I am always amazed when I see people jumping the turnstiles in NYC. I find myself wondering “What are they thinking?”
In general, they tend to be well groomed and well dressed young people, so I am guessing that they can easily afford the modest fare.
Maybe they think they are rebels, bucking the system, sticking it to the Man. But in fact they are just hurting everyone else, dealing death by a thousand cuts to a transit system that is trying its best to accommodate the needs of the most difficult to run and interconnected city in the nation.
New York is a special place. It’s a city where people not only tolerate but celebrate diversity and cultural difference, where we all try to learn from one another, where we realize that people from everywhere in the world have much to teach us, and much to contribute.
So it’s hard to see entitled individuals simply taking all that for granted, and in their ignorance attacking the very infrastructure that makes it possible.
I’m pretty sure that these are not people who voted Republican. This is New York City after all.
But I’m guessing that many of them were too lazy to go to the polls on Election Day. I’ll bet they just said “Free Palestine” or some other convenient slogan, and then stayed home, robbing the rest of us of the slim margin of votes that would have preserved our democracy.
So now instead of an actual government we have a ruthless authoritarian kleptocracy, which is quickly dismantling the checks and balances that make democracy possible.
Meanwhile it looks as though Palestinian refugees are going to be shipped out of Gaza en masse, and around the world vulnerable people are about to die unnecessarily while our nation’s reputation takes a nosedive as USAID is dismantled.
I realize that the fare beaters are just being clueless idiots. But sometimes people need to do better than be clueless idiots.