The other day, I was sitting alone in a restaurant, minding my own business, and having breakfast. I was wearing the "let's go Brandon cap" I had purchased, because that was how I "felt" that day!
A nice young server came up and told me that someone had complained that I was "offending" them and asked that I remove it, so I could stop "hurting their feelings." I thought, I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings! I am simply expressing my own.
Instead of blowing up, which would most probably have been my first response, I stopped myself and said...Please give me a couple minutes and stop back by. She left.
When she came back, I tried to speak clearly, slowly, and as calmly as I could muster.
My reply:
"If the 'Opinions or Feelings' of one American is to be catered to, safe guarded or protected it should be the same protection for all Americans."
Under the "Woke" offended complainers' position, we should be able to walk into every golf shop in Bella Vista and successfully demand that everyone remove their hat's that seem to identify them with "Titleist" or someone who thinks they are in front or ahead of everyone else...that could really offend someone if they saw those hats and "felt" that way! I politely refused to disrobe to satisfy anyone else's "feelings." This incident was over there.
My decision to share this story was made to promote a greater good for all of us here in beautiful Bella Vista we now live in together.
This issue at hand, was settled many years ago in the "Uniquely American" document called the U.S. Constitution...It provides us the full protection of our law and allows us the right to have our own "Feelings and Opinions" and to express them at will in a free society, unlike many other parts of the world today!
With this pandemic, our country has been through terrible times recently. There are forces everywhere trying to use that damage to drive wedges anywhere they can. It can be seen in Cancel Culture, CRT and a "WOKENESS" approach to try to destroy the United States of America. They don't want us to have a history (good or bad), individuality, free speech, cooperation, unity, and pride in the good things we, as a group, have shared here at home and worldwide. This is being fought against nationally on a large scale, but the effort to keep it at bay locally should begin in restaurants with people expressing themselves as they see fit and minding their own business.
Everyone has the right to turn their head and look away if they do not like something they see, which would really work well to secure everyone else's rights!
In closing: We are all solely responsible for our own feelings because they only exist in one place, which is inside each individual person alone. Deal with it. That is the American way.
Kenny Piel
Bella Vista