TheSanSabaSongbird

You obviously know nothing about linguistics.

I'm not disputing your argument, I'm simply pointing out that Hexbear is basically a shit-storm of yammering cretins and unlettered buffoonish morons. What one makes of that fact is their own business. I just don't see how they are relevant to anything, regardless of how much hate they broadcast towards The West writ large.

If they account for more than half the "hate" towards Americans on Lemmy, fine, but no one is obliged to take their nonsense seriously.

They are not intellectually serious people and do not deserve to be viewed as such.

Agreed. Leaving should be a last resort. This is my fucking country and I'll be damned if I won't stay here and put up a fight for what I know it could be if we were more true to what we say we believe in. There are many hundreds of thousands of others like me, and maybe we lose in the end, but by God the fascists are going to know they were in a fight. Figuratively I mean. I don't see actual violence as playing any real role in guiding the future of the US.

Also, I live in the Pacific Northwest which is unlike anyplace else on the planet. I don't want to live anywhere else. I guess I could move to BC , but they probably don't want me and besides, I have an ex up there who I'd rather avoid.

TBF, Hexbear is packed full of degenerate bozos and the clinically insane. It's the intellectual equivalent of Wal Mart.

Also some of them are paid very well. Any of your unionized specialty trades can easily make $150k+ a year, especially if they're willing to travel or work a lot of OT. If you're single or married with no kids, you can pretty easily afford a big fancy truck like that.

If you're willing to travel that can be more than $50k a year in per diem pay, so in two years you can easily pay off a new trailer to live in and a nice truck to haul it with. I personally know people who have done exactly this. The catch is that you need to get into a good union and do your apprenticeship and generally have your shit together. It always surprises me that more people don't know this.

This is a strictly American thing

If by "American" you mean North American, then yeah, you are correct, because pickups are also super popular in Canada and Mexico. But I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean to specify the US which again, is incorrect. The fact that pickups are so popular in Canada and Mexico as well tells us that contrary to what I suspect you're trying to imply, there isn't some kind of special innate idiotic pickup truck gene that's unique to Americans and that instead, it's all about marketing.

After all, if marketing and advertising didn't work, it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry. What the big American car companies have done with amazing effectiveness is to make owning a pickup truck an intimate part of a lot of people's self-image. That's what you are arguing against and that's why it's nearly impossible to change anyone's mind about it.

How do they even do it? I know for a fact that a lot of them are not especially wealthy.

I wonder what other hugely unpopular positions they can poison themselves with. This is what minority rule looks like. The only way we stop this is by defeating Trump and reforming our democracy. Minorities should have enough power to protect themselves from oppression, but not so much that they can impose their views on the rest of the country. This is what's happening with the far right, which very much is a minority that's far out of step with mainstream American opinion on virtually everything.

Well the other team is SF, which if I had to guess is probably the right's most hated city in America. It must be galling to them that the 49ers are easily one of the winningest teams in NFL history.

You have the cucumber gene. It's rare, but if you have it there's a chemical taste to cucumbers that is absolutely repugnant. I have it too, which is how I know. It's also in watermelons, but at a much lower concentration.

The cucumber vs pickles one is wrong. There's a chemical in cucumbers that something like 1 in 50 people can taste (it's also in watermelons, though at a much lower concentration) and if you can taste it, it's horrible. Anyhow, something in the pickling process neutralizes it or changes it or whatever, so that's why I absolutely despise cucumbers but am totally cool with pickles. It has nothing to do with liking vinegar.

Edit; a quick Google reveals that it's "due to the presence of toxins like Cucurbitacins and Tetracyclic Triterpenoids in cucumbers." Again, the vast majority of people can't taste it, but for those who can, the taste is God awful. I can't even really eat something a cucumber has touched.

My point is that you won't make the changes you want by alienating working people. What part about this do you not understand?

There's a reason why working people are flocking to the authoritarian right and it has everything to do with this dismissive attitude on the left that basically tells them that they are unimportant, their issues don't matter, everything about their culture is stupid and evil.

And then you expect them to take you seriously, as if you somehow have their best interests in mind?

I am actively involved in my Union's leadership and I can tell you for a fact that what the far left in the US is doing and preaching is hugely unpopular among our rank and file membership.

You people want us to use the term "Latinx," for example, and most of our Latino and Latina membership has no idea WTF that's even supposed to mean, let alone the fact that it's extremely condescending to tell people how they should use their own language.

So keep doing your precious bullshit, but don't be surprised when you alienate working people and Trump wins another term.

I am warning you now, though I know it won't do any good.