The Most Interesting Discussion at Occupy DC

While I was at Occupy DC I encountered a man and woman who gave my buddy and me the most intelligent conversation that we had that day.  She was originally from Pakistan now living in Canada.  She and her male companion were at a conference in the city.  She was thrilled to be at the Occupy location and pointed out that nothing like that was possible in Pakistan (duh).  [For the record she never pronounced it “Paah-ki-stahn” like you know who.]

We were getting along famously until she asked us what we thought of the Occupy movement.  It distressed both her and her companion that we believed that the Occupiers were mad at the wrong people.  I maintained that the real culprit in nearly all of our problems was government.  They were convinced it was “greed” or some such nonsense.  When she found out that my buddy had recently returned from Afghanistan she leveled all her attention at him.  She apparently bought into the mythology that we were killing innocent people by the bushel in our pursuit of terrorists.  My buddy maintained that wasn’t true. 

That left me in a discussion about how we got in this mess with her friend.  Her companion allowed me to actually roll out the story of the democrat (progressive, liberal, socialist, whatever) destruction of the home loan and housing industries.  When I was done he said: “So your position is that government caused the current crisis and that we would be better off if they got out of the way and let the market set prices.”  You nailed it pal.  You now have the answer.  Of course if he was from Canada as well – he would know that Canada never experienced a severe home mortgage and banking crisis because they never had a Jimmy Carter, Bawdy Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, or Chris Dodd to undermine their banking system.  Further, they don’t have a Barack Obama heaping further abuse on their financial system except that our failure to recover does do collateral damage in Canada. 

By that time our Pakistani friend (maybe not) had determined that my friend (unlike our President) was completely unapologetic for any of the excess force leveraged in the world by the finest military that world has ever seen – she declared that it was time to go.  Okay “Bye.”

It might not have been a victory, but it was more mentally challenging than the old lady who could proudly say “F**k!” or pajama boy who maintained that Abraham Lincoln was his favorite founding father. 

I might be guilty of milking this visit too much, but I think I have one or two more sets of observations and more pictures for you tomorrow.