A friend writes on FB:
So here is a lovely L.A. story. On way to airport for redeye, merging from the 10 to the 405, signaling for lane change, guy in aggressively fast BMW coming up behind doesn’t let me merge. I toot horn to let him know that I think this discourteous. He whips in front of me and then slams on brakes at 40 mph to make his point that he will tolerate no honking. Oh, those fantastic German brakes really stop on a Deutschmark. My American ones, not so much. I have no option but to helplessly plow into his back end.
Hotblood rushes off in a huge cloud of black smoke. And when I arrive at the airport, I see my front end has a slightly scrunchy look. Not a good look. (Translation: $$$). First time my vehicle has so much as tapped against another since I was 16 years old.
I normally do not wish any fellow human any ill fortune and this may be a tad un-Christian, but I do hope I tagged that Beemer’s back end a good one.
Mark Minter: “Another super quality post from ThoseWhoCanSee about high trust vs low trust societies and how rare high trust is, namely No. Euro and Anglo. The high form of this is the ‘queue’, so common among us, and so baffling to others. This guy is one of the best long form writers on the alt-right that is always well researched with wonderful illustrations, charts, images, etc.”
Link:
A freier, in Israeli eyes, is a shopper who waits in line to pay retail. It is a driver who searches for legal parking rather than pulling onto the sidewalk with the other cars. … The fear of being a sucker turns driving into a bumper-car competition and makes grocery shopping as trying as arm wrestling.
… ‘In London, the culture is to give way, be a gentleman, don’t compete,’ said Peri, the former editor. ‘But an Israeli is the opposite. If you are stronger, why should you give way to someone weaker? In a debate, the British will say, ‘You have a point.’ In a debate here, no Israeli will admit he has been persuaded to change his mind. That shows weakness.
Americans often find the Israeli attitude intolerably rude. Israelis, meanwhile, find Americans to be the biggest freiers of all. They are naive idealists. … Americans are perceived as innocents who follow the rules and who believe a person will actually do what he promises to do. ‘An American is willing to trust until someone proves to be untrustworthy,’ Shahar said. ‘Israel is much more like the rest of the world, where the basic assumption is that people . . . should not be trusted until proven trustworthy.
