The individual who disturbs my peace in the middle of the night by rummaging through the recycling bin outside our building has transformed into a complete nuisance.
He now neglects to close the lid, leaving it wide open and damaging the flowers on the railing behind it.
As if that wasn’t enough, he scatters the non-redeemable recyclables all over the ground, creating a mess and breaking the unspoken rule of cleanliness between local garbage collectors and the residents they depend on.
The impolite can collector is just one example of strange, petty anti-social behavior I have observed in the area.
The smell of marijuana fills the air at every turn.
A plant thief is on the loose in my Brooklyn neighborhood, where local businesses have shared photos of a woman stealing irises and geraniums from outside their stores.
Recently, my longtime barber, where I have been a loyal customer for years, asked me to leave in the middle of my haircut and return after an hour.
He mentioned that he had an errand to run.
“Do you want me to walk home with half a haircut and come back in an hour?” I inquired, completely puzzled.
“You can borrow a hat,” he replied.
Although he lost a loyal customer that day, I couldn’t comprehend how this type of behavior was deemed acceptable and why it appeared to be on the rise everywhere.
After all, my haircut only takes 20 minutes.
I began to question if I was becoming overly sensitive until one evening over drinks, a friend from Queens confirmed my observations.
“Everyone is becoming more rude and disrespectful lately,” he remarked, “waiters, delivery persons, even my dentist.”
His theory: the lockdown has affected our minds, and society is experiencing a form of long-COVID agoraphobia or psychopathy.
I wasn’t entirely convinced.
The decline in basic courtesy is evident across the country, not just in authoritarian Democrat strongholds like New York, where there is a higher concentration of individuals with anti-social tendencies still wearing masks, yearning for a return to stricter times.
Recently, graduates from Duke University walked out of a commencement speech by comedian Jerry Seinfeld, presumably due to his Jewish background.
Squatters from New York to California are now emboldened to claim other people’s homes as their own, and then have the homeowners arrested when they try to reclaim their property.
Recently, a mother gained attention on TikTok after sending another mother a $36 bill for a playdate.
The bill included $3 for Goldfish crackers, $1 for a pump of hand soap used by the other mother’s child, and $5 for electricity – because the kids played a video game.
More alarmingly, the lack of empathy has led to a rise in random acts of violence.
Although crimes like murder and rape have decreased in New York City, there is a new trend of individuals sucker-punching strangers on the street – mostly targeting women, but a few male celebrities have also been victims, such as 66-year-old actor Steve Buscemi just last week.
A similar incident occurred to actor Rick Moranis in 2020.
The widespread rudeness is a result of living under leadership that openly disrespects and deceives the people they are supposed to serve.
What does unchecked spending on foreign conflicts, stagnant wages, a focus on DEI, and the migrant crisis – with billions of dollars going to criminal aliens committing asylum fraud – signify if not a clear message to taxpayers that your well-being doesn’t matter.
Combined with bail reform, sprawling homeless encampments in our cities, and an uncontrolled fentanyl epidemic, the message is the same: if the government doesn’t prioritize its people and their basic needs, why should anyone else?
The most volatile and socially immature members of our society have taken notice, whether by littering the streets while searching for a few cents’ worth of aluminum or scowling under a man bun as they take your dinner order.
Even as Democratic leaders like Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul jet off to Europe for taxpayer-funded trips (disguised as cultural exchanges or climate summits or whatever), the NYPD is under pressure to reintroduce broken windows policing.
While not a panacea, it may send a message to criminals and troublemakers alike: being polite for once is not a crime – and you might even be happier if you do.
