La Ultima Paja

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Published by Political Grind - October 14, 2007
-http://politicalgrind.com/2007/10/14/la-ultima-paja/
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"It is pathetic that our country has come to this."
-- Deb Hamilton - Right Truth
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Question: At what point does a theoretical political debate cross the line and become a direct personal assault? For me, this line was crossed yesterday, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, when I was personally accosted by my friendly neighborhood bank.

I live in a small, typically scenic New England coastal town. Population 18,000. I’ve lived here for half of my life. It’s a nice place to live. 53.4% of our townspeople are married. The unemployment rate here is 2%, those living below the poverty line just over 5%. 90.6% of our local citizens have an educational level of high school or higher, 42.2% have bachelors degrees or higher. The racial demographics are as follows: 0.9% Hispanic/Latino; 0.6% Asian; 0.4% Black; 0.5% Multiracial; 0.1% Other; and 97.4% White.

Now, the theoretical political debate in question here, which you are all familiar with, is our ongoing struggle to save our traditional American culture from being sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism. But yesterday afternoon, this intense cultural battle burst full-blown into my quiet little living room.
Here’s what happened —

I had just written a check to pay my electric bill and came to the last line of my check register. So, I reached into my desk drawer and opened up that little green box and took out my new check register — that is, my new Registro de Transacciones.
My what? I looked at it again.

To be completely fair, there was an English language version printed directly above the Spanish language version. And I suppose this should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. This dual language check register is, I can only presume, for the benefit of that 0.9% of our local population who are Hispanic/Latino.

I don’t know what those 0.6% Asian folks, or those 0.4% Black folks, or those 0.1% Other folks in this little town think about this latest encroachment on our shared American language, but to me it means that every time I write a new check I’m going to have to post it in that damn Descripcion de la Transacciones column. Now, I don’t really want to do that. So I took the check register back to the bank and asked for a new one.

Well, in case you haven’t already guessed — these ARE the new ones.

My little bank is a very nice little bank and they’ve always been good to do business with, and they promised to do something about this new problem, and they did.

This afternoon I received a telephone call from the Vice-President of the bank who explained that from what she had discovered, all of the new check registers in all of the neighboring banks were coming in this way now. She said that the bank didn’t really have anything to do with these things, that they order their checks from a very large company. I said that just because they were a very large company didn’t mean that they were right. She agreed with me, and assured me that she completely understood my point of view, but –

Finally, and very pleasantly, she resolved the issue this way. She told me that she had found some old style registers that she had put aside and would mail them out to me right away. The only problem with this solution would be that the calendars on the back of the registers would be old calendars.

What she seemed to be telling me was this, that I could have my registers in English only, but that they would have to come from a different era, from that same era that I had come from, that American era that was rapidly fading away. I thanked her for her trouble and said that that would be fine.

But you and I know better, don’t we? It isn’t fine. It isn’t fine at all. As a matter of fact, it’s very far from being fine. This battle for our American culture came to me yesterday in my own little living room and already I have lost it. Oh, I made my little stink about it, but what had I actually accomplished? A fart in a snowstorm.

Am I mad at my friendly little bank? Of course not. Am I mad at those 0.9% Hispanic/Latinos in this little town of ours? Hardly. I don’t even know who they are. Am I mad at that company that makes our new bilingual checks? No, they’re just doing their job.

Am I mad at those loony leftist liberal commie bastards who are trying their level best to give this great country of ours away?
You’re damn right I am!
And I am going to fight them till my dying breath. I am going to fight them with every weapon I have and in every way that I can think of. And I hope that you will be fighting them too.
We can’t just let it all slip away.

Finally, for those of you like myself who aren’t yet bilingual –
La Ultima Paja simply means The Last Straw.