Fadi's Opinion

I recently had a meeting with a local businessman in there in our area.  In and of itself is not too unusual.  Because I meet with businessmen all the time.  Sometimes they are aspiring entrepreneurs, businessmen, or multilevel marketing people at this meeting was different.  In the next few days I was going to see a side of America that I do not ever seen before.  The name of the person that I have met with was FADI.  Fadi was an Christian businessman who was born in Lebanon.  At the age of 13 he already had seen combat because he was in the war.  As I spoke to him I could see on his face that he was a man who had seen death, violence and experienced things that we in America have never ever even thought about.  Not only had Fadi experienced war, but when he came over to America he was about to embark on a journey of enlightenment about what Americans were like from a middle Easterners point of view.  Course it was peppered with explicative’s that I dare not repeat hear but to be sure his speech was very colorful, in a broken English type of tone.

Here’s how the whole thing went. As Fadi and I drove back from a business transaction he kept saying, “ I can speak to you like I know you forever”, so I must tell you. My son… and then he went on to tell me about some of the problems that his beautiful son was having in school. This was a really sad tale. This poor kid got really screwed. Have you ever been the only kid in school with a pair of overalls? Or maybe you were walking the wrong way down a busy corridor? It seems like this kid was in an environment where he was just going in the wrong direction. He wasn’t fully American or should I say Anglo and he wasn’t Hispanic. He looked Hispanic but the kids just didn’t accept him as a Lebanese. As a result he was being picked on year after year. It all came to a head in an incident that ended his stay in our school system. When I heard the story I got really incensed. It wasn’t right that someone who was different had to be subjected to such ridicule. When I was in high school there was a girl, we’ll just call her JB, she was treated in much the same manner. That left awful scars on her emotionally.

Fadi’s son didn’t deserve that treatment. That was act number one.

Act two was my new found friends take on the social system of how we Americans treat our elderly. Fadi’s ex-wife seemingly couldn’t handle the fact that her in-laws were going to be a part of her life on a permanent basis. What I mean is that, they were going to be staying with them. This, according to Fadi was the reason why his wife left. OK, so this isn’t so unusual but this only speaks to the fact that as a society we have more compassion on animals, than we have on our elderly parents, or for that matter the homeless that live on our streets. (authors opinion). Fadi expressed that we have a preoccupation with animals in this country and not on people.

Let’s move on. He had a definite opinion on how we handle people on welfare and the whole cradle to grave mentality of the political parties that represent us on capitol Hill. According to this veteran of war, if we don’t do something about how people take responsibility for their own actions, i.e. pregnancy, drug abuse, illiteracy, etc… then we as a country are committing social suicide.

I wish I could spend more time talking about how angry my friend was about the social condition of this country but I just don’t have time nor space. I just wanted you to get the jist of how passionate other people, who come from foreign lands view their new country. They love this country like none other. They can’t stand the gangs, druglords and apathy within our schools. They see a disintegration of the social fiber in our country. We have throwaway babies and pedigree poodles existing in the same city. All they ask for is the chance to prosper and protect the country that they now call home. Welcome to all of those who yearn for freedom and the chance for a new life, here in America. VIVA America.