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June 9, 2007American Summer, 2007 - Snapshot 2Last night I was relating this story to a friend, and she suggested that perhaps a/c temp was not the policy of the management but of that afternoon’s staff, as she’d shopped there earlier in the week and the air had felt quite comfortable. “I have an even better story for you though,” she said. “A couple months ago, I’m at [a multi-checkout line department store], standing on line behind a young girl - like 15 years old - and two men, one say in his 30’s and the other with grey hair. The girl is wearing a peace sign patch on the back of her jeans. The younger guy says, “young lady do you know what that is you’re wearing?” The girl looked around at him with no idea what he meant. “That so-called “peace” sign, do you know it’s an anti-Christian and communist symbol?” The girl finished her transaction and left quickly, still ignoring the men, but they continued to argue back and forth, the young Christian man carrying on about irreligious liberals and the socialist state, the older man telling him, ‘people like you are the reason everyone hates America!‘ Then they started on Bush, Iraq, Terrorism - I was afraid there would be a fight,” my friend said. “Finally the younger guy finished with his purchase, and he made a quick exit. The older guy - just fuming and so red in the face I was worried about his blood pressure - pays for his stuff and leaves and it’s finally my turn. The cashier and I looked at each other like, ‘good LORD, can you believe that?’ Then the middle-aged woman behind me piped up, ‘that peace patch probably came with the jeans, and the poor kid had no idea what was going on, but what I want to know is, why was the Christian guy looking at her ass to start with?’ “Everyone in the area cracked up, and we all started talking about how ridiculous some people are becoming. But until then, the tension - it wasn’t nice!” Another perfect little snapshot. Americans have become increasingly intolerant of each other and aggressive in their opinions, and their opinions are being marketed left and right, even down to the patches on the jeans…people are buying into ideologies that are all partly illusory, and they’re buying the accessories, too. They’re shopping and growling at each other…perhaps that’s the predictable end of any society that is moving away from the spiritual and more deeply into the material. It doesn’t seem like any of us are covering ourselves with glory, these days, does it? Well…maybe we’ll all do better when the strawberries come out! - another - apolitical - snapshot, from 2006. http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/06/09/american-summer-2007-snapshot-2/trackback/ 7 Responses to “American Summer, 2007 - Snapshot 2” |
June 9th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
[...] American Summer, 2007 - snapshot 2 [...]
June 9th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Maybe that is why so many of us go to the middle, we are trying to find a balance.
June 9th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Let’s Cool It…
Dont miss this from the irreplaceable, The Anchoress.
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June 9th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
If you have not read Generations you ought to. Straus and Howe predicted this sort of polarization more than a decade ago. Their theory is that there are four different types of generation that come in a cycle and that this cycle has been going on in this country for hundreds of years. The Baby Boomers are part of an evangelical cycle that tends to believe that they have the revealed truth and that anybody who disagrees is evil. Michael Barone’s comment on the matter was that the good news is that the liberal Baby Boomers are starting to die off but the bad news is that he won’t live to see the last of them gone. Barone, a Baby Boomer himself, was speaking tongue in cheek, by the way.
June 9th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I think manners are just not as common as they use to be.
We’re not becoming *less tolerant*, it’s just that folks are more willing to be rude.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:12 am
There are also a lot of teens and young adults who wear Che t-shirts without knowing who he really was. It’s just “the trend” for them. Most of them fell asleep in history class, or they never had any real history discussed for them.
I don’t know what they do if/when they find out that Che was actually a mass murderer with the usual excuse of “good intentions”.
(I actually don’t see the “peace symbol” as the foot of a dove, or an inverted, broken cross. It’s more like the footprint of the American Chicken, but heck, it’s in the eye of the beholder… or not?)
June 11th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
A decade or more ago, my elder brother commented that people were becoming ruder and ruder on call-in shows and on-line trolls because they could be anonymous. “They’re cowards. They’d never dare say that in real life,” he said.
I think the real-life rudeness is a similar kind of cowardice. People count on the relative safety and restraint of the people around them. They get self-gratification by saying an unkind thing to a complete stranger who is either too embarrassed or taken-aback to respond. They drop a verbal bomb into the innocuous chit-chat in a large mall or the cheap seats at the game because they don’t care if people shun them; they’ll probably never see those people again. And if someone does take offense, it’s fun. It gets the adrenaline pumping and even getting a reaction is bonus; they “win” because they triggered a reaction in other people.