"The English language used to be a vehicle for philosophy and poetry; now it's a bloody tool in the hands of the managerial class."--a saying popular with myself in a previous incarnation.

People in the USA are just plain weird!

It's not just managers at Starbucks who want to supress and censor my sense of humor. It is also people I don't know driving by in their cars shouting at me--a uniquely North American and very unleasant experience.

The other day, it so happens, I took a dance class.  That requires a special form of dress, and special shoes.  Ergo, upon finishing my exertions I had to change back into street dress.  As the studio was very crowded, and I just wanted to get out of there, I neglected to carefully tie the laces of my sneakers.

Not a big problem, I would have thought, as I wasn't about to walk home, but was about to spend the next thirty minutes sitting on my behind driving.

And the trip from the studio to the car is six feet at most.

In any case, as I was about to climb down into the vehicle, a car drove by and someone screamed
at me out of the window.

When I say they "screamed", I mean it.  The person shouted loudly, and with great exertion.  You would have thought I was murdering someone given the vehemence of their voice.

The person was bothered, personally offended---as if I had insulted their religion or favorite sports team.

But all they had to say was "Tie your shoelaces!".

Hello?  What's going on here? Is it a crime to leave your shoe-laces untied?
Does this threaten the morality of the young or is it going to cause an economic collapse?

Obviously, it does not.  (There is ZERO evidence for the so-called broken windows theory (sic) of crime prevention. ---zero, by the way means 0, or 0.000, or none, not any, zilch, nada, nic, kein, pas de, nul,  and so on...)

What kind of country is it where a citizen has nothing better to do than aggressively and loudly comment upon a fellow human being's manner of dress?

Shades of the Scarlet Letter.  This seems to be a new form of paranoia and fascism.

I know very well that adult citizens of the USA harbor all kinds of irrational fears about their children, but really my shoe laces are none of their business.

I expect someday to read that students at the local high school can be arrested (by a policeman) if they leave their shoelaces untied.

That is how sick and bizarre this country really is....

It appears that the citizens are imitating the oppressiveness of the government.
gmooh