Anger Management, the most recent Adam Sandler tour de force, is out on DVD now, and there’s a scene in it that says a lot about how our society works these days.

I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that the main plot of the movie revolves around Sandler’s character being ordered by a court to undergo anger management therapy. This court order arises out of an incident on an airplane, after a stewardess has been pointedly ignoring Sandler’s request for some time:

The idiocy of race, airlines, and cops, all wrapped up in one little scene.

Now, of course, this movie is an absurdist farce, Sandler is a clown, and the scene is a joke. But the fact that it works at all as a joke — the audience is left laughing in recognition, rather than scratching their heads — is kind of disturbing.

People complain about erosion of 4th-Amendment rights and other major civil-liberties issues; but the biggest loss of civil liberty — because it affects nearly everyone, nearly all of the time — in recent times seems to be the assumption generally-held by people in positions of petty power, that everyone else is hostile, all the time.