Society is completely unreasonable. People want everything and want to pay for nothing. They panic if they think about their taxes being raised, but if their garbage collection is a day late they scream and yell.
People don’t seem to make the connection between their tax money and the benefits that they get from their tax money, like free education, and the fire department, and police protection, and everything else. It drives me bonkers, because it’s pretty straightforward to me. People think of taxes as money just being robbed from you. They don’t consider the benefits of paying taxes. The benefits that they get and also the benefit of just being a part of a large group of people: a town, or a city, or a country, or a society that allegedly should stand together and all try to help each other. So my cynical, angry side I gave to Ron. And we have him voice the idea that there’s no point, that governments can’t function, that society is unreasonable, that everyone should just leave everybody else alone.
The other half of my personality is this incredibly, wildly optimistic, rah-rah, patriotic, America is the best place on earth. Every time I read about anything that’s going on in any other country about how other countries treat women, or, you know, if you’re gay in the Middle East you’ll just be instantly murdered, I think, “Okay, we’re not perfect, but dammit, we’re way better than they are.” And I want to put an American flag on my front porch and salute it, and sing the national anthem really loudly. So that side of it is kind of with Leslie.