text: It would help considerably if they wouldn't come here just to brag about “how real” it is back home and imply or outright state we're just a bunch of passive-aggressive weanies.
  
  Maybe we native Pacific Northwesters have evolved to the point where we don't feel we have to be the center of attention, or to impress anyone, or to punctuate our interpersonal lives with arrogant demeanors or violent gestures and tones. The influx has become a raucous beauty pageant of people who will wear hundreds of dollars of petrochemicals while cutting checks to save the forests, who would scurry past the street kid getting beaten by three of his peers yet be ready to throw down the moment they think you deliberately scratched the paint on their Beemer.
  
  It's remarkably self-deluded, to be able to respect yourself and feel you are the vanguard for cultural and economic progress and be such a person.