I live in a senior building, so we do have our share of old grumps. Anyway, I went downstairs to get my mail and these two guys started in about how I'm a revolutionary, I hate America, and why don't I leave.

Turns out, when I questioned them, that their opinion of me is not based on anything I did or said, but on what I didn't do or say. They feel I have not said anything good about this country. They admit that the things I said which were not particularly complimentary, like that we need election reform, are true, but seem to feel that if I'm going to say something like that I should recite the pledge of allegiance first and sing the stars spangled banner afterwards. Sheesh!

One of these guys is pro-corporate and a low level politician himself. The other claims to dislike Bushco. The problem, as I see it, is that Bushco is to them, as they are to me: privileged punks who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. I'm just going to have to be more careful about what time I check my mail, and avoid getting drawn into conversations.

You just hate their freedoms folkie!

Aren't sheeple funny?

What I don't understand,
is where do they get the idea that somehow they have special privelage?
Why do they think they have the right to hassle you for your views?

Why do these people who call them self patriotic, deny the basic freedoms in the constitution?

They get the idea that they have special privileges because they've always had special privileges. Their "conversations" are mostly limited to lies, baiting/bullying, and juvenile/bigoted "humor." That seems to be all they know how to do: lie, bait, bully, and make fun of others.

This is a HUD Section 8 building, and neither of them really needs to live here. People qualify by being over 62 and having an income no higher than any astute businesscritter or spoiled heir from a good (but not super-rich) family, can easily attain by stashing some of their liquid assets offshore, putting other assets in trusts or in someone else's name, and not mentioning any valuables that they have in safe deposit boxes. They live here so that they can gloat about depriving truly needy and deserving people of subsidized housing.

Because they can. Because they always have. Because it makes them feel superior. And because they hate that America might grant freedoms to anyone except them.

There are a lot of guys my age and older who believe they are superior because they never had to compete with females and minorities. Equal opportunity laws didn't exist back in the day, and many white males, particularly veterans, whether or not they'd seen combat or had families, were coddled in school and had all the high-paying jobs and professions almost completely to themselves. You couldn't flunk or fire them because the government was paying their tuition and they might someday have a family to support. So they just accomplished anything they tried to do, and they thought it was due to their own superiority, rather than due to the fact that they'd had the world handed to them on a platter and were always given preferential treatment.

An illiterate Afghan once told me, "I'm poor, but everybody in my country is poor, so it's okay. But you're an American and you're poor, while all the other Americans I've seen are rich. It must be terrible being poor in a rich country." The fact is that I was homeless much of my life and spent many years living on the streets of cities like New York and San Francisco, and many years living in less-developed countries like Afghanistan and Honduras. If I could afford to leave here, and if there was any country that would take an older person with no money and few job skills, I'd go. I'm not afraid of starting all over in a strange place with a strange language, with no family or friends, and only the second-hand clothes on my back. That's what I've always done. There wasn't any other way to survive without turning to crime.

That I'm still around is attributable more to luck than to any worthiness on my part. And perhaps in small part to a natural aversion to people like them.

What I hate Folkie, is the fact that there are so many bulllshit laws on the books, I can be taken to jail at anytime for almost any reason.

Like right now, I am not married, but I live with a woman, which is illegal in my state. They do not inforce it really, but if they wanted to I could get up to 15 years in prison for it.

And they hate us for our Freedoms? What freedoms?

To my way of thinking it isn't so much the laws, but the manner in which they are selectively enforced. You know, it is illegal for both rich and poor to sleep under a bridge, but if a rich dude happens to do it, he is given polite advice to move along, while a homeless person gets hauled off to jail.

Geez. You can go to jail for being homeless. You can go to jail for living with someone you're not married to. And if you own your own home and live alone, they can use eminent domain to give your house to a big developer, and then bust you for being homeless. Ain't America great?

Seriously though, I truly appreciate having luxuries I didn't enjoy for most of my life. I like my computer, refrigerator, stove, bathtub with shower nozzle and hot and cold running water, etc. But I'd happily trade it all for a dirt floor shack, a diet of rice, beans, and tortillas, with meat once or twice a month, and having to boil my drinking water using dried cow turds for fuel in a clay stove, etc., as I've done in the past, for the opportunity to live in a non-fascist country. As much as I hate malarial mosquitoes and blood-sucking chinche bugs, I hate blood-sucking fascists more.

Is there a law against being smart ?

Technically no.

But by the way they encourage stupidity,
being smart is banned by default!

Heh heh. I used to have a sig line that said: "The most discriminated against people in the world are the intellectuals."

Examples of this:

Stupid people don't get told they're overqualified.

Employers don't reject stupid applicants for fear they'll take their jobs.

Many employers prefer stupid people because they're less likely to be whistle-blowers.

The best way to "go along to get along" is to pretend to be stupid.

I've never heard of a revolution where all the stupid people were lined up and shot.

Look who's preznint.