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Don't judge them too harshly. If everybody surrounding you starts talking about how Portland turned into a shithole, you'd start eventually believing it, too. I know people that live 20 km South of San Francisco, who claimed they would not come see me in town when I was visiting because it was too dangerous. They were baffled not only that I walked everywhere, but that I survived the ordeal unscathed.

Propaganda is strangely powerful. I still remember the run-up to the Iraq War, when Bush et al. were talking about weapons of mass destruction and everybody believed them. I thought to myself: if the Iranians are not concerned about Iraqi WMDs, and they are sworm enemies and right next to each other, why should anyone else be?

How fucking dumb are some of these Americans to believe that shit.

I've lived here most of my life and knew it was bad but had no idea just how bad it was until Trump 1.0. Then covid-19 happened and it was a real eye opener for many of us. Now it's not just willful ignorance but a deep-seated dedication to remaining ignorant at all costs.

It's easy to believe someone who tells you what you want to hear.

Including the president, king of dumb.

How fucking dumb are some of these Americans to believe that shit.

You see where we're at now...

Really fucking dumb.

They’re told day after day for hours on end that all cities are dangerous shitholes. It’s part of the right wing propaganda to keep this a cultural war instead of the class war is should be.

It could also be a setup to treat city dwellers as other than human because they tend to be Democrats.

One of those things where it's difficult to talk about because conservatives go wild with anything bad about a city in a blue state. A blue city in a red state and they'd have to look up the party association of the city council members and mayor so until they're widely known as a blue city, they don't get attention.

Portland is nice. It's quiet. Things close early. COVID hit Portland and Seattle like a freight train. So there was about a 2 year period where the homeless were a major issue, still a nicer place to live than most red communicaties you drive through. For how bad downtown Seattle and near the water Portland got, drive like 10 minutes away from the dense part of the city and it's quiet suburbs.

The thing about poor communities along the west coast is that these days, yes people are poor and desperate but go to poor communities in like Arkansas, Indiana, Tenessee, Louisiana. It's a world of difference. Like east Portland scares suburbanites and then I drive through to grab something I wanted to eat and it just looks like an average suburb where people aren't paying landscapers to keep everything aesthetic.

It's an example to me where people visit the US from almost anywhere in the world and be like, "even the poor people are rich." And it's about how people manage to have these comparative to their countries: big houses, expensive phones, multiple cars that are pretty big too, a substantial front and backyard

Ya there were problems with homeless people setting up barrel fires for warmth/etc and those getting out of control. Homeless people occasionally posting up dumping all sorts of whatever in residential streets. Occasional hyper aggressive homeless that's a danger to others surrounding them. But peak COVID was 4-5 years ago. Portland is back to having the common large enough city homeless problem every large enough city has and it's back to being a relatively quiet sleepy city.

The main knock on Portland is the passive agressive racism that comes with being very close to a mono-color city and the denial from people that racism could be a problem in Portland especially not from themselves a vocal leftist. Better than cities that don't try. Also I'd say there's an odd classism in Portland similar to like Paris, France. Intersection of leftist rhetoric but you got to play up your rhetoric and have the correct occupation (and color though people try not to be racist but people in Portland don't live around very many non-whites. They see them at restaurants) or else get weird treatment.

Portland'ers treat non-white people with the concern of a terminally online social leftist who tries to be culturally sensitive by watching tourism videos of other countries and trying to connect very awkwardly like - I love rice. I know how to use chopsticks. I really enjoy the Djembe. I have a mortar and pestle (big smile and knudge on their shoulder), a molcajete. You're native, I did my genology a year ago and I'm 1/16th Cherokee - I'm on the rolls - Thanksgiving is so awkward isn't it? Look at all my Buddhist prayer beads and urns and drums and rugs and paintings and incense and ...