evidence that up to 70% of passengers are now freeloading with impunity, Ms Balducci replied:

People are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.

Which is progress, apparently. An achievement unlocked.

Update, via the comments:

Readers who poke through the linked thread may register an odd uniformity among the reactions, and considerable self-satisfaction. One progressive podcaster, a purveyor of “media and political analysis,” was quite adamant that such “fake crime” would be “solved” by simply not charging people, at all, for services they use frequently and which cost a great deal to maintain. This was presented as some unassailable insight, a basis for applause. Several pious souls insisted that habitual lawbreakers shouldn’t be “shamed,” even when no mention had been made of their identities. Because noticing routine and shameless thievery is apparently much worse than indulging in it.

Or as one chap put it,

Cosplaying as Hall Monitor outside of a subway station is actual antisocial behaviour.

Such sentiments were by no means uncommon, and the thread does rather suggest that one is not supposed to ask, even tentatively, whether such behaviour, however frequent, and however flagrant, might have wider and regrettable effects.

Those expressing their disapproval of Certain Things Being Noticed didn’t seem at all concerned by the fragility of civilised behaviour, or the effects of a large and growing minority disregarding norms of behaviour, seemingly with impunity and with no expectation of ever being asked to behave otherwise. As if such exemptions couldn’t engender resentments, social friction, and an erosion of social trust and goodwill.

Assets that, once lost, are very difficult to retrieve.




Subscribestar
Share: