Carpetbagger. Well, no offense, but were you born and raised here. If you were, fine. If not, then you my friend are a carpetbagger as well. And just how many people who live in NJ are born and raised? Come on now, NJ has as many people as it does because so many choose to transfer here as opposed to the least favorable alternatives, namely, the expenses of living in NYC and Philly.
As long as I live here, I will continue to try and change the place. But it is frustrating and I am not going to put rose color glasses on just because I live here. In other words, take a "well, I live here so it must be perfect, approach." I call it like (or as in my opinion) I see it.
As for me being an outsider, what constitutes an outsider? If I live here, aren't I an insider? I propose that perhaps you have lived in NJ for so long you are the one who has lost some objectivity especially since your arguments are highly ethnocentric.
Flip,
Yes I was born and raised here as was my father. His father before him came to NJ around 1900, so we have only been here a bit over 100 years. My distant ancestors hail from Massachusetts and New Hampshire where they got off the ship Elizabeth in 1634. My earliest connection to New Jersey (that I know of) was when my ancestor 1st Lt. Benjamin Kimball (1st New Hampshire Regiment) marched through my town during the "Retreat Across New Jersey" in November/December 1776 and again in January 1777 after the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. He was just travelling through with Washington's Army and didn't settle here. As a matter of fact, he never got back to New Hampshire either since he was killed by Indians during Sullivan's Indian Expedition in 1779. I do know more than a few people locally who can trace their New Jersey ancestry back to before the American Revolution.
I don't have a personal gripe with you and it is a free country so you can stay in NJ or leave, as is your wish. I however am a native New Jerseyan and despite its shortcomings and flaws, I am proud to live here in a place where more battles of the American Revolution were fought than any other state, where the lightbulb and phonograph were invented, where the first fully submersible submarine was built, the Colt revolver, the first drive in, the first American steam railroad, first National Historical Park, the oldest highway in America, first baseball game, first professional basketball game and where people like George Washington, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein etc. etc. lived worked and fought.
New Jersey is my home and will always be a part of me. Imagine if you will that I willingly came into your home to live and then told everyone who would listen that it sucked and was a filthy stinking hole. Even if I had some merit in saying so, how would you feel if I, as a virtual stranger, came in and did that ?
I agree with you on some of what you said. Many New Jerseyan's feel the same way and have the same frustrations. At least 45% of us are not stupid, we can see and have lived through what has happened here politically and socially and the last thing we need is someone else coming here and trumpeting every problem we have in the mistaken belief that we hadn't already noticed.