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If one more person says:
If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Well congratulations Mr. or Mrs. Perfect. So glad to know you never hurt anyone’s feelings, never took the wrong job, majored in the wrong discipline in college, married the wrong guy, bought the wrong gift, or failed to pay a bill on time. The rest of us wish we could have some do-overs on a whole pack of things in the hopes that with fore-knowledge we would be kinder, smarter, gentler, and a whole lot better person than we WERE.
Take heart, things could be worse.
Yes, they could be. I could be dead. Isn’t that the only real response to such a thoughtless and meaningless phrase. Meanwhile by saying it you feel “sympathetic” while at the same time you have wasted not one precious second of your miserable life truly empathizing with another human being. Congratulations, things could be worse buddy.
If only we could return to the good old days.
Yes, I guess that would be great, especially if you lost everything in the crash of 29, or you were a Jew in Warsaw during WWII, or a grunt in a rice paddy in Vietnam, or had an office in the WTC on 9/11, or were a black person living in Montgomery in the late 50’s, or a woman wanting to be a doctor in the 1940’s. Let me remind you of the good old days of polio, and living in London during the Blitz, and going to back alley abortionists because you felt you had no other option. Let’s get back to life in the Gulags in Russia and by all means remember the slave trade and all those lovely ships that free of charge brought blacks on vacation to America! Get your damn head out of your ass.
I would rather dig ditches for a living than ask for welfare!
The point is you have never been in that position. You were born, most likely male and white in a land that holds neither your gender nor color as an obstacle to be overcome. Your parents might have been poor, but that was when bread cost a nickel and everybody in the whole neighborhood was poor, and nobody knew they were. You have never been systematically denied anything simply because you don’t fit some model of what such a person should look like. You grew up in a world where unions kept wages high and benefits became a right, not a luxury. You grew up where sweat shops were regulated, and kids didn’t work twelve-hour days. You had a real floor under your feet, and a real roof. Shaddup. What you really mean is that you have yours now, and don’t want to pay to help anyone else who is caught in this economic hell we now exist in. You are between the ages of 35-65 white and male and YOU feel discriminated against. Yeah, you sure are.
If you live in America, speak English, ditch the head-gear, and act American.
You point out in perfect detail just how lousy our free education has become in this country. Did you learn nothing in history at all? We are a nation of immigrants and each has brought their ethnic life with them. Many cities have ethnic days throughout the summer and celebrate Polish Days, and Armenian Days, and Irish Days, and Italian Days. These were fine with you. And guess what? Those folks actually eat ethnic meals and continue a whole plethora of ethnic morays in their lives here. They actually sometimes live in enclaves where most of them are from the same country. But you now get stinkin’ crazy when Arabs and Latinos want to do the same regarding their native lands. Could it be that something else is at work here buddy? Like your ready to bursting racism? See the paragraph above for further elucidation.
America: Love it or Leave it.
Been there, done that. We went through all this during the Vietnam War era. It was somehow unpatriotic to object to the war as being–get this–IMMORAL. All this stupid phrase really means as far as you are concerned, is that you have some corner on what America is supposed to be, and want anyone who disagrees to shut up and disappear. So you call them unpatriotic. You have defined most Democrats as such, and certainly all liberals and progressives. “Libtards” you call them. Calling people Commies because they don’t agree with your personal desires of how life should be led in America simply reflects your lack of knowledge. How do you think the Revolution got started? I guess the English would have called them “libtards”–Adams and Franklin and those guys. Wise up stupid.
When you get to be my age you’ll agree with me.
That’s about half right and half wrong. If you mean that I will become protective of what I have and not want to share. . .then not so much. If you mean, I will have learned from my mistakes, and see the world in a broader focus, and realize that we are all in this together. . .then that’s probably true. People do not all become conservatives as they grow older, sometimes they become smarter liberals. If your principles are real, then they don’t change, they simple become better articulated.
HAVE A WONDERFUL AND SAFE NEW YEAR’S EVE AND DAY!!!!
Existential Ennui 