I didn't understand HOW BAD it's become. [View All]

[no_hypocrisy]

My SO was driving home through eastern Pennsylvania Saturday night. He stopped at a Cracker Barrel for a cup of coffee as he was tired and there was nothing else open where he was.

He was walking around "the gift area". A woman in her seventies tried to peddle some "Support Our Troops" T-shirts while he was there. The price was all right ($5.99). He made the mistake of making small talk with this woman. An otherwise throw-away statement made her defensive and challenged him, "What's the matter? You DON'T support the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq?" He answered that he did support them, that they were victims and deserved our utmost respect and he hoped they'd return very soon. That infuriated her, and then more people started to gather around them as she was shouting and screaming, getting hysterical. She had a fit with the obligatory "This country is being run by a socialist, Nazi, illegal alien and I don't want all that socialism!" Not knowing when to cut his losses, my SO tried to give her some reputable facts. She was then screaming about my SO not being patriotic and by this time, a bunch of men started to circle him. Nothing materialized as he's over 6'3" but it was getting ugly. Kinda like Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider".

He finally got the Emotional IQ and figured he should depart soon, sans the T-shirt. He's still shocked by the whole episode. I knew things were bad, but after his stories, it kind of reminds me of fledgling Nazi Germany where you had pockets of this ultranationalism and some individuals eager to beat up someone to prove how much they "love" "their" country.