angry people in 24 hour wal*marts are bad for apple pie.

We live in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area in the deep south surrounded by angry people. I took a head count just the other day, and so far I've found these angry people living around me: angry tea partiers; angry Sarah Palin supporters and Glenn Beck fans; angry people who don't know what socialism is exactly but the president is black so he must be a socialist; angry people who are certain the illegals are all here to steal their corporate executive jobs right out from under their noses along with all their health care money that still requires a copay and a certain percentage of whatever outrageous charges the medical/pharmaceutical industry levies in their highly unregulated, wayward manner (and in spite of the fact the crippled American next door was just dropped from his health insurance on the account he was going BALD...because thank god for free market capitalism) and they're angry! They want justice! They want every single Mexican in America rounded up NOW, held in internment camps, and sent right back to Mexico where they belong, even if they came here from Nicaragua because Mexicans, Nicaraguans, what's the difference?

There are very angry people who long for the days of the Confederacy when Jeff Davis was in charge, and they slap about 10 Confederate flag stickers on the back of their SUVs, right next to the faded pink and yellow striped, light blue/yellow starred American flags they slapped on their truck on September 12, 2001 and promptly forgot about...and all those stickers are right under a sticker proclaiming this is America and real Americans only want to hear English spoken, which is next door to a sticker that says "Jesus Loves You." And then, of course, there are the angry people who think people who refuse to wash in the blood of Jesus are refusing to do so to personally destroy the lives of those walking around bloodied by Jesus.

In other words, lately I've noticed I live around a lot of angry people who seem to be deeply angry about things that actually either help them in ways they seem to have never deeply contemplated (public libraries, Social Security, unemployment assistance, and access to Medicare for example, which all have their problems but who the heck wants to go without free books and unemployment assistance in this kind of an economy?). Or they come across as incredibly indignant about things that have very little effect on the day-to-day machinations of their lives...do they really think an undocumented day laborer is plotting to invade their home because he has his eye on their grandma's antique crocheted doilies? I mean, honestly. We've been robbed, twice, and both times have been by white meth addicts looking for stuff to sell for drugs...where's the outrage in that? Nowhere, is where, because when I tell people I've been robbed twice, they tend to ask: "Were they Mexican?" or "Was it gang-related?" and become confused when I say quietly, "No, we were robbed by Caucasians." (Four of whom actually were caught thanks to Magnum P.I.-wannabe neighbors--which is how I know they were white, and meth heads. Otherwise, I'd still be handing out my standard response to loaded-with-white-privilege-and-all-its-advantages questions from otherwise very nice people: "I don't know. I wasn't home to get a good look when they came through, which, thank god. Because they were clearly very angry, judging by the size of the rocks they used to break our front door's windows with.").

So instead of getting peeved about real problems like what methamphetamine does to people's brains and lives; people being treated terribly unfairly by conglomerate corporations which are regularly given a free pass by the US government; the fact there are children in this country who are being sexually, physically, and mentally abused by adults in power over them; that there are children in the United States of America who don't have access to proper nutrition or medical care and a whole slew of other really wrong things, these angry people I see all around me are getting totally worked up over crap like whether or not the two old ladies yapping away in Spanish while standing in line behind them at the 24 Hour Supercenter Wal*Mart last night were making fun of baseball and apple pie and ridiculing the US Constitution. Which they probably were, because baseball games are overpriced and apple pie is not as tasty as pumpkin, and Congress is totally making a mockery of the US Constitution and has been for decades.

And I suspect this is not only happening in the deep south where I live; I bet many Americans live around similar people directing their anger in misguided ways, and live in the vicinity of a nearby 24 Hour Supercenter Wal*Mart, or maybe just a Dollar General Store. And if you are not American, I bet you live around a lot of angry, misguided people.

My point is, why all the anger? So what if Obama is a damn socialist hell bent on destroying the good name of Jesus Christ and muddying the holy image of all Jeff Davis' Confederacy never was? There are still rainbows every once in awhile--remember how God promised whenever it got really bad, he'd send us a rainbow to remind us he decided never to smite the whole world again, that he'd let us do that to ourselves instead? There's always that: Wall Street is making a mockery of the American taxpayer and we're on our way to smiting ourselves right out of a perfectly decent planet to live on, but God will not smite this world, ever ever again. And! Dairy Queen continues to make their tremendously tasty Blizzards, of many different varieties. And TV still airs King of Queens re-runs, and Netflix and TiVo are two extremely awesome concepts. And Little Miss M actually tries to bottle feed our cat Tasha every once in awhile, which is always cute to witness.

I just have to remind myself, when confronted yet again by these angry vigilante mobs: my family of rats and I live in a nice green and gray stone house, right next to a mosquito-infested detention pond the county government swears they take care of every summer but I wonder. Does that stop me from sitting on my back porch with an iced tea once every few summer days because I'm inside writing borderline racist letters to the editor about it? No. Why? Because I have far more important things to do, like wasting time looking at hot pictures of Gerard Butler online. I simply refuse to get my panties in a wad about county government waste and ignoring real problems like peach-sized mosquitoes dive bombing whole houses in a sci-fi/horror film like manner, and just happily slather some lavender onto M and myself instead, because I read once that mosquitoes really hate lavender. And I think that's nice.

In other related news: I'm internally debating about sharing this blog's postings on my facebook page. I have a couple of contacts who live in my neighborhood near the pond who may not know about the mosquitoes, or the effects lavender has on them. And Sweet Mary Jane Jones, I don't want THAT to be an HOA topic of discussion because C is on the board of directors and I'll never hear the end of it. But also because I don't want people combing my blog posts here wondering if I'm talking about them, when I'm actually just talking about me (I just realized this was a really angry blog entry).