This afternoon I encountered an angry agressive Teabagger in a hardware store.
So this afternoon I went to the local Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) store in Salinas to get a bolt to fix Dad's walker. Dad's walker had lost a bolt that was rather hard to find, being it was metric, so I'd gone to OSH so Dad could use his walker to walk around again.
As I was in line, the person ahead of me, a middle aged man wearing a "Monterey Tea Party" T-shirt was making a return of a BBQ burner, unopened in the package. The clerk asked him for ID, which he produced, and then he angrly and loudly asked "IF I WERE AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WOULD I HAVE TO SHOW I.D.!".
The clerk, a middle aged Latina woman, caught by surprise, said something about green cards, to which the Teabagger almost shouted "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SHOULDN'T HAVE GREEN CARDS" and after a brief pause continued, "UNLESS THEY'RE FORGERIES!". Then he turned to me, and for a moment I wondered if he recognized me from various Town-halls and other political rallies I attend. I'm a rather physically distinctive person who, as Gavin Newsom said to me recently, is "not easy to forget". But the Teabagger apparently didn't recognize me, and, presumably he assumed that since I'm a middle aged white male, he further assumed I must share his bigotries, said "ILLEGALS HAVE A LOT OF FORGERIES!".
I wasn't in the mood to argue, so I just tried to ignore him. He muttered more about "ILLEGALS" and after getting his refund walked out of the store to the obvious relief of the clerk and several others who'd been watching.
I usually wear a fedora with a Obama button on it, but not this time. I have mixed feelings about this being one of the rare times I wasn't wearing my Obama button. I imagine that had the Teabagger seen the button, he'd have gotten very angry and agressive, and perhaps even violent. Yes, he seemed to me to be that deranged, like another Teabagger who, after a Sam Farr Town Hall in Monterey in August, who had followed me, shouting insults and "slapping" me on my back.
While he may not be typical of all Teabaggers, he certainly was one of the fringers who are making politics increasingly scary, and even just being around them in what should be non-political situations.
JTG