So, between you and me, dear reader, why Florida?
I came for the weather and I'm staying for the front row view of some pretty crazy people. There are many wonderful friends I have made here, but they are way too normal and forthright in life, thus rendering them uninteresting as characters in wild stories. I hope they do not mind.
I do not know why, when it is some outrageous scandal, somehow there is a Florida connection. Now it's poor General Petraeus and his perceived carnal weaknesses. Tampa and its tarts come front and center.
What's the matter with Florida? It seems to have this vague sense of the value of living vicariously through another's bad luck and pluck.
There is no arguing that currently this true wing-nut artistry is practiced to the fullest expression in Florida. While all political persuasions are actually represented here, travel but one direction 50 miles, and you will find a hotbed of like-mindedness of fear and anxiety of the "other" -whether the other is another race, another culture, or another political party. There is this conspiracy mongering about the President, or the gays, or the guns and God. Fear rules their politics and their social view. So, the tinfoil hat society lives on, whether through the Stand Your Ground law or the Ayn Rand theory of global bad-will to all.. Certainly their Church supports Trickle-down economics. The obliviousness to their paradoxical belief system is not uncommon, but still amazes.
We can find the oddball character anywhere, they are just more fun to find with a sweet-tea drawl, a fish decal and Jesus saves bumper-sticker, and a gun rack inside the pickup truck- in the warmth and brightness of the SWFL sunshine. I love the variety of life here, even if some here pretend it's of purely one mind of resolve.
I am needed here, if only for contrast.