Another kind of ‘flu’ season is underway

After a pretty mild last few years, flu season is back with a particularly nasty strain that has folks packed into local ERs and doctors’ offices, where polite society is forced to mingle with the riffraff like common sardines among the catches of the day.

I just read that seven people have died from the flu so far this year in California, and up to 30 deaths are being investigated to see whether this new version is to blame. I’m not so sure the flu I’ve got is actually fatal, but I do find myself still reeling from the effects, not quite my usual self but still better than most at half strength.

Certainly it must be the flu doing this; how dare anyone think anything different? This is an illness that can be tough on the very young and the very old, both of whom have compromised immune systems and not much else to offer the world. What is the flu if not a thinning of the herd; Darwinism at its finest?

I spent the better part of this week doubled over, and frankly, I’m offended. A man of my stature in the community, with my station in life, well, the flu happens on my terms, not the other way around.

It reminds of the sickness gripping young Justin Bieber. He’s earned his place in the world, commands our respect and deserves treatment befitting what he’s accomplished. That the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department just wasted taxpayer time and resources recently searching his humble mansion for evidence of eggs — the throwing kind — is symptomatic of the way people dismiss people like us, and that is a disease unto itself.

Apparently Master Bieber did $20,000 worth of damage to his neighbor’s mansion in an epic egging episode last week. But what should that neighbor expect? The Biebs moved into his neighborhood, and for said neighbor not to be more welcoming is just rude.

Privilege is earned, and we totes agree with fellow Belieber and Calabasas neighbor Kylie Jenner, who tweeted her sage 16-year-old critique on crime, public safety and how the man just doesn’t understand Justin Bieber and the protected class of the wealthy.

Young Kylie, part of that whole Jenner-Kardashian royal lineage, also suffers from the flu, and your understanding of her condition is not only appreciated, it’s expected. Anything less is simply jealousy and sour grapes.

This virulent strain of the flu has been known for quite some time, defined as an anti-consumerism movement in Britain and Australia. Yet everything gets bigger and better in America, and especially in Texas, where in December the definition took a different turn when a defense attorney decided it should apply to the delusion afforded individuals of privilege. That one such individual was a wealthy 16-year-old drunken driver who killed four pedestrians and paid for it with no jail time and a year’s worth of therapy.

His defense team invoked a diseased line of thought based around an outbreak of the flu that did more to sicken the whole country than it did to describe the illness affecting a young man who really seemed to show little remorse in court for what he had done.

Has my recent bout with the flu made me more sympathetic to the young Texan’s troubles? That’s irrelevant, really. He doesn’t need your approval; none of the stricken needs your approval. In our minds, we’ve earned it by our existence. That’s the warm, nurturing, delusional bubble of trust funds, old money and being born into the jackpot of unearned riches.

It’s difficult, this illness we’ve been afflicted with. Who needs empathy when you’ve been raised to want nothing, expect everything and have no perspective? And now, early this week, a Los Angeles area Democrat — a party that hates an unapologetic rich man if there ever was one — introduced a bill that would call foul on any attorney in the state who calls flu.

Interesting. Oh well, I’m sure no one reading this column even understands what I’m referring to. Socioeconomics in this cow town usually translate to less education and far less worldly thinking, so I guess I have to spell it out. I’m talking about affluenza, something for which there is no vaccine. But most of you wouldn’t get that; you’re beneath those concerns.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Jan. 17, 2014.