Power Hath Its Privileges

I've just added a tag to a couple of existing posts plus this one: Power.Hath.Its.Privileges.

Yes, power hath its privileges. Yes, people in power have a different situation from most people who don't have that kind of power. And "the little people" have trouble figuring out what's reasonable and what's an abuse of their position of power.

In high school, my PE class decided our PE teacher was a hypocrite because she dictated that we exercise and she didn't and if we had to, she should. She agreed to set the example and walk the talk but also pointed out she had five or six classes a day and it wasn't reasonable to expect her to exercise five or six times as much in the name of walking the talk and setting the example.

So she exercised with us one day a week and each day of the week did so with a different class.

Money CAN sometimes fix a problem. "Oops! I accidentally broke your thing! I'll buy you a new one."

No, it's NOT reasonable to say it covers anything and everything. "Oops! I killed your loved one! Surely, I get a slap on the wrist because of who I am or who my daddy is." shouldn't be a thing.

Notice the absence of even offering payment. Some rich people expect to get away with all kinds of stuff simply because they are rich and often without even trying to fix the problem with their money.

And some problems can't be fixed with money. Cash payment because I killed your husband doesn't bring the husband back from the dead.

Sexual assault should not be overlooked "because he has money."

Crimes casually, callously and cruelly harming poor people rooted in attitude that they don't really count and don't really have a voice or meaningful rights shouldn't be tolerated.

"Power hath its privileges" because people in power are exercising power for the benefit of a larger group and they are in an unusual situation and they are still only human.

They need to be able to get enough sleep.

They need to be able to eat adequately.

They need to be able to blow off steam so they are mentally and emotionally fit to serve a diplomatic role that can avert war for the nation.

Like with my PE teacher, sometimes when clueless "little people" "expect THE SAME" of their leaders as they would of anyone, that's an unrealistic expectation and excessive burden, and not because the person in question is unethical or lazy or corrupt.

Currently, society has very poor mechanisms for trying to determine what's reasonable to expect of a given person in a given situation and we try to hard to come up with some kind of universal standard that goes bad places, almost ALWAYS for poor people.

We hold poor people to "middle class expectations" they can't meet and then routinely act like rich people are exempt from ANY expectation of decorum at all.

Then act MYSTIFIED that things work so poorly.