act your shoe size lady, and other revelations.

Remember the old adage, "act your age, not your shoe size?" I would like to make an amendment and direct it at a certain woman of gigantic proportions who I had the terrible misfortune of being in close proximity to late Monday evening. I will explain in a moment but first, some background. I am in a global studies class at Viterbo that deals mainly with the topic of globalization. For those of you who don't know, globalization is a hard term to define but is generally agreed upon to be "a multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply, stretch, and intensify worldwide social interdependency's and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening connections between the local and the distant," according to Manfred B. Steger in Globalization: a very short introduction. So, in a nutshell, globalization is basically the inter-connectedness of our globe and has an impact on many facets of life.

I attended a seminar Monday night entitled: "Globalization: a positive outlook." It was addressing concerns about the economics of globalization and was given by a man named Edward C. Prescott. Now, upon entering the seminar I was immediately bombarded by the smell of Drakkar Noir and a plethora of affluent gentlemen sporting what seemed to be Lord and Taylor's new fall fashion line. In a word: yuppies. Don't get me wrong, I believe to survive in this world it takes all kinds of people, but you can imagine the discrepancy in our outlook on life as I accidentally stepped on one gentleman's $500 dollar polished shoes with my $70 dollar Etnies that I've worn for two years because I insist that I haven't gotten my $70 worth yet. Anyway, I take my seat and the seminar begins.

Ever watched a movie in Russian? Yea that about sums up how much I understood from that seminar. What I did take out of it was that I was in a room full of people who firmly believed the rich should be getting richer. At the the end of the seminar, the speaker announced it was time for questions. My teacher was in the crowd, a few seats away from me actually, and being the liberal socialist that he is, asked a couple questions that did tear into the mold of what the speaker was saying but he remained respectful at all times. He used Europe as an example as there are parts that are more socialist friendly and doing well. The point of the question was lost in the explanation as it was clear that both my teacher and the speaker had very conflicting viewpoints. While my teacher was asking his questions, however, I noticed a very tall lady in front of me shaking her head in disagreement and whispering in her husbands ear who then nodded in agreement of whatever her opinion was. That's fine, I have no qualms with disagreeing, but what happened next appalled me. I had walked over to my teacher and was having a friendly discussion with him when the aforementioned lady came over, slapped a big forceful hand on my teachers' shoulder and said, "If you like Europe so much, why don't you move there. And take Obama with you." To have the nerve to say that to someone who holds a different opinion than you and was being very respectful about communicating that difference is absolutely appalling. I don't care if you're a democrat or a republican, left wing or right wing, we are all members of the same species. Lets treat each other with a little respect.

I'd like to point out how frightening it is to see the damage that so much seperation can do. Democrats and republicans become so enraged with each other that they resort to vulgar misinterpretations of each other's character. Look at any political video on Youtube and read the comments. It's a cyber battle-field. Starts to remind me of the Rwandan genocide. The Hutu's and the Tootsie's became so arbitrarily seperated and because of despicable agendas of a few men in power, there was total chaos and literally thousands of people were slaughtered. Why? Because the Tootsie's were different than the Hutu's? Seems that way, but the two tribes were actually divided, by the British when that area was being colonized, into two groups based on physical characteristics. If you were tall or had a certain shaped nose, you were a Tootsie. Quite often members of the same family were labeled as different tribes, torn apart, and taught to hate each other. Now, I'm not saying that a genocide is going to happen here, but it is a good demonstration of the intensity of seperation. Have your view point and allow me mine. Then, we'll compromise. Tolerance and empathy, pass it around.