Bush is like so stupid

...this was the graffiti message that greeted me on my morning walk through the redwoods of Mill Valley, California today (and no, I don't think it was written by the trees, although I'd completely understand if it was). Regardless of who wrote it and why this person had to do so in such a pristine, un-Bush-y environment, I was confronted by the sad fact that Californians, as present to the truth as they might be, just sound really dumb. Yesterday I had an incredibly insightful conversation with a very successful and intelligent woman who works in the natural food store by my house, and she was telling me about how she's been trying to convince her father in Kansas to get his 50 acres of hard-shelled pecan trees certified organic, because then he could sell them for nearly ten times their value as conventional nuts. Additionally, she went on about how Kansas growers, with all their production of soybeans, could easily localize their own fuel source for all their farming by creating biodiesel, and then cut loose from the corporate dominated monocropping of their landscape, diversify crop production, increase the nutritive value of their bio region, and create healthier communities and ecosystems. All the while, the conversation was punctuated with emphatics like "total" and "dude". Needless to say, her dad didn't buy into the promising possibilities of organic nuts.

I wonder if much of the country similarly tunes out when they hear such phrases as "yeah, like, totally, dude" which is simply an expression of sympathetic agreement, or my personal favorite, "it's all good", which actually refers to the strategic development of considering present events in a more holistic perspective. Are we ultimately just talking to ourselves here in California, and have we adopted the stupid American routine of expecting everyone to learn our language, all the while refusing to develop our comprehension of other tongues?