Opposite ends of the spectrum

I was trolling through one of my favorite forums when I came across a thread ranting about stupid 911 calls and the people who make them.

Amidst all the anecdotes and folklore, there were two comments that struck me.

One, that people call 911 because they've been so indoctrinated into the nanny state mentality that they literally have abdicated all responsibility in their lives to the .gov and since 911 is the .gov dial-a-prayer line, they can't help themselves from dialing it.

The other is that people are so egotistical and self-centered that anything that happens to them is, obviously, an emergency and needs immediate and overwhelming response by the only ones.

Interesting, no?

On the one end we have the people about whom the world revolves, maybe the universe, but we haven't heard from a couple of galaxies in the pegasus direction, so we can't say that yet. And on the other end we have people who are perfectly happy orbiting around whatever shiny thing they happen to see that morning.

You'd think that would be a match made in the DNC, or whatever place serves as heaven for that sort.

I'm not going to go on about the utter waste of the limited resources these ijits are causing with their misuse of 911. That's fairly obvious.

I'm going to give you an example of each just to give you an idea.

A second Florida man has been arrested on charges of making false 911 calls in as many days.

An arrest report says 47-year-old Carlos Gutierrez was at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino early Monday and called 911 to say the slot machine stole his money.

The report says Gutierrez left the casino to place a second 911 call to say the same thing.

He was arrested and charged with making a false 911 call. He's being held with no bail set.

And the other.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Jacksonville police say Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren't arriving fast enough.

Subway workers told police Peterson became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store after he left to call police.

When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.

WTF, over! How do people like these two make it out of the house in the morning. Rily.

I haven't been able to confirm it, but the second example is apparently on the news defending himself. Which I guess is the other option. The more logical one would be to hide in shame. But, there's no accounting for choice.

I have to give kudos to LEO's and Firefighters everywhere. They don't have a choice, they have to respond to every 911 call they get. That means that the odds are Johnny Law or Freddy Firefighter will be seeing to sandwich condiments or providing flashlights to people out smoking a cig, rather than, you know, investigating the home invasion of your grandma, or saving the guy who got run off the road by the soccermom-on-a-phone.

The mentalities of these two examples have one thing in common unfortunately. They both seek to rely on outside sources. One for blame, the other for vindication. Opposite ends of the spectrum converging on one source.

On second thought, not so much a match made in heaven. More of an all mighty clash waiting to happen. Unfortunately, our first responders will most likely get crushed in between.

And no, I'm not advocating making another law. It's already illegal to make a false emergency call and that's not the problem.

Both these groups, seemingly, can not comprehend that what they're doing is wrong. There is such a disconnect with reality that they really shouldn't be left to walk among real people.

I carry for my own protection. More and more of my friends do the same for the same reason. It's rooted in a belief of self-reliance and self-responsibility. It's almost impossible for me to understand either of these two people, but they exist, therefore, I have to believe that their internal logic supports this behavior.

The question I have is where did they learn this behavior?

How can one group feel at all comfortable having no control over their life and the other not be utterly frustrated over the same situation.

Was this some sort of social experiment that a .edu did that got out of the lab?

Fortunately, I believe that those who believe in self-reliance and responsiblity stand a better chance of survival in the long run. Let's just hope that there's a little civilization left by then.