B E B E R E

Food for Thought:

A couple of trivial things sort of got my goat the past couple weeks.

Up where we visit in Maine, it's started to gentrify, and seems a bit in some places like NYC or Boston. You get a lot of people up theah who drive the Volvo station wagons, the Subaru Forresters, and now the Priuses.
Based on these car choices, you can pretty much deduce that their owners are 'liberal' in the "move on" sense of the term. I am so tired of listening to wealthy east coasters spewing Communist propaganda. For one thing, clearly someone does not understand that the minute you start blaming one group (this time around, the 'evil corporate capitalists') for all the world's ills, and start talking of how their elimination will make the world better, you are headed down the path of evil. I'm sorry, even the folks who want 'the best' for everyone are now in the company of thugs.

Secondly, I'm listening to people who I'm pretty certain did not get to afford the beautiful sylvan retreats, sailboats and nice, foreign cars from giving their fortunes away to the Greater Good of Mankind. These same people who holler about 'tax cuts for everyone' making them sick tend to be rather conspicuously silent on things like the repeal of inheritance taxes, for example.

The other thing that sort of annoyed me, and I'm sure that it's just me here, was a reference to how difficult it is for the typical female growing up in America. I guess that that's true - it's not easy being a girl, or black, or anything obviously different from whatever people are saying is deviant from the 'norm,' or 'acceptable.' For me, it was not so easy being of above average intelligence in the public schools back home. Combine that with my being a girl, my lack of athletic prowess, ethnic background, the use of red ink to correct my homework - you've all the makings of a very picked-on and unhappy girl. The nice thing was that I grew out of it. Stuff ain't perfect here, but it is within my ability to make life better for me. (Actually wrote a bit about the experience of being me here a little while back.) For laughs, what do you say we contrast this with growing up female in, say, Iran. Or Saudi Arabia, maybe.