Not a Karen

Yeah, I'm not calling them Karens anymore. I know too many decent people named Karen to lump them all together like that, even (gasp!) a Republican or two. The same goes for the term Republican, honestly; just because the GOP as a party has gone off the rails entirely doesn't mean individual people who still identify as Republicans are awful humans.

So, yeah, I'm using the TV Tropes phrase for it - Obnoxious Entitled Housewife - even though housewives are not all like this either. The keyword here is entitled, with the qualifier obnoxious. I do encounter a lot of people who - according to their online profiles and behavior - are very definitely this.

You may have met them - the parents who are totally privileged, who have the money, and who are just too cheap to pay for the private education they’re always touting as so much better than what they have. These are the same people who try to suggest they know more than the people who do this for a living, whose apparent need for the (public) school to do it their way without ponying up any actual workable suggestions, who think that their child's 3rd-grade education is more important than the teachers' life and health (but not enough, apparently, to do anything about it; they just complain), and especially those who belatedly try to frame it as concern for the “less fortunate”.

That would be my kids, the less fortunate ones, who don't live in a McMansion, have a stay-at-home parent (or two parents, for that matter) and enough income to support that, as well as assorted neurodiversity issues that make distance schooling a really, really bad fit.

You may also have met them outside the school system. The people who think that they don't need to mask up or follow the rules because they're basically healthy, who will call names and sometimes actually threaten people because mask-wearers are sheep, and who will begrudgingly wear them when required and dramatically pull them off the instant they are outside. The ones who stalk the vaccination openings instead of waiting for their turns, but would be completely defensive at the mere suggestion that this is unfair. The ones who refuse to wear the mask over their nose until someone reminds them and then huffily pulls it up while rolling their eyes hard enough to sprain them. They may or may not believe that 45 is a good Christian who was unfairly abused by his country.

Common phrases:

• "I want to speak to the manager."
• "What do I even pay taxes for?"
• "I pay your salary."
• "The customer is always right."
• "I'm not X-ist; I have an X friend."
• "If you would just do it my way..."

They ask questions like: "Why can't we open schools, like the next district south of us? I wish they'd tell us why we're being punished!"

• You are not being punished, you self-important twonk.
• The next district south of us is only in a single county. We are in two.
• The district south of that one is suing their teachers for being unwilling to teach in person before vaccination. Because teachers' lives are evidently less important than Little Jonny having an in-person expert to teach him his ABCs.
• The northernmost of the two counties in our district has a new case of the extra-contagious UK strain of the virus, as well as a Proud Boy-supporting sheriff who won't enforce any of the rules, so guess what? MOAR VIRUS.

These people are so tiresome. Passive-aggressive, tiresome, entitled, obnoxious bullies.

Just stop it. My God, don't you have anything better to do than to complain?