When did rude, inconsiderate and stupid become the American way?  I only ask because it appears to me that folks are becoming ruder, more inconsiderate and way more stupid.  Is it because I’m getting older and have no patience, or have we been taken over by the mentality of The Housewives, or Jerseylicious, or perhaps we’ve fallen for the likes of Toddlers & Tiaras or Hairy Bikers.

Let me give you a few examples from my personal arsenal of rude, inconsiderate and stupid.

•  ·        I’ve been asked why all lesbians hate men?  Is this why I’m with women, because I hate men so much? Seriously, you’re that stupid that you have to ask me this question?  Why is it that I have to hate men to love women?  Do people have to somehow justify my being gay, and do men actually have to believe I hate them in order for me to love women?  I don’t hate men.  In fact I have some male friends I just love to death; I just don’t want to have sex with them.  As Kathy Bates said in the movie Primary Colors: “I am a gay lesbian woman! I do not mythologize the male sexual organ!” 
• ·         I’ve heard way too many jokes about children who ride the “short bus.”  Grown men and women making jokes about children who are mentally challenged?  Really? When did this become okay, and when, on any level, are these jokes funny? Perhaps if it were their child or perhaps their grandchild the jokes would cease to be funny.  The thing is; these children are someone’s child and someone’s grandchild, and what sort of an adult would find pleasure in mocking a mentally challenged child? A rude, stupid, inconsiderate one?  I’m just asking…
• ·         And then there is the person while standing in line in a store anywhere in the United States who believes it’s perfectly okay to talk on a cell phone loud enough for everyone to hear.  Yesterday, I heard the grizzly tale of this girl Micah, who is a Ho and has had sex with most of the senior class.  Apparently she (Micah) came after this girl who was on the phone, and she (the girl on the phone): “shut her ass down.”  I had to check-out, so I missed out on exactly what it means to shut someone’s ass down!  Sadly, I would have been considered the rude one had I told her to get off her phone, or at least go outside and talk about Micah the Ho. Time was when people would have known it was rude to carry on that kind of conversation anywhere, but today we are to just accept her being rude and inconsiderate. 
• ·         Driving down the freeway and a car goes from lane to lane cutting off cars and as the guy flies by he give you the finger.  Seriously? 
• ·         Susan and I walk down the street and she has her arm in mine and a group of adults laugh and smirk and call us dykes and faggots and whatever else has become okay to call homosexuals in this country.  It’s not the children; it’s their parents who need the education on equal rights and human dignity.
• ·         A Marine veteran comes home from his third tour of Afghanistan and his family is having trouble surviving on his pay and food stamps.  Yes – food stamps.  Active Duty and Veterans of our United States Armed Services not being paid enough to survive.  They can give their lives, but – let’s not pay them enough to raise their families. Makes one proud to be an American doesn’t it?

Has the world of the “Housewives” and anything from Jersey invaded our psyche so much that we have all become so self-absorbed that the only thing that matters is what’s in it for me?  I’ve seen and heard so much about what people want and expect for themselves. It’s a world of Me, Me, and what can you do for me? Is it being rude or is it survival of the fittest?  I don’t want to believe we really have become a nation of any of those rude, inconsiderate, stupid Housewives but really – look around. 

When did we stop believing that we are all Americans, all deserving of the same rights, the same desires, the same dreams?  Then again, it’s never really been an equal playing field for all Americans.  It’s always been a country of those who have and those who do not.  It’s just that there used to be a group of us in the middle that believed strongly in helping and giving and nurturing.

The problem is; those of us in the middle are rapidly becoming a part of the have not’s, and we are finding it harder and harder to help, to give and to nurture when we find ourselves  in a position of needing help ourselves.  It’s not that we don’t care, because a whole lot of us do, passionately, we just don’t seem to know what to do to make anything right and just anymore.

 I just don’t see where rude, inconsiderate and stupid needs to enter into the equation of right and just.

~Peace~