Capitalism of the Socialists

I recently had the honor (hmph!) of covertly observing two men, one young and one old, conversing in a coffee shop.

The young man had a Verizon cell phone which he used several times during the hour or so I watched them. He had a brand new, top of the line HP laptop computer decorated with pretty stickers from coffee shops he frequents. He was wearing a suit coat and a dress shirt with terribly worn blue jeans. Birkenstocks adorned his mostly hidden feet. He had gelled his hair and took great pains to look a certain way with his necklace and $200 backpack computer case. The young man, a boy really, was reading Erich Fromm’s The Same Society published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. He probably bought it from Barnes and Nobles. He was smoking Camels and drank tea made by the Lipton Company.

The older man, who left first, was using a sleek new Dell computer and wore a posh wind breaker. He wore a newer ball cap with some kind of symbol on it.

The young man noticed that the man had a socialist newspaper sitting next to him, and struck up a conversation. It turned out that they were both hard-core socialists who detested the modern capitalist state and all it represents. They opposed the war in Iraq and discussed what demonstrations they had been to. They discussed various socialist writers and lamented the demise of the socialist party in America.

Finally, the man said goodbye, packed his things, put on his Kenneth Cole sunglasses and made his way out of the coffee shop to his awaiting Subaru B9 Tribeca.

UPDATE!

We went to a professional sporting event last night, and, as truth is stranger than fiction, we ran into the older man from the coffee shop. This professed socialist critic of all that is capitalistic was scalping tickets in front of the stadium. He actually asked me to buy and then asked if I had tickets to sell. What a country! (Could I make this up?)