My wife was seated in the airport waiting to catch her flight back home. So far so good. She was already past security waiting in the gate area. As usual, she was reading a book trying to pass the minutes until it was time to board. My wife can be as entertained by people watching as anyone. However if she has a good book, she would rather tune out the world and slip into a well written story, but not today. On this day, she along with everyone else in the gate area were going to have their concentration shattered by a guy on his cell phone. For sake of discussion, let’s call him Barry. Barry had a pretty deep voice, and he was talking loud.

It didn’t matter if you had on headphones, wore hearing aids or were half-deaf, you could hear Barry. His baritone voice blasted through the atmosphere at the gate such that everyone could hear every word he was saying. It became very clear, very quickly he was trying his best to get out of the dog house. It was obvious from his side of the conversation that Barry was in deep TROUBLE. He was in trouble with his girlfriend Liberty, and she was really ticked off. You couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but it definitely was NOT PG-13. Barry was doing his best to convince his girlfriend over the phone that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t buying it.

That’s part of the reason why he was talking so loud. This wasn’t Barry’s first rodeo. He had been in this position before with Liberty and with a bunch of girlfriends before her. Barry was getting loud because he was shocked that she wasn’t buying his usual approach. In this case, Liberty was confident that Barry was sleeping with somebody. Normally Barry was a smooth operator and generally felt pretty confident that he was smart enough to convince her he did nothing wrong. He started with the obligatory, “Baby”. Calling her baby was a good term of endearment and also minimized the chance that he would accidentally call her another name. Then followed by an emphatic, “You know me!”. Then Liberty would blast him making it clear that she was pretty sure she did know him. Followed by another “but you know me!” This time a little louder with a closing chuckle from Barry. Enough people in the gate area were following this real life soap opera that most of the other conversations had stopped. Many of the men were smiling because they knew they were watching a guy with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Most of the women were scowling because they clearly empathized with Liberty. This guy was a jerk. Several men across the hall removed their headphones so they wouldn’t miss any of the drama.

Oops, the laughing didn’t help Barry this time. Usually a little levity helped show her how ridiculous she was being. After all if he wasn’t taking her charges seriously, how could she. (I have to wonder if this approach ever worked for Mr. Smooth) OK, it’s time for a new tactic. This time Barry responds more softly with more of a pleading tone. “I wouldn’t do that. You know me.” Liberty blasts back letting him have it again. This isn’t working and now Barry is getting even louder out of his frustration. She’s different this time. She’s not just mad. She has righteous indignation. To add insult to injury, Liberty is even more upset this time because Barry thinks she’s stupid enough to be sweet talked once again.

Now Barry has to fall back on his last line of defense: convince her he hasn’t done anything. After all Barry is a trustworthy guy, right? Ok, let’s skip that tactic. But if she would just remember what a great guy he is, she’ll believe that he has her best interests at heart. So Barry alternates between “You know me” and “but you know me” responses. Each time she lets him have it again with a verbal barrage. Sometimes Barry cuts her off mid-sentence and sometimes not. This goes on for another 10 minutes. By now, Barry is reeling and getting worn out. Liberty has had him up against the ropes the whole time and none of his normal defenses are working. Barry decides that she is acting this way because she must actually have something on him. Finally he decides to find out what set her off. After all she may have some facts wrong. Then he can use those inconsistencies to rationalize an explanation that hopefully she will be stupid enough to accept. So he asks sheepishly, “Exactly what do you think I’ve done? “. He listens intently for a couple of moments. Then he smiles and has his best response of the night,

For some reason Barry thought this was his get out of jail free card. Liberty disagreed. The call ended abruptly as Liberty screamed while she slammed down the phone.

I guess what was most shocking to those listening was that Barry didn’t think he did anything wrong. He shrugged his shoulders and took a seat to wait for the plane. Barry wasn’t even embarrassed. The real life screen play above reminds me of our relationship with our “Progressive” government officials. The Progressives claim that they are enacting regulations and controlling our behavior to make things better for us. However every time we dig into the details, we find out they are really acting in their own best interest, not ours. All in all, Progressives are pretty simple to understand. They think they are smarter than the rest of us peasants, and their “superior intelligence” gives them the justification they need to play God. (which explains why most progressives don’t believe in God but that’s for another post) Progressives feel uniquely qualified to pick societies’ winners and losers. They feel justified in leveraging the power they derive from that authority. In their Progressive world, the ruling class represented by the intelligentsia is the only real winners.

I was recently asked by a Progressive why people became so mad at the town hall meetings in the fall of 2010. First of all, we weren’t mad. What the politicians heard was our righteous indignation. We were insulted because our elected officials were cramming life shattering legislation, like Obamacare, down our throats. Then to add insult to injury, the politicians were trying to sweet talk us into believing they were looking out for us. Like Liberty, we’re not that stupid. If the government-run healthcare plan was so great, the Congress and their staff would have required that they were enrolled in Obamacare. Instead, they slipped language into the bill giving them an exception to keep their own Cadillac healthcare plan. Clearly they thought that Obamacare was good enough for the peasants but the ruling class deserved something better.

Frankly, we have grown tired of the Progressives trying to run our lives. We are tired of being treated like Barry’s girlfriend. We’re really tired of being treated like Barry’s wife. That noise the Progressives heard from the Town Hall Meetings… That was just us slamming down the phone.