Gathering Moss 17 - Ride

I gave a ride from Hertzliya to Haifa to some guy in his late thirties. Because i'm so nice, i took a path that was a little longer to bring him closer to his home.

He didn't speak most of the time, but towards the end he became chatty. He thanked me for giving him a ride and said that many people never give rides. Including himself. Then he wanted to talk about soccer and had hard time understanding that i'm not the right person to speak about it. So, quite expectedly we eventually reached he topic of elections. I asked him who is he voting for.

— "No-one! There are all thieves."

— "The current prime-minister is a thief, you say? So vote for someone else."

— "One thief goes, another one comes. Who are you voting for?"

— "Probably the National Union."

— "What, the Russians?"

— "They used to run together with Lieberman, who is Russian, but now there are mostly religious settlers."

— "So it's Shcharansky, right?"

Poor confused guy. I am just telling him that the National Union has nothing to do with Russians anymore, and he brings up Shcharansky, who never had anything to do with them in the first place. But why should he listen?

— "... Well, it's not related, Shcharansky is just running with Likud now ..." It was futile.

— "Why vote for him? Do we need a Russian prime-minister? It's the last thing we need. Soon all the road signs will be in Russian. And all the politicians will be Russians. And all the shops will be Russian. Do you realize that?"

— "Oh. Hmm."

— "What do we need them for, these Russians? And the Ethiopians too? Why did they bring them here? What did they give us? Poverty, prostitutes, crime, and they speak Russian everywhere. Really, what did they give us?"

— "A ride."

— "Ehh ... what?"

— "A ride. The Russians gave you a ride."

— "What?"

— "What if i told you that i'm Russian?"

— "What? Really?"

— "Yes, yes."

— "Well, i didn't mean ... I was talking about the new Russians, those that came just now, lately ... When did you come?"

— "Ten years." (Well, actually fifteen, but i was fucking with him, and i wanted to do it with shorter words.)

— "No, you're a veteran, i'm talking about the new ones." He was bravely ignoring the fact that the majority of Russian immigrants came to Israel more than ten years ago, but it's not very important. He was ignoring many other things. In the meantime, we arrived close to his neighbourhood.

— "OK, would you like to get off here?"

— "Yeah, yeah, brother, thank you. Thank you very much for giving me a ride. I didn't mean to ... you know."

Scott Adams says that telling stories about people like him sound much better when they end with the sentence "... and then he voted." It is funny, but in principle i really believe that everyone has to vote, even the people with whom i disagree. Yesterday was the first time ever that i sincerely wished that he would really not vote.