"I chose to engage yesterday. "
"Customer comes in to have a mirror replaced and we start talking while I am flipping things around. A Saturday morning so I have time to goof around. I took her as a more 'wannabe' liberal than 'died in the wool', the conversation ranged from hybrid cars and clean diesel technology (that has all been shelved by the white house) to the new law in Arizona to the Cubs being such losers that they were able to lose an 'assumption of risk' case when a fan got beaned by a foul ball - losing a case in total defiance of hundreds of years of precedence and undermining a bedrock doctrine of law that now allows people to not be responsible for themselves (huge grin ... I love picking on Cubs fans - not the old ones, the new ones ...). On health care I told her 'News flash - you are going to die. Nobody knows when, but you might as well start getting ready now because you can spend all of your money and all of everyone's money on whatever anyone can dream up and that will NEVER change. Get used to the idea and make peace with your Maker'.
I cannot call her a confirmed liberal because she was willing to listen in between spewing the typical liberal mantras. She wants to buy a new hybrid. I told her it was fine unless she was doing it to be fashionably 'green' which hybrids are not - they are in fact equally if not more abusive of the environment than traditional gasoline powered cars and there are better 'green' options to consider. I told her to go on the INTERNET and check where nickle is mined in Canada and see what an environmental disaster it is and then to ponder how green hybrids might be if we do as the fashionable green crowd seems to want in their knee-jerk manner, to shift tens of millions of car drivers over to hybrid or electrics today and multiply that disaster ten or twenty or an hundred fold before she wanted to be so fashionable. Shift the disaster elsewhere when we need to generate power which is going to be predominantly coal fired since we can't build a new nuclear reactor because it is not fashionably green any more ... I told her to check out the clean (and VERY quiet) diesels or some of the other excellent high mileage cars. I asked if she was ready to consider a Carree closer to home that might not pay as well so she wouldn't have to be so reliant upon fossil fuels or do her shopping at the local store instead of driving to the mega outlets to save a few pennies (if that). Not a true tree hugger (or is this a true tree hugger), her convictions were only skin deep and she was not ready to go to any extra expense to be green, and she really did not want an 'econobox' and wanted something with much more 'luxury'.
Fine with me, just don't bust my chops for driving my cowboy Cadillac (suburban) because you are no greener (I drive less than 2 miles and often bike) and she needed to remember that her car is made from much of the byproducts of refining gasoline - her car is mostly plastic which not only uses the crude completely by finding additional uses for byproducts of refined oil, but also saves crude by making the car lighter and stronger and safer, and that hybrids were in many regards a step back from what we are making today ...
About half way thru it gets really interesting when I bring up the fact that I am a single issue voter, and it may surprise as to which it is - the Second Amendment. She asks which one that is (oddly, a question that gets over an 80% correct rate when asked of people on the street ... not only that, but the vast majority can quote one or both lines of it ... hmmm, is this a typical liberal?). I tell her 'keep and bear arms' and she grimaces to reflect an off the scale reaction but without giving her a chance to respond I explain that it doesn't really have anything to do with the guns but it has to do with character, and that I believe as did the Founding Fathers that the Citizens of the country are all Noble enough and have the character necessary that I don't have to give their gun ownership a second thought - it is quite a thought that they felt you were worthy of being considered of Noble birthright.
I tried to explain that the Constitution is a radical document because for the very first time in history it finds Nobility in EVERY Citizen and that she herself is assumed to be of Noble character on par with any aristocracy or emperor that exists or has ever existed, as is every other Citizen who manages to call this country their own.
Well she responds with "There is no character in this country any more."
Blink, blink, ...
Shocked, I managed to say that I felt sorry for her seeing her country that way because I feel that I am awash in a sea of extraordinary character and wouldn't have it any other way.
She asks why I am so paranoid that I need a gun strapped to my hip. I replied that I am not afraid. She says "Sure, because you have a gun."
I asked then why she didn't get one so she wasn't so afraid. She said they are only for killing people. I said, no, they are only a tool - it is up to your character as to whether it is used for good or evil. I set down my screw diver and said pretend this is a gun - if we watch it long enough will violence ever happen? Of course not - it is an inanimate object. It takes your character to animate it. It is the same for baseball bats, hockey sticks, hammers, knives, wrenches, axes, or any tool - they can do nothing without you. I for one, trust that you will not put any of these things to use in an evil manner, but should you choose to not behave so, I have a ready response if that becomes necessary. You see we are surrounded by evil and hiding from it or pretending it does not exist does not change that fact.
She asked what I felt when I saw someone with a gun on their hip. I said I feel 'simpatico ... my kinda people and that I would probably ask if that is a .45'.
I switched to the law in Arizona and she spouted off again, so I asked if she knew that it was nothing more than codification of a Federal law at a State level so that Arizona could do something about the costs it was incurring due to illegals and the violence that has been wrought upon them across that region. She slowed. I told her of some friends of mine that retired there - lifelong liberal anti-gunners here, they had their LEO son come and teach them how to use their new firearms ... I asked if she preferred to instead be a safe haven like some of the California cities that have chosen to act in total violation of that very same Federal law and aid and abet criminals just because they were illegals, and I asked why she thought it was that no one from the white house to the media would say any of this. She was quiet and asked for proof - I gave it to her.
I comment that the biggest problem I see is the extreme hatred and vitriol (am I even using that word correctly ...) that is conjured by the far left, and that it should be un allowable in our system and yet we have a media and a left that play with hatred as a political tool with abandon which I personally find despicable, irresponsible and intolerable.
Suddenly she brings up Rush Limbaugh and really gets herself going - apparently she hates him. I look up at her (still working on her car at this point) with what must have been a somewhat confused look on my face and ask; "If you hate him so much why don't you just change the station?" I add, that while I think much of my thinking falls to the right (far right), I don't think I have ever listened to him on the radio at all, and I really don't think that anyone needs his help me think thru these issues. Again, I think we all have the character to decide these things on our own, which she again 'poo-poo's'.
I tell her that I am most distressed to hear that she finds no character in this country and hope that sentiment is not widespread because I think it is the only thing standing between us and the abyss. She has no comment other than a look that says she may well feel we have been in the abyss for a long time already ... (I guess George did it ...)
Then I go on to say that the media and the democrats are chewing on the own leg when they are attacking the only grassroots movement that we have seen in 25 years - a very large portion of the tea party movement, something like 40%, is disgruntled democrats and by villainizing them they are casting them aside and painting them as liberal lunatics on the far right when they are in fact made up in substantial portion of people in their own base. Again, toying with hatred being used a s a political tool - it should be intolerable.
At the end of the hour long battle I was spent (the mirror was the wrong one so I had to do it all twice and will see here again Tuesday when the right one comes in ...), but I guess the thing that stuck with me most and that was the most shocking thing that I took away from it all, was that she sees no character. Is that widespread? Is that really the source of liberal views?
Might have been a total waste of time but I need to figure this whole mess out better. In the end I feel sorry for liberals. On a micro level this individual seemed afraid of but able to sweep her fears under the carpet for the moment and is ready to listen to anyone who says they can fix it for her. Are they really unable to find any character in anyone? Are they really afraid of the world around them, or is it some kind of transference - a fault or failing of their own that they can only see in the world outside of themselves? But if they are really afraid of the world around them and everyone in it, when they gain power then how can they possibly lead us to anything but the destruction of the world they fear and that we hold so dear?
God help us.
Whatever personality that can lead us out of this, they need to appear on the horizon today. I have been looking around and I just can't seem to see them, ...
I guess I just thought you guys here might find it all interesting. I find it disappointing."
I think "Bodyman" has this one nailed. Now if we could spread some of that "Character" in City Hall, wow !
Tom Ford
NO. 758
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