Soaking up the culture

     I went out today to get one of the tires on the car repaired.  It was losing air and I have pumped it up several times.  I dropped in at a tire shop on the way to the mall hoping that they could quickly find the cause of my air leak and get it repaired.  It was quite an odyssey.

     It took over an hour for the people in the place to get the job done, there was a pickup truck ahead of me and a couple of other clients waiting.  I was treated to their opinions on just about everything that you could imagine.  It seems that the "Negroes" are taking over McKee's Rocks.  One of the reporters present has a friend who is afraid to go out of her house because they are always present.  This led to a long discussion about welfare and how all of these people are getting for free what we are all paying for.  That somewhat surprised me because it seems to me that welfare is being more curtailed than expanded and that the sentiment of the general public seems to be against providing much of anything for the poor.  I kept my mouth shut and didn't contribute to this discussion at all.

     Another topic became the trillions of dollars that we owe to China.  This was properly lamented and China was blamed for their causing our economy much distress.  I suggested that the two wars that we insist on continuing are a great part of the "trillions'' that we are in debt, but this was summarily dismissed as not particularly important.  I suggested that we love war and that we will never be free of fighting.   The cost of this will be borne by all of us for the foreseeable future.  There was little agreement about this, and I think I was foolish to think that I was making any kind of an impact at all.

     I came home a bit shaken by all of this.  Sitting confined in a dirty shop listening to all of this nonsense was more than I have in mind for a morning.  Shame on me for not more forcibly making my points, but I just didn't have the energy.  Eventually my tire was fixed and I left the place.  I suspect that I was the subject of the next conversation.