Ever notice the one kid at the birthday party who plays by the rules? He’ll stand in line for his turn to swing at the piñata while some other kid cuts in, grabs the stick from the still-blindfolded player and starts whacking wildly. He will accept whatever party favor he is given and not try to trade up. He will take whatever piece of cake is offered rather than demand a big corner piece with extra frosting.

There was a time when that kid was seen as a strong character, a person of virtue, a model of restraint and discipline. Following the rules used to be something that the best people did. It made you a better human being. It was a display of character. It was a mark of class regardless of social class.

In the modern world, that rule-follower is seen as a sucker.

So many examples. Let’s go.

Kalalau, Kauai’s beautiful wild valley, is now the place for rule breakers to live without limits. Pity the Department of Land and Natural Resources having to try to control that shameful mess. The photos the state released documenting the garbage in there are infuriating for those who apply for camping permits, keep an eye on weather reports to make sure they’re not hiking into harm’s way and pack out what they pack in. Of course the DLNR needs funding for more enforcement officers. Of course the funding will come from those of us who work our jobs and pay our taxes and obey the rules of society like chumps rather than escape into a lawless Eden with mossy queen-sized mattresses and satellite phones.

In Oahu’s urban jungle, the homeless have taken over. When night falls and downtown businesses turn off the lights, there is a mass movement of people and shopping carts as each stakes out his or her favorite spot for the night. At beach parks and underpasses, they don’t even bother to move during the day. If they are shooed away by law enforcement, they come back. There is never a sense of homeless people, as a group, using that kind of stubbornness and tenacity to pull themselves out of homelessness.

On the other end of the economic spectrum, Hawaii is seeing an outbreak of oversized houses being built right to the edge of the property line so that each bedroom can be rented separately as unpermitted vacation rentals.

And then there’s our president. He is so sure, and so proud in that certainty, that rules don’t apply to him. Many of his supporters seem to relish that, as if, by extension, rules also no longer apply to them.

There are infinite examples in between — the guy who drives on the shoulder to bypass a line of waiting cars, the lady who parks in someone’s driveway because she can’t find street parking, the people who steal fruit or flowers or worse from other people’s yards. …

And isn’t it always the case that when one of these for whom rules do not apply comes up against a fellow rule breaker who is even more flagrant, they’re the ones who cry the loudest about how someone cut the line and stole their piñata stick.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.