All I wanted was a Taco: The Teabaginning

[dave29]

All I wanted was a taco, and to visit with an old pal from college.

Seemed simple enough... he was in San Antonio to visit family, so I made the drive down from Austin. I saw the family for a bit, and then my friend and I went off to Taco Cabana.

We were talking about the joys of being adults when down sits an even older one, at a table directly across from us. It was clear that this fellow was going to be adversarial from the moment he sat down. First, he made no attempt to hide the fact that he was listening to our conversation. He just sat there and stared right at me as I discussed my job, and how it has actually been going well. We've hired about 4 people in the last four months, and I also mentioned my brother getting a job (and my friend talked about his brother getting a job). The man even ignored his family (wife and kid) who sat down at his table while my friend and I continued our conversation.

Our talk of jobs was apparently too much for our new friend, who politely interrupts and asks what I do for a living. I explain, Educational Software. He quickly devises that both my friend and I are in IT. Which is somehow a launching pad for a diatribe about "This Guy" -- he couldn't even get himself to say Barack Obama's name -- or even say "The President". Which surprised me, considering that the man was clearly a vet (wearing camouflage and a hat that said Vietnam in bold black letters). Apparently our jobs going OK and our friends and family reporting some relief in terms of employment were somehow proof that Obama was the worst President we've ever had. He was polite enough (didn't seem physically aggressive), but continued, even after I told him we were going to disagree on everything -- to lay in to "This Guy" ..

When he started on Afghanistan and Obama's supposed dithering on the decision... I politely responded to him that "the last President" had made several stupid and quick decisions regarding Iraq. That's when he almost agrees with me, but veers into all Muslims are bad Muslims territory, which I had to correct, and let him know it's the fundamentalists that we have a problem with, just like in any religion/culture.

He then demands to know where Barack Obama was when he was in Vietnam. I politely responded, in grade school. The gentleman then goes on to grumble about how there were many people like "him" (Barack) when he was in Nam.

The man we were speaking to was not someone who was reachable, but he was someone who was clearly angry. That in and of itself should continue to raise alarm flags for those of us that pretend there is not a real political enemy we are fighting and it's name is both Angry AND Stupid. He was not content to let others have their tacos, he felt the need to lash out about the President without even pretending to follow logic. There would be no reason. It was like he thought the Taco Cabana was the set for the Glen Beck show.

That was my first teabag experience, but I fear it will not be my last. We walked out of there, and I wished him and his family a good day, and I did it earnestly. He tried his best to seem thankful. I did not feel very thankful, myself, but it was either that or an embarrassing arrest for assaulting a vet at the Taco Cabana. Somehow I get the feeling that's what he wanted the whole time.

FU Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Rep Bachmann, Lou Dobbs. All I wanted was a taco.

[tabatha]

1. You handled it well.

[mitchum]

2. The teabagger is either a fake vet or an actual participant in a war LOST by the US

Who cares what a phony or a loser thinks?

[dave29]

3. as much as this guy irritated me, I would never call a vet a loser...

ever.

[mitchum]

11. Generally, neither would I (they are not losers)...

but there are always extreme cases

[The River]

6. Who Cares

what you think?
Unless you've served, STFU!

[cliffordu]

15. I find the number of people thinking we ( the vets) lost Vietnam pretty funny.

After all, it was The Left and the riots in the streets that ended the war.....Wasn't it??

I never gave up or ran away and all the guys I knew would have died rather than surrender. We didn't lose shit.

I'd like to see the people who claim we lost that war perform under the same circumstances for about a year. No shooting, just the same jobs under the same environmental conditions.

Awesome.

[Better Today]

17. Vets never lose nor actually win the wars, it's the strategies that win or lose.

And like Iraq and apparently Afghanistan, there seemed to be no cohesive strategy for Vietnam, just "win," which is no strategy at all.

I agree no one should blame the guys on the ground, and no one should credit them with a win either, you're just pawns of the rich and powerful you maneuvered you all.

[cliffordu]

18. I wasn't a pawn, I was a soldier.

I volunteered.

[Better Today]

21. So you volunteered to be told to go onto a battlefield and fight for interests

that had nothing to do with the safety or well-being of your family or your country (Vietnam in no way was a threat to us, nor as it turns out was "Communism"). That makes you a pawn, a willing one, but a pawn.

To be a soldier and not a pawn, seems unlikely anytime soon either. Not dissing you, but either soldiers win and lose wars, or they do neither and are just pieces on the board. Perhaps you'd like it better if I said you were the bishop or a rook or the king itself, any way you cut it, you're just doing your masters' bidding.

[cliffordu]

23. I believed in what I was doing at the time, wrongheaded as it might have been.

Shitting on the action that belief inspired 39 years down the road is what you're doing.


When have you taken a stand on anything?? I mean anything that might actually cost you something besides points on a message board?

Still can't figure out why people who never served insist on calling soldiers pawns. Pawns are pieces in a game of chess. It wasn't any fucking game on the ground.

I think it's an easy way to denigrate the service without actually having to come out and say it. Cowards do it all the time.

But you keep on with it, you're actually pretty sly. I'm thinking you have a little shame going on, maybe a little sideways envy.

And by the way: Who's bidding are you doing? Who do you work for, who do you exploit? who did you allow to die so you could put oil in your car last month?

See?? Anyone can play that game.

[Rozlee]

26. Clifford, I hate to fight another veteran, but I'm going to

that oil in my car (that incidently, I'm too disabled to drive from MY Gulf War experience) was the reason I was a pawn in a war that I didn't sign up to fight. I signed up to fight all enemies of the U.S.--foreign and domestic--not to fight to make oil zazillionaires richer. And no, it wasn't a game on the ground. As an RN, the deaths and wounds I treated were horrendous, each soldier we lost an agony. Then, it was my turn to come home with strokes and seizures. I'll live with those lost young lives; the traumas, burns, and mutilations of those young people are the stuff of nightmares. What did THEY die for? WMD? Saddam's mythical ties to Al-Queda? Democracy in the Middle East? Good reasons. Reasons that were lies. And those young kids don't believe any of them. They know the score. I'm shocked you don't. Tell me, Clifford. What were you fighting for in Vietnam? Please. I'd like to know.

[cliffordu]

28. I was fighting for democracy. No kidding.

There was no oil in Vietnam, no gold, no diamonds, and believe it or not, there were MANY of us that believed in that mission.

Why else would we be involved in that shitty little war, trying to fight for a bunch of fucking farmers in the countryside who never wanted the chinese-backed North running their affairs.

Don't believe the revisionists, there was PLENTY of honor to go around for at least trying. We had been fighting the cold war for 25 years by the time I got to vietnam, longer than my life at the time.

D\Fighting the Chinese and the Russians were all I knew of the world.


I know the pat answers we'll see popping up here pretty soon, mostly by people who's hubris and fauxrage is more important to them than honor of any kind.

I am sorry for your suffering, you are not alone or unique in this, get help, please, because at 58 I can tell you life is too fucking short to give the war one more piece of yourself than you have to..

And you WILL continue to suffer. It will last for the rest of your life. Your perspective on it will keep you alive and perhaps allow you some modicum of peace, even. Or it will kill you.

Kennedy and Johnson were NOT Bush and Cheney, and even Nixon knew he had to leave the stalemate, and Haliburton didn't run the fucking show at that point.


Vietnam was NOTHING like the wars you just participated in. I wish I could help.

[Better Today]

32. cliffordu, I feel it is necessary to say that in no way is my opinion intended as

a personal affront to you. It is a general philosophy. I am sorry that my opinion does seem to effect you personally and apparently most of your family, though again in my mind it would depend on which wars/police actions they took part in. But unless and until individual soldiers have the right to opt out of actions that they consider illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain wrong, the soldiers are just chess pieces on a big board of plans (or lack of plans as it may be) being played by the wealthy and the connected in this country.

That's my philosophy.

[Better Today]

30. I have been in many circumstances where my assistance of others

has caused harm to me. For example, a few years back, walking into the mall two teen boys were seriously getting into it in front of the food court entrance. Men, other teens, everyone was just watching while these two were smashing each other's head on to the concrete. I see this from parking lot, run up and put a hand on the shoulder of the teen currently on top. Well needless to say he was in rage-state and instinctively turned 'round and threw the next fist at me. However, after seeing what he had just punched (I'm a very slight older woman), his eyes cleared and he stopped. Also all those grown men that had been gawking suddenly found their macho and interfered and acted like they were breaking every thing up.

I've got about a dozen more like that, do you really want each one?

[XOKCowboy]

41. That's easy for you to say today. It was way different back then

You weren't faced with the draft after high school or parents/grandparents who fought in WW1 and 2. Unless your family had money/power you were going to VietNam, period.

[Better Today]

42. He said he volunteered. And yes, my relatives fought in many wars.

That being said, I agree the draft was bad. I've even gone so far as to comment here that I believe soldiers should be able to opt out of actions outside of the country (our country). I don't believe and individual's conscience about particular actions should be overwhelmed by orders from warmongers and chicken hawks.

[mitchum]

19. Actually,I think you vets ended the war, rather than lost it

Despite the massive civilian protests, it took the widespread troop resistance beginning around 70 or so
before the folly of the venture became glaringly evident.

[cliffordu]

27. I spent time on the barricades after I came home - got gassed at the UofO...

Vietnam Veteran's against the war.....

But that STILL doesn't mean I was anyones pawn. somehow the term repulses me.

I did what all the men in my family did all the way back to the civil war.

[grantcart]

34. OK well that gassing thing explains a lot.

[cliffordu]

36. I cast a fart in your direction.

[treestar]

4. Great job

You dealt with him well! :yourock:

As to your FUs, I can only say, +1000

[Love Bug]

5. You handled it as well as one can

It sounds like this guy has a mad-on against the world and "knows" who to blame for it. Considering the fact he was rude to butt-in on your conversation, then bring up topics that had nothing to do with what you were discussing, shows he went into that restaurant with an agenda to spout his opinons no matter what. Good thing he ran into someone as nice as you, because with someone else, it might have ended much less pleasantly.

[Leftist Agitator]

7. n/m

[rhett o rick]

8. It's not the fault of Beck, O'Reilly, etc. If it wasnt them it'd be someone else. The gullible

teabaggers can never get it right. They cant handle the truth. They want lies, they demand lies. Makes it easier for them. Gullibles the lot.

[SheilaT]

9. Perhaps you should have pointed

out all the Vietnam Vets who served in Bush's administration.

And those who are right-wing talk show hosts.

Remind me again who they are?

[Autonomy]

10. I had a similar experience on Thanksgiving

except it was family and not a stranger. They are all Republicans, and kept implying that Obama was spending their money, and that their personal financial problems were caused by Obama. If they had been strangers, I would have pointed out that they didn't make over $250k/year and that their federal taxes did not go up under Obama, that spending under Obama builds things and creates jobs, whereas under Bush it was just a giveaway to bankers and cronies, and an economic depression was avoided by Obama's economic moves. But they weren't strangers, and I wanted Peace & Turkey on Thanksgiving.

Though if they had said something other than economics that did not hit so close to home, such as foreign policy, I would have laid into them.

Oh yeah, my point: a great majority of people are unreachable on political matters, and the guy you described was probably unreachable decades ago, maybe 40 years ago. We have to go into these discussions with that in mind. Sounds like you did well.

[monmouth]

12. Most Viet vets are now in their 60s, so if this guy was much younger

than that, he was FOS.....

[cliffordu]

13. Just because he was wearing the hat doesn't mean he's a fucking Vietnam veteran..

Get a fucking clue will ya???

Painting with the kind of brush you do is PRECISELY what the beckkerheads and Rushes of this world do, sparky.

[dave29]

25. I was pointing out tea-baggers, not vets

and don't call me sparky, sparky. I have the highest respect for our vets, regardless of ideology.

Reminder, I could have punched this jerk in the face, and it was an appealing option.

[cliffordu]

29. I like that option.

Sometimes people just need an ass kicking to get it right.

[rocktivity]

14. TEA-SIST!

VIVE LA TEA-SISTANCE!

:patriot:
rocktivity

[Better Today]

16. You've lived in Texas a while and it was your first??? I guess you stay in Austin

quite a lot.

San Antonio had become so strange with the extreme right, even my ol' high school chums who were entirely hippie liberals through about 1992-3 (graduated HS in'76), are just impossible to speak with anymore. They didn't turn into Yuppies like so many in other places, they turned into evangelical, rightwingers. Really disturbing. Surely not everyone in SA is like that I have no doubt, but I also have no doubt that Austin is truly a unique oasis of blue in a state otherwise full of teabaggers.

[dave29]

24. oh no

quite used to the "Limbaugh" experience, even in Austin... this one was unique to Tea-Baggery, so a first in that regard. I actually found it quite odd myself that this was my first encounter with these types, nonetheless... especially being in Texas. I guess you kind of just grow used to this sort of mentality and it fades into the background, until it stares you down in the middle of a conversation.

-Dave

[Cha]

20. And, what you got was

the above and the limpbaugh brainwashing Especial in your face.

Sorry, you had to go through that but you were an exceptional emmisary from the world of reality.

I hope you got your taco somewhere else.:pals:

[pansypoo53219]

22. shit,

where were georgee + dickie during nam? too much propaganda. hell. WHERE's OSAMA georgee?

[HughMoran]

31. All I wanted was a teabag

I ended up with a taco :(

Good for you for not getting rattled by the troll. Glad people up here in the Northeast are more likely to talk-down right-wingers than not. I don't think I could control myself as well as many here do.

[rasputin1952]

33. While this guy was in 'Nam...

one of his "heroes" was skating by protecting TX from the VC...then went AWOL to avoid a drug test. The rest of them were getting deferments for various and sundry things...x(

I'd prefer, by a long shot, the grade school student who would go on teach law...:)

[Clio the Leo]

35. I tell folks like that....

.... "Well, I'll pray for you buddy...." ..... that always confuses the heck out of them to the point they stop talking long enough for me to escape! :)

[havocmom]

37. Obama was in grade school while the man was in Vietnam, but cheney, rush and other chicken hawks...

oh how I love to point out where so many GOP 'patriots' were while some of teabaggers were in Vietnam.

[Honeycombe8]

38. Scary guy. Maybe you shouldn't have had a conversation with him.

It could've ended some other (violent) way.

There is no "discussion" with people like that. You will not sway them. They will not sway you.

Some members of my family are like that guy. I try not to discuss politics with them, altho they sometimes bring it up. I think they may be checking to see if I'm still "one of them librals," or if I've come to my senses yet. My brother's jaw dropped when I answered "Obama," when he asked who I was going to vote for. I guess he figured I wouldn't vote for Obama because he's black or biracial (he still can't grasp that those "librals" don't feel about blacks the same way he does...my best friend is Af. American).

[never cry wolf]

39. I hope you pointed out 5 deferment Chaney

and the other chickenhawks... he served, they did not....

[tomm2thumbs]

40. clearly unreachable - but good to be a clear voice

Taco Cabana - taco al carbon, bean and cheese and a faquita with guac please - (yummmmmmmmm... sigh)

[tavalon]

43. I miss Taco Cabana

San Antonio, not at all.

[dave29]

44. nod :)

TC is the best. SA has been wiped from my memory

[tavalon]

45. I lived there for 16 years

I had a good marriage until it went south and we liked to play on the Riverwalk and I graduated from UTHSCSA with no debt and a BSN and we had a close knit group of 4 couples we spent our twenties with. All that should have left me with fond memories of San Antonio but nope, it is and was a rightwing cesspool. If I never see it again, it will be too soon.