Smoking and the P.C. Left Coast

One thing that's come up a bit this week is the political correctness of life in the urban centers of the West Coast. I grew up "back East," as they say, not in one of the great bastions of curmudgeonly East Coast assholery, like New York or Boston, but some aspects of coarse East Coast forthrightness stuck with me. I love living in California and I especially love the Bay Area, but the culture here can be smug, self-righteous and politically correct to a gagging degree.

Smoking is just one of the ways this manifests. I am a Democrat, even a liberal, but I have some libertarian principles as well, and one thing I cannot stand is public hysteria that tries to interfere with my right to do what the fuck I want to do. I struggle with smoking; I don't really want to do it, but it has me in its grip. In the next year, I will quit smoking, as circumstances have arisen that should finally motivate that. But it's also one of those issues where I think people need to calm the fuck down and let people be. There is now, among certain crowds, an unhealthy social snobbery about smoking, the kind that says, " I am better than you because I don't smoke." Out here, people pride themselves on their open-mindedness; what that means is, rather than actually confronting opinions with which they disagree, because everyone is free to their own beliefs, they will just remain silently, smugly superior.

The refreshing thing about the attitude on the other coast is that it's both more in-your-face - well, fuck you, buddy! - and accepting - now, let's get a drink, asshole! Out here, if you don't agree with someone, you just roll your eyes and back away, and go be with the people who share your exact convictions.