i actually had an interesting encounter myself last week at a taco-shop where i was quietly eating my lunch...facing the entire venue (quite large and clean by most taco-shop standards...this was a to-do conservative neighborhood after all).
anyway....across from me sits this rather swaggering, loud, stocky, baseball-hatted...tiny blue-mirrored sunglassed...obviously conservative macho
40-somethingish...i'll just call him baseball dad.
he sits facing me and answers his cell-phone and it seems someone (nephew son friend?) is asking him to go see faranheit 9/11 upon which he LOUDLY goes on
with his rant about moore being a slob and unamerican and i'll never go see that guy's trash....he hates america!!!! on and on> "everything that comes out of his fat mouth is trash....i've been studying him and he's worthless" etc....basically looking at me and me trying to ignore him...which was a task i failed miserably at...and
so i decide to reciprocate him with acknowledgment that
half of his performance IS directed towards me as much as it is to the person on the other end of the phone....thusly i return eye contact and sadly shake my head.
anyway, their conversation ends and he finishes his meal...and rather hastily gets up to go.
as he comes nearer to me to empty his trash i say to him
(not loud or aggressive)...
you know...you really should go see that movie.
he says: i'll never go see that piece of trash ever.
i say (not to waste any time)>
well...from what i can see it looks like you've been sitting there for 3 1/2 years watching 24/7 the most highly televised manipulation ever known to man so as to rob you your hard-earned taxpayer money so we can go bomb and attack a nation who has never attacked us.... and yet you can't give a guy 2 hours of your time to hear something different than what your tv is feeding you.
at this point his basic impulse was to reach into my booth and start pummeling me....which i could easily sense was the case.
he knew i knew this was an easy scenario to follow through with and yet i didn't move.
for me to get up would've suggested a definite desire to go there....which was not my intention.
he also knew by my remaining seated and looking at him directly as i spoke without yelling....i was basically inviting him to show me what he was made of intellectually.
to my surprise....he gave me a good solid look-over and decided he had nothing to say and u-turned and went out the far door.
i won't say i won that one
but i will say this loud man was not used to having someone clearly state in one good long sentence everything he needed to hear to his face by an absolute stranger.
mr. macho wasn't very loud after that.
that did kind of make my day to be reminded what mental midgets we're actually dealing with here in general.
what is nevertheless disconcerting is the fact that it is these exact sorts which remain at the helm of steering us towards ongoing disaster....given that opportunity.