This one hits a little too close to home for me. :-P

*If he's so good, *why* are you here?*

For me, the viewpoint is, if you're in a pays blanc, and it's better than home, you should want home to be just like a pays blanc. In other words, copy the white people and be secular and educated so you and your people can be a pays blancs too.

But I'm the child of foreigners that looks in awe of everything in the first world.

It's weird, Haitians have a weird "the Americans messed up our country, but yeah that dude is corrupt" vibe, so I don't think you'd see the same degree of support for a Haitian leader. If he's so good, *why* are you here?

FWIW, Haiti doesn't allow for dual citizenship, so a lot of Haitians held onto their passports for years. 9/11 and various changes to Medicare qualifications during the 1990s made *many* Haitians sign up for citizenship*. Oddly, to think back to my childhood, it's interesting to note that my family discussed American politics despite not being able to vote for years. Mind you, they never went to the embassy to vote in Haitian elections either.

*My maternal grandmother wanted her citizenship ASAP in the 1970s. Mom became a citizen almost 30 years after arriving in the late 1960s.

Organic 2% milk is $1.50 less at BJs compared to anywhere else. We buy a half gallon on a weekly basis. The membership pays for itself when combined with eggs and some cold cuts. :-)

I'd love to try Aldi, but it's near the shopping mall which means it's too far and too annoying to reach for weekly shopping, so Lidl wins.

Pet Theories:

1) It's relatively easy to fly back home and stay "Turkish" with cheap flights on Wizz Air, and WhatsApp chat groups.

2) Erdogan lifting Kemalist secular cap allowed religion to blossom which means any immigrants from his era are more likely to be wedded to their faith.

3) The Turkish economy improved to the point that the smart fraction types and the mid level types don't leave anymore. You either get the activist/artist types, or the dudes from "the back" who are poor and looking for the short cut to success via Germany.

TIL that Egypt grows potatoes.

FWIW, a local supermarket chain was taken over by Lidl in an attempt to beat Aldi to Long Island. It was *very* unpopular with locals due to the loss of a deli counter that sold Boars Head products.

The bagged salads, brautwurst, raclette cheese, sliced chorizo, and German potato mix ensure that I keep coming back. Otherwise, fruits are meh and the freezer containing the chicken seems to have a weird smell. Salmon is *great*, but there's only boneless steak. I'm feeding two people in my household so I can be a bit more picky in terms of paying more for nicer stuff at other places.

With that said, Shop Rite (local chain), WalMart, and BJs are where 90% of my food shopping is done.

Wait, candidates, or is First Communion done differently there? It’s basically a April/May thing here.

Also, do you guys have big parties, or we French Caribbeans the only weirdos that do this?

In contrast, my parents' generation came to the States just as Vietnam was slowly winding down, so they missed out on that, and they were too old for GW I. My cousin was out of the Marines by the time Iraq started up as well. A lot of Haitians from that era were unlikely to see the military as an option, especially since the bourgeois types were unlikely to rocket their way to officer status like back home, and the homless black veterans on drugs literally scared people into wondering what goes on in the military.

Now my niece and another cousin are DoD property.

It's weird, I've known you for over a decade, and somehow never made the connection until now.

Which leads one to ask if your dad was involved in the first Gulf War?

FWIW, my niece is currently overseas as DoD property so the positives tend to outweigh my fears of the negative for her. IOW, there's a reason I pray for peace and prudent leadership...

I think somebody noted that DoD was basically the easiest way to live like a European as an American citizen...except for the whole military controls your life part. Otherwise, you had cheap healthcare, daycare, and excellent racially integrated schools.

...but wouldn't that be true of Millennials? FWIW, a decent chunk of Gen Y is composed of siblings of younger Millennials in some cases.

Meanwhile, my Catholic school had the updated versions of Apple IIes with color screens, educational games, and Logo programming for a surcharge over the tuition. No internet connection as this was years away from AOL being common knowledge.

*Personally, it's Millennial men that don't seem like real men to me.

I've known several Millennial dudes who are in their 30s, never married,

and don't really know where they're going in life.*

I suspect that I'm the unmarried, never had a real girlfriend, childless 40 year old example of this. As I've told Stella before, I still don't feel like an adult and still feel like a kid in relation to the older adults in my family, and I suspect a lot of us in this situation feel the same way, but we're probably unlikely to really change our situations.

FWIW, these men to be anti-feminist because feminism leads to female independence and avoidance of them for "alphas" and non-white men. So if you take away feminism, the implication is that they'll remain chaste virgins who will be forced to date them* and magically find them attractive with zero ability to compare them with previous lovers solving whatever awkward inadequacy issues that they have.

There's a reason why the more extreme ones like Islam for it's stronger anti-feminist viewpoints while also permitting divorce and polygamy.

*They assume "he has a middle class job* would somehow make them attractive if in peak 1950s fantasy land. Meanwhile, they'd probably still be in envy of the women that the men with more money/charisma could attract.

Assuming you weren't skipped ahead, you did this what I was in first grade in the extreme late 1980s so that's *amazing* to me.

I didn't play around with the internet for at least another six years.

...they don't have the GMail app on their phone, but they have WhatsApp?

OTOH, you're admittedly in a rural area so maybe it's different there...

OTOH, the fun narrative buster is the fact that Mark Rutte's successor in the VVD is Turkish and seems to have more moderate politics, but is potentially willing to support him in a coalition government.

At best, you'll get the "he's a sell-out" comments in regards to his maternal ancestry. For all intents and purposes, he comes across as a white guy to most people, and as a reflection of that, he's not going to see himself as a member of non-white group that would need protection from his party's political manifesto.