This is not just a story about a very large woman suing Lyft for a ridiculous reason, it's an illustration of how a lack of self-control, personal responsibility, and moderation over a period of years inevitably spirals
And how the consequences of that dearth of discipline are always much harder to correct in the long run.
This is Detroit-based rapper Danke Demoss. Not a fan of rap myself, I hadn't heard of her. But today she's all over social media after a Lyft driver refused her a ride because of her size.
This woman just filed a lawsuit against Lyft after a driver refused her ride because she couldn’t fit in the car pic.twitter.com/JnrV33expd
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 28, 2025
According to The Daily Mail, Demoss, 36, weighs 489 pounds. She ordered a ride from Lyft and a sedan showed up.
As a woman who has struggled with weight all her life, I'm telling you: Demoss was not fitting safely in the back of that car. There is no way she would have been able to fasten the seatbelt. It became an issue of safety. While Lyft, as a company policy, does not require passengers to wear seatbelts, the state of Michigan does. In fact, every state but New Hampshire has some form of seatbelt law.
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It seems Lyft is eager to virtue signal rather than defending its driver, who was complying with the law in whatever state this event took place.
But I don't want to really talk about Demoss or weight loss, but the symbolism of this all: here we have a woman who -- through a variety of circumstances -- is so large she cannot fit into a normal car.
Rather than accepting responsibility for the choices that led her to this place (whether it's how she was raised or the 'body positivity movement' or whatever) and doing something to lose weight, she's suing the company whose employee was unable to accommodate her size.
It's someone else's fault.
If there's a better metaphor for the current state of things in America, I'm hard pressed to think of it right now.
As my colleague Eric noted here, America is $36 trillion in debt and that number goes up by another $1 trillion every three months or so. Donald Trump has ordered, effective at 5 pm Easter today, a freeze on all federal grants and loans. According to Kiplinger:
Retirees can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now. While the White House budget office has ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans effective at 5:00 p.m. today, it took Social Security and Medicare off the list. That should be welcome news to the 51 million people who collect a monthly Social Security check or the more than 67 million Americans on Medicare.
Of the close to $10 trillion spent by the Federal government, over 30%, or $3 trillion, went to Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans, according to a memorandum from Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” wrote Vaeth.
The reality is: we are broke. There is too much debt, too much spending, and not enough revenue. No matter how often Democrats scream about taxing billionaires. According to Google, the richest people in America have a combined net worth of just north of $2 trillion.
In other words, we could confiscate every dime of their wealth and it would cover just the growth of our debt for less than a year.
The math doesn't work.
In the same vein, for years -- both long before and during the Biden administration -- we allowed near unfettered illegal immigration and had open borders. Now that Trump is in office and deportations of criminal illegal aliens has begun, the Left are wailing about how cruel it is.
They did similar things with 'criminal justice' reform. By releasing violent criminals in the name of 'equity' and 'restorative justice', we have created a culture where bad actors are bad actors because they know it's unlikely they'll face real consequences for their actions. It's why rioters destroy and vandalize and no one in authority bats an eye. Even normies often shrug it off as 'just how things are.'
None of this is sustainable long term, and none of these things happened overnight. Not Demoss' weight gain, not our dire fiscal issues, not our lacking public will to enforce laws. But now all of these things have spiraled out of control and getting them back on track will require more effort than if we had stayed on track in the first place.
It will be much harder for Demoss to lose weight now than it would have been five or ten years ago. Suing Lyft may get her money, but only diet and exercise will address the myriad health issues brought on by obesity (even if she's not feeling those issues now).
It will require tough budget cuts and austere spending to correct our budget shortfalls, and programs that have always just existed will go away. The government trough will be closed, and it should be. But some things will have to go away for that to happen.
It will require spines to enforce our laws to their fullest extent -- immigration and otherwise. People will sometimes be shocked by the measures that need to be taken, and saddened to see people actually face consequences for the crimes they commit.
In short, this will probably hurt.
It didn't have to, but here we are.
And suing Lyft won't fix the situation.
