Get ready for some political ranting. My opinions.This one’s a bit of a thematic mess and doesn’t flow but we’re getting to the end of the trip so I’m putting up random stuff.
We’re in the US again and the perennial issue which Americans face numerous times a day and about which we blow-ins stress over, is back at the forefront of considerations – tipping. It used to be that if a service was provided efficiently, cost-effectively or pleasantly, or a combination of all three, the provider would be rewarded via a tip. Then we were told that tips were necessary because the minimum wage was too minimum and providers needed tips to survive. So we’re moving from voluntary towards guilt-trip. Now the credit card machine comes with various percentage tipping options built in, one of which you are expected to choose and one of which isn’t necessarily zero. So now the customer isn’t just expected to reward good service but to also subsidise the waiter’s wage. Lucky business owner. If we’re contributing to the business do we get a share of the profits? That sort of socialism always falls over when it’s extended to sharing the losses also, so we live with it.
We’ve just been in Amish country in backblocks Pennsylvania. It’s the sort of place that brings out the voyeur in us all – there’s one, someone shouts and there’s another and that house has green blinds and washing on the line and no electricity connection. We’re all experts in finding Amish now. It’s a bit like whale watching or train-spotting except the Amish don’t move as fast (they travel in horse drawn buggies) and don’t have numbers riveted to their sides (they wear quaint clothes instead). Whilst they make the occasional concession to the modern world these days, like using batteries or communal phones, I can’t help thinking the world is technologically accelerating away from them and their Mennonite brothers and sisters. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing for them.
There are two things that stand the US apart from just about every other country in the world (apart from the Amish community). One regards the attitude to their veterans. Washington does monuments to their history, their wars and their veterans better than anywhere I’ve ever been. And the respect shown is heart-felt and admirable, for the most part. Attitude doesn’t always translate into action however so there’s work to be done in this regard. Government funding for illegal economic immigrants while veterans live on the streets is an over-simplification of a complex problem but the underlying premise has some legitimacy.
The other is the utterly unhinged (to those better endowed with common sense) love affair with abortion. Millions of mainly (this is 2024) women will never have an abortion or contemplate having one but will die in a ditch defending their god-given right to have one. Is that related to the “pursuit of happiness” outlined in the Declaration of Independence? And to justify this commitment to “women’s reproductive health care” they’ll quote the 1% of tragic examples where compromises and compassion are absolutely necessary and ignore the 90+% of cases which are simply contraception after the fact because people (men and women) are too stupid, too lazy or too ignorant to take advantage of one of the many ways to prevent pregnancy.
So much for the deep and meaningfuls. Back to the quirky and irreverent (and irrelevant) with #12