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<p>Wow, where to start… I have to say, the GFG, that you did more with those sentences to make me feel like a tolerated-for-now outsider than I ever have felt in the 40+ years I have lived in the US. I guess I just haven’t been around the right kind of people. As far as eating at your table, as a professional who pays more in taxes every year than the average family income in my state, I think, frankly, that people are eating at <em>my</em> table. And no, I’m not taking the job of some deserving ‘native.’ My field is severely underserved as a whole, and more acutely, where I live. I have had more big buckled, big hatted cowboys cry in my office and thank me for saving their lives than I can recall. </p>
<p>After marrying a freckled redhead who can change oil with his eyes closed, raising 2 children including an NCAA athlete, voting in every presidential election since I was 18, owning several Chevy Suburbans and Dodge diesel P/U trucks, having visited all 50 states except OK, making a better apple and pumpkin pies than 99% of the population, attending more little league, hockey and soccer games than I care to recall, financially supporting my ‘practically came on the Mayflower’ in-laws for a time being, no, I don’t see myself as a guest, and I’m sorry if I don’t seem to know my place in this society. Fortunately, I seem to have gotten along just fine despite my lack of sensitivity to my less than equal status. Seriously, I have less right to criticize and complain than Joe the Plumber?</p>