Patchen Mortimer

Yesterday I took my two 4-year-old daughters to our local public pool—a nice, fairly new facility. They don’t have “Family Change Rooms”, they have “Universal” ones, but whatever - what’s in a name, right? There are about 14 individual private stalls, designed for parents with young kids (especially mixed-gender siblings), or people needing extra space or assistance, or anyone that needs extra privacy. We arrived to find every stall occupied except one. As my toddlers and I approached it, a sixty-something golden girl elbowed right past us, dropped her shoes on the bench inside, turned to me without a hint of apology: “I’ll be right back—my shoes are holding this spot.” As we waited we watched six or seven other stall doors open, in each one a boomer (men and women alike) lounging single-occupancy, leisurely packing bags, blow-drying hair, gabbing loudly across the corridor like it was a coffee shop social hour. No rush. No awareness of the growing line of actual families and one wheelchair waiting. This is a perfext snapshot of why we are where we are as a country. A vocal cohort—often the same demographic that polls show still reliably backs the Liberals by wide margins, even as GDP per capita flatlines and housing/affordability crush younger generations—cheerleading “progressive” redesigns and policies while quietly hogging the practical benefits for themselves, leaving everyone else (especially those coming up behind) to queue, adapt, or go without. No shame. No urgency to yield. Just a casual assumption that the system should bend around their convenience, forever.

Yesterday I took my two 4-year-old daughters to our local public pool—a nice, fairly new facility. They don’t have “Family Change Rooms”, they have “Universal” ones, but whatever - what’s in a name, right? There are about 14 individual private stalls, designed for parents with young kids (especially mixed-gender siblings), or people needing extra space or assistance, or anyone that needs extra privacy. We arrived to find every stall occupied except one. As my toddlers and I approached it, a sixty-something golden girl elbowed right past us, dropped her shoes on the bench inside, turned to me without a hint of apology: “I’ll be right back—my shoes are holding this spot.” As we waited we watched six or seven other stall doors open, in each one a boomer (men and women alike) lounging single-occupancy, leisurely packing bags, blow-drying hair, gabbing loudly across the corridor like it was a coffee shop social hour. No rush. No awareness of the growing line of actual families and one wheelchair waiting. This is a perfext snapshot of why we are where we are as a country. A vocal cohort—often the same demographic that polls show still reliably backs the Liberals by wide margins, even as GDP per capita flatlines and housing/affordability crush younger generations—cheerleading “progressive” redesigns and policies while quietly hogging the practical benefits for themselves, leaving everyone else (especially those coming up behind) to queue, adapt, or go without. No shame. No urgency to yield. Just a casual assumption that the system should bend around their convenience, forever.

“We will go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost effective.” - Kurt Vonnegut

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