I'll never forget the look in their eyes, they were terrified of me...

[IrishAyes]

133. Excellent points, all.

Terrible but true. You want to talk scared? There's not a black or even hispanic person in this flyspeck MidWestern town where I retired, but most of the people are xenophobic as geese and some are actually afraid of ME - a nearly harmless little old lady, pale as cauliflower, because I descended upon them w/o warning or permission and I'm a damnYankee from the dreaded North East, and I've been seen wearing Barack Obama teeshirts!

Although I consider myself a mere socialist, to them that reads downright Stalinesque (I actually liked Trotsky better, although I'm not about to tell them that). Well, I have to admit that most people here couldn't correctly name a real Red even from history because the only word they know is commie. Maybe one or two would recognize Putin at most. No kidding, one guy cornered me with a harangue about world affairs but declared modestly that his girlfriend was the true intellectual of the two because - drum roll, please - she almost made it through the 11th grade!

In short, so many people trapped (although they don't know it) in isolated enclaves anywhere live in stark raving terror that the 'others' are massing for an all-out assault on them. If it sounds crazy to you and me, that's because it IS crazy. I shudder to think what it must be like to live their lives, but I'm also acutely aware it makes some of them very, very dangerous. No need to damn them to hell, though, because they're already there.

Lately I've been feeling compelled to say something nice about the more decent types, because there are actually a few that I've come to know and care about. But even with them, this cockeyed world view is bone deep, and I tend to think they have only begun to be a little nicer to me because they're a bit ashamed of how many of the others have behaved. And yet that still doesn't mean they think straight. As Steinbeck said, even the poorest don't realize they're abused by the class system, and if you dare even hint at such heresy they'll knock you down for allegedly disrespecting them. They work hard, dammit, and they think you're calling them all lazy loafers because that's the way they've been taught to feel. They know they've been screwed, but they don't understand who's doing it. I've had people start hysterical screaming at me when I have no idea what set them off, because I'm still in the process of decoding their true language.

Well, sometimes I do know what stirred them up because I deliberately questioned their unassailable superiority, but lots of times it does come as a total surprise to me. What does asking the most mundane question in the world, maybe about the weather even, have to do with "I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW MY HUSBAND WORKS HARD!" The only hope of halfway understanding these people is to realize how stark raving terrified they are of a world that's changing rapidly before them and likely to leave them even farther behind than they already are. That goes for the rich as well as the poor since the former are convinced the latter are out to take them down.

Well, maybe they're not entirely wrong on that one.