On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Leila wrote:

> You know, three and a half years ago we were mourning 9/11. It took
> about 3 months though for people on this NG to start sniping at each
> other, trashing New Yorkers, Southerners, Californians, etc.

maybe you were. me, i went through my standard checklist, and concluded
it wasn't going to hurt me. that standard checklist gets checked quite
frequently... I have relatives in Tel Aviv. (insensitive? nah... just...
hardened).

> I don't like much about dominant Texas politics but I love my
> right-wing Texas cousins and not one of them is stupid. OK some of them
> have some dumb ideas about the rest of the world but that's because
> their culture is isolated and they live in an echo chamber of
> xenophobia.

I sincerely hope they won't be pointing fingers and saying "Hey! there's a
black person!" in NYC... unlike _some_ people I know. (pennsyltucky is a
very backwards place.)

> But we Californians have our own echo chamber that
> amplifies our own prejudices, not quite visible to ourselves but
> perhaps painfully visible to ... Texans.

ayup you do. and it might be nice to remember that people can change
their opinions. the idiot saying, "*** love cannot exist" may have never
_met_ a counterexample.

> In the meantime, I'll say it again, my right-wing, evangelist Christian
> Texas cousins are smart as whips. And furthermore, they're all
> Americans. Human beings, too.

yah. pity i hate americans, ain't it? ;-)

> This liberal, Arab-loving, Jew-loving*, ***-friendly, pacifist,
lena

yes, ain't is a word. and it is older than isn't. so _there_.