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Pecos Pueblo

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Backsliding

© Robert Sommers 2017
I was making small talk at the bank today and the teller, a very sweet latina I have known for years, was a little bit shaken.

She is a native born U.S. citizen and her family has been in northern San Diego county for over two hundred years.

She was having a private conversation with her aunt in Spanish when a man barged up and told her to speak English in America.

Haranguing her mercilessly, he told her that she was dishonoring the military by not speaking English. When she pointed out that she had lost her own brother in the war protecting those very freedoms the man claimed to champion, he finally shut up.

To be totally accurate, true local natives once spoke a dialect of Uto-aztecan, either a Numic, Tubatulabal or Takic variety, but they of course no longer count.

It is a shame that so many bigots now feel like they have a license to hate. Never seen it this bad, before, must be Obama's fault.

I googled Fallbrook on Google + yesterday and got this nasty guy's pages, well he has many of them, all dedicated to the most vicious racism and antisemitism. I alerted Google, they did nothing.

According to experts, California now has the largest racist skinhead population in the country. A chilling article on the phenomena at ProPublica. You really should read it.

You feed the hateful beast, it is real hard to ever get it back in the cage.

9 comments:

Jon Harwood said...

I have always been much more careful in Fallbrook than I was in Orange County. Fallbrook is a great place but it has a long standing infestation of right wing fanatics. I am more cautious than ever now with the haters feeling validated by the Trumpkins. It only took one or two casual conversations where I saw the person I was talking to go all rigid and paranoid for me to get the point that what you see in the Friendly Village isn't always what you expect.

I would shave my head, but age already did that for me.

Blue Heron said...

The problem is certainly not endemic to, nor headquartered in, Fallbrook.

Jon Harwood said...

Nope.

Anonymous said...

Remember Tom Metzger? There was a time when Fallbrook was known primarily for him, and sensimilla.

Blue Heron said...

I knew him fairly well. He was pretty low key here, most of his hatred was exported.

Kerr A. Lott said...


I went to his Google+ website, what a vile prick. Wonder what this thing's story is? Was it raised by nazis?

Hudgins said...

Extra familial racism is the current evolutionary rule for the human race.

When it is no longer thought successful by the amygdala as a survival trait then equality might be considered, but my bet is that it will be superseded by something even more contra-survival.

Blue Heron said...

Nice Hudgins - it may only get worse. Unfortunately you are absolutely correct.

max hall said...

Nice flag Rob...