- Jay Ashworth Ok... *now* I feel privileged.
- Anja Sonne My roommate who is Chinese Malaysian had a guy throw a bottle at him from his truck as my roommate walked on a sidewalk. What is going on with people?
- Alan Petrillo This is part of why one should walk on the side of the road facing traffic. That way you can see anything like that coming.
- Anja Sonne The sidewalk is only on the north side of the road -- but also many feet away. He didn't get hit, the man was yelling at him before he threw the bottle.
- Ann Morris Nobody is off their list. I've been bullied by right wing types all my life. I just didn't know that's who and what they are till I got away from the conservatives in North Florida.
- Susan Lewis Paciga I've had people ask me where I was from because of my "unusual coloring." My hair was a lot darker before I started coloring it; still, where I come from, dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin is really not that unusual. So, I tell them, "Pennsylvania."
I've also had a woman tell me that "Hitler should have finished the job." and another ask if my son was Jewish, tell me how her husband's boss was Jewish, how much he hated his boss, and then, with a big smile, gave me the "Hitler should have finished the job" bit. Speaking of jobs, I knew the woman who owned the business I was standing in and that she was supposed to be waiting on me for, and I could have gotten hers, but I was nicer than that.
And I agree, Alan, it has always been right leaning types that made these kind of comments, along with the assurances that I would burn in hell for not being Christian. - Anja Sonne I appreciate your Pa. comment. :)
- Robert Luis Rabello Maybe it's just people who drive Ford trucks? 😉
- Alan Petrillo LOL!
- Alan Petrillo Especially red ones. :-D
- Robert Luis Rabello My Ranger was red. My SporTrac is red, too!
- Alan Petrillo Long live Supertruck!
- Sally McLennan WTF America. So disgusting. We have a race relations office here. Any of what you described would have someone jailed, most likely or at least in the merd. Can't believe you have to deal with that. Or how much worse it must be for actual Arabs. 😓 If I lived with that my whole life I might begin to feel like an act of violence against the majority. Don't people understand they're creating what they fear?
- Alan Petrillo Nope, they don't.
- Jay Ashworth No, the people that are doing it aren't smart enough for that.
- Anja Sonne When I moved to America, the first thing everyone asked me is if I was a Nazi. The war ended 25 years before I was born. It is because of this that I am such a left leaning liberal. I never wanted to be like that. Then when they found out I wasn't American, told me to go home. This has been going on for almost 40 years.
- Dana A. Snowden Further proof of the "dumbing down of America" in the classrooms and churches. The powers-that-be have stirred up enough confusion and distrust among everyone that they have gleefully pushed the ignorant towards a "revolution," which is not what THEY believe it to be. SMH
- Em Orkwis I'm so sorry that hate filled people have done these things to you. You are a wonderful person.
- Thomas Trumpinski Alan, over the last century, the radical left has murdered over a hundred million people world-wide in their quest for Utopia.
While it might suck to be you, I cannot put your comfort (since no one has actually done you physical harm) over the likelihood of megadeaths.
Truth is, in America, there's *always* someone that hates other people for who they are--that's why diversity ultimately doesn't work. - Alan Petrillo And the radical right isn't any better. We've had this discussion.
- Thomas Trumpinski I know. I hold, however, that the Right's total is much lower. Besides, "the Soviets killed my European family" trumps about anything else.
The thing is, the Left says that diversity leads to vibrant cohesive societies that progress faster. The Right says that humans are both tribal and irredeemable--that they will, given the chance, treat The Other like crap.
Your personal experiences seem to indicate that the Right has the correct map of reality.
I would *love* for humanity to be perfectible, but every society that has tried ended up killing their own people in frustration. - Alan Petrillo I hope it can be different, but I suspect not.
- Alan Petrillo And, as I wrote in the piece, I don't trust the radical left either.
- Jay Ashworth And as I point out, nearly every time this comes up, in America at least, the percentage of the right you can reasonably term radical in objective measurement is a much larger percentage of the right than the percentage of the left that you can term radical is as a percentage of the left. Partly, this is probably because the center line has shifted to the right over the last three decades or more. Because of that, even if you put the fence in the same place on either side, in distance from The Edge, the spread is wider on the left.
- Alan Petrillo Still true.
- Alan Petrillo It's hard to believe I wrote this only 3 years ago. It feels like a lifetime.
Or so holds a friend of mine who, if I recall correctly, calls himself a libertarian.
Warning: There is 16 years worth of anger in this note, so if that’s a problem then look away now.
My friend holds that the radical right is more likely to save me, and it’s the radical left that will kill me.
Really?
What part of my experience with the Right would tend to indicate that they’re more likely to save me than kill me?
I’ve had a distrust of the right since high school, when it seemed all of the bullies were leaning to the right. Even more, their parents leaned to the right. But through the 1980’s and 1990’s the Right and the Left seemed to coexist in a kind of uneasy truce.
That all changed on the 11th of September, 2001. That was when the radical right, especially the Radical Religious Right, took their gloves off. That was where my previous distrust of the right grew into outright fear.
It wasn’t the radical left that had me hiding in my apartment with the blinds closed and my shotgun loaded. The problem is that apparently, to people on the Right, at least, I look like an Arab. At that’s where my current problem with the right, and the concept that “the right will save me” came from.
What part of my experience with the Right would tend to indicate that I can trust them to save me?
Perhaps it might be the two rednecks in the beat-up old F-150 in traffic yelling racial slurs at me and telling me to “go back where I came from”? Should that lead me to believe that the Right will save me?
Perhaps it might be the guy in the red F-250 Dualie, with a collection of right wing bumper stickers, who looked me in the eye as he ran me off the road? Fortunately, the Nissan Hard Body that I was driving at the time was a good bit more nimble than an F-250.
Maybe it’s the half legible, hand scrawled note left on my windshield reading “sand nigger go home”?
Maybe it’s another half legible, hand scrawled note telling me “Don’t come around here no more or I’ll kick your ass all the way back to Arabia”?
Perhaps it’s the email telling me “all Liberals should be shot”?
Maybe it’s the guys in the green F-250 with the right wing bumper sticker collection coal-rolling me on the interstate?
Maybe it’s another guy in another red F-250 Dualie, with a right wing bumper sticker collection surrounding a banner on his tailgate reading “Fuck you and your hybrid!”, coal-rolling me that should lead me to trust the right?
Maybe it’s the guys yelling racial slurs at me and flipping me off as I walked across 4th St.?
Maybe it’s the Facebook comment telling me I’ll “be one of the ones up against the wall when the revolution happens,” and “real Americans take back America from you Liberal pukes.”
There are far more incidents than just these few here. It was particularly bad in the couple of months following 9/11, which caused me to hide in my apartment when I didn’t absolutely have to be somewhere. It’s tapered off since then, but the bitterness lingers, and so does the distrust. I must admit the incidents have run together in my mind, largely because there were so many of them, and I don’t really want to remember them.
Aside from the incidents that have affected me personally, what else should lead me to trust that the far right will save me instead of kill me? Could it be the abortion clinic bombings? The statements to the effect that “If you aren’t a Christian then you should be shot”? Statements that liberals should be imprisoned, shot, deported, or otherwise purged?
All of this begs the question: Why would I trust the Far Right to save me when every indication is that, either for the way I look or because I’m a liberal, they want to kill me?
While I am a centrist liberal, I don’t trust the radical Left either, but thus far they’ve given me no reason to fear them. While I think they’re a lot less likely to kill me, I have, over the past 30 years, exactly twice, had lefties tell me I should be shot, or words to that effect, for the crime of being a capitalist. I don’t trust those fuckers, but I don’t fear them.
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