Raw anger. American style.

I passed this in the parking lot on the way to the gym today:


Can you imagine being so out of your mind with anger that you do this to your car? My area of New Jersey is full of conservative, angry white people. They’re not adjusting well to the demographic shift of America. They look at Washington D.C. and they see a black man in the white house, a Latina on the Supreme Court and a woman running the House of Representatives. Their numbers are is slipping away, along with their power, and it scares the hell out of them. Their fears are stoked by people who make a LOT of money off of stoking the fears of panicky white people.

There is no room for open discussion in my country anymore. Where is this all going to end up? I saw the guy who owns this car. He is, of course, an old white man. Does he really believe the Democratic party is a communist front? He can’t be talked down off the window ledge he’s standing on. He’s too far gone. I’m afraid there are more just like him being minted every day.

Hey, Australia. Do you have room for a husband and wife with two adorable daughters? Canada? Anybody? (Not you, China.)

* * *

There’s an optometrist in Manhattan who, I shit you not, performs lasik eye correction surgery right in his front window. I was walking by and took these pics.


His intention is to prove to people how safe, quick and easy the surgery is. And he doesn’t just perform it in a store window on 25th Street. He allows people to come in and observe. The woman in the blue hair net is not a nurse. She walked in off the street to watch. The best part of this pic is the creepy eye in the monitor. Ick.


See? New York really is different than where you’re sitting right now.

23 thoughts on “Raw anger. American style.

  1. re: angry man. i like the ‘truth’ fish eating the ‘darwin’ fish. next time you see him? encourage him to jump, will ya?re: window surgery. i watched my mother have cataract surgery on a monitor outside the operating room. i was ok – very detached as if i were watching a medical show. then i heard the doctor ask ‘are you doing ok, mrs. s?’ when she said ‘oh, i’m fine’, i realized she was awake while her eyeball was being sliced open, and i about passed out…

  2. Must be (I predict) the lone voice of dissent and point out what is often forgotten: there was a black woman Secretary of State under Bush. Republicans didn’t have any problem with that.The Lasiks-in-the-Window is horribly disturbing!

  3. Just had to add–I’m angry but not as angry as that guy, but I’m still glad he has the right to drive around with all that craziness on his car and not get silenced. Hey, he may be a loon, but rah rah Democracy and he is living, driving proof of it!

  4. Daisy: I was wondering what the fish-thing was. Thanks for clearing that up. Leah: Hummm…you make a good point re: Rice. So what’s at the root of their burning hatred? I can’t understand it. And you make another good point. He could, quite literally, be thrown in prison for saying that in certain countries. So good on us. Perhaps I’ll stay after all.

  5. That car’s just messed up. Its beyond me how people get seriously so bothered about that kind of stuff that they make ridiculous, sweeping statements in public. Imagine that was your dad’s car. Maybe he’s trying to deter his daughters from asking for a lift everywhere. Plenty of room in Australia, there is just the slight issue of getting there at the moment (if you’re flying via Europe, anyway)

  6. I think part of the problem with many ‘mericans, especially the old white variety, is tied up in this.The degree of obstinacy and unwillingness to even consider anything that might be new or different or more evolved is something I, quite frankly, can not comprehend.Why don’t these people realize that the lifestyle they had/have is unsustainable? Why do they believe the “way things were/are” is fair, equitable and reflects a good and decent civilization/society?Certainly, in a democracy these people do have the right to dissent but, what is so tiresome about the tea baggers and their ilk is their willingness to play fast and loose with the truth and to spread misinformation like wildfire.Re: lasik – I always wanted lasik surgery but I was afraid to submit to it because, if it goes wrong, you might become blind. However, it turns out my corneas are too thin and I’m not a candidate anyway.I think there was a time when many a business practiced their craft in the front window. Mostly because the light (from the sun) was probably better.

  7. Nurse: That’s probably the best offer I’ll get all week. Month. Year?Jo: I’m so sorry for your volcanic disruption. If I had superpowers, I’d blow it out of the atmosphere an clear the ether for him.Ellie: You’re not kidding, sister. I hate *any* kind of conflict. Avoid it like the plague.Rob: I’m moderate with liberal leanings, but I’m willing to entertain all ideas. I think my friend Leah is just a tad conservative but we could certainly have an exchange of opinions over a frosty mug. More of us. Less of him, please. Interesting point about store-window business operations.

  8. Interestingly enough, just after reading your post and commenting, the next thing I saw was a repost of this piece by Frank Schaeffer.Excerpt:In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!

  9. As this tea bagger movement built steam, people around me would say it’s the same thing they did to Clinton; they think they’re paying too much in taxes; they’re sore losers; blah, blah,blah. I kept saying no. The problem is they hate him because he’s black, that is all there is to it. How do I know this? I was raised by these people. Almost all of the people I am related to, the people I grew up with and went to school with think this way, so I recognize it when I see it. I may not know a lot of things, but I know deep-seated, even hidden, racism when I see it.

  10. The next time you hear about this car it’ll be a story about how it’s been damaged by some frothing-at-the-mouth liberals, or Teabaggers pretending to be liberals, or liberals pretending to be Teabaggers, or communists pretending to be Americans, or angry blacks pretending to be white or, or, or… The wild-eyed whack-jobs are crawling out of the woodwork, aren’t they? All they needed was a little encouragement from Palin and Beck and Limbaugh, et al.

  11. I respectfully submit in answer to all the above, in addition to Condaleeza Rice:Colin Powellthere are plenty of smart, thoughtful, eccentric people out there who don’t support Obama, and are pissed off, who aren’t religious nuts or any kind of nut. I’m one of ’em.I would hate for someone to call me a racist just because I can’t stand Obama’s policies…

  12. I grant you that we don’t have storefront eye surgery here in Franklin, but, unfortunately, we do have our share of angry conservatives. As for the car, is that a hammer and sickle in a Chevrolet logo? I think this guy might be more angry at GM than Obama. Regardless, I won’t be inviting him over for cheese grits anytime soon.

  13. Ha. Please nigga, you ain’t got nothing to fear. Right now your youth leader isn’t singing songs about how you should kill certain minority groups. Currently researching Denmark’s immigration policy.

  14. Rob: Wow! That’s what I call casting a wide net.PG: I believe that guy is in the small minority. I would *hope* that most people could control their anger.Cat: And I had such high hopes when he was elected. Now, I’m not so sure we have.Leah: It would be preposterous to say that *everyone* who opposes the president is a racist. You can’t make a blanket statement like that. HOWEVER, there’s a difference between opposing a policy and raw hatred. And I believe a lot of the hate is because he’s black. I would also like to put forth that there’s a world of difference between having a black man serving in your cabinet and having a black man run the show from the White House. And, yes, I love these spirited debates, as well!HIF: That is, indeed, a hammer and sickle. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s there for comic effect.Sid: Denmark? I thought they were a peace-loving people? Oh. Wait. Hamlet was a bit of a hothead.

  15. As a NYC born,(Bronx) Jersey raised (Old Bridge) and exiled to Seattle life long Irish American Democrat, I say……I drive Fords…..I am not a commie (just a Lib Dem)I still miss Jersey, the homeland, land of Bruce SpringsteenBTW, these folk have ALWAYS been mad, they are mad when we WIN elections, they are MAD when THEY win elections (cause we don’t simply melt away) so let them keep misspelling their signs and with a little luck their anger will burn THEMSELVES outTom

  16. I can’t stand politics…. so I won’t debate anything about whose a good leader, regardless of skin colour. But we get folks like that up here too… in the land of the blandest national leader ever…I can, however, unequivocally, state that the Lasik procedure changed how I see the world! I had it done 2 1/2 years ago and it’s been great!However, if anyone had been outside the window at the time, I am quite certain *everyone* would have had a heart attack! It was the 22nd floor… 😉

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