Rock Rants

Upon entering McDonald's this morning for breakfast I saw Rock sitting at a table, glaring at me. A previous post described Rock, it you recall, he was the unkept and disheveled motorcycle rider. Upon getting my meal, I avoided Rock and sat at a table in which I could not see him. Charles came and sat with me and we started talking about how bad it looked that Obama did not put an American flag on his campaign plane. Rock, who could see Charles, said to him that he could see he was a Republican. (Charles is a Democrat.) Rock started into a rant about how this Country was no longer a Democracy: he wanted Obama to win the presidency, we should not be in Iraq, Bush was dictator and went to Iraq because he wanted revenge on Sadam because he wanted to kill his daddy, the country is Socialist now and Obama will make it a Democracy again, he will give the little people more money, etc. At this time Rock was standing, talking loudly and pointing his finger at us. When he stated that we have had four thousand of our children die for Bush's foolishness, I interjected. "There were no children sent to Iraq, we sent soldiers. Those that did die were soldiers and it is dishonorable to them to call them children." Rock continued: "The Iraqi's do not want us there and Obama will get us out. The Iraqi's hate us and we deserve to be hated." At another table, there was a young man named Joe, about 26, who works for Haliburton and is on leave from one of his four-month tours of duty. He stood up, walked over to Rock and asked him how many Iraqi's he had talked to. Rock just looked at him and said nothing. Joe said, "I have talked to many of them and they want us over there. The Iraqi soldiers do not want us to leave they know we are helping with a difficult job of keeping the peace. Those people are just like us, they want a good job and they want to live in peace." While he was saying this, Rock got very quiet and sat down. The rest of us started to question Joe who was willing to relate his experiences over there. Shortly after this Rock meekly picked up his coffee and left. Joe works in construction, my impression was as a semiskilled worker. He works 12 hour days, 7 days a week. He said his jobs vary but are unassociated with security. He will go back to Iraq in two weeks because, as he said, I make no money while here at home. He said he will make about $80,000 in a year if he does not keep coming back because his contract pays only while he is there. It was a pleasure to talk to Joe and he certainly closed down an uninformed rant.