RebKell's Junkie Boards

[Luuuc]

No one who would make a meaningful improvement to that state of steady decline is ever going to be the POTUS

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Thanks for calling. I wait all night for calls like these.

[jammerbirdi]

[patsweetpat]

So, jammerbirdi, the country is a shithole— not compared to any previous time in our country’s history, nor compared to any other specific country on the planet today— but just compared to what you think this country COULD be?

Do I have that right?

[pilight]

The ever optimistic jammer thinks every country is a shithole

_________________
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[jammerbirdi]

[patsweetpat]

Okay, so then I guess my initial question to you still remains: our country is currently a shithole… compared to when? In your view, when (specifically) was this country NOT a shithole, compared to now? Gimme a non-shithole year for the USA.

[jammerbirdi]

I think you missed the point of my messy bedroom analogy. It was a rejection of your line of argument. No one is required to compare anything here and now in the US to anything else in order to claim that our country is a shithole.

This country is this country and it is a unique society, with a unique history, government, and economy. We have been a very prosperous nation with at one time a very high standard of living. I DID however, mostly as to not come off as completely obstinate, but also because it is a quite valid and very stark contrast, offer that I would and AM comparing the state of the country now with what it once was.

I don’t know how to make any of this any clearer. I mean, I considered rhetorically and graphically, with graphic images, stating the theory of my case that the country is a shithole. But, AGAIN, as I said, we have entered a moment in time when intelligent people are no longer agreeing on the most basic of facts. So to make my case to someone who really doesn’t see what I see and what so many others see has gone south in the US is not something I’m inclined to waste my time on.

I don’t know if people are hung up on the figure of speech ‘shithole’. Did that set you off? Maybe because Trump used it? Good lord I hope that’s not the level people are on. It’s just an expression, a figure of speech, that existed long before Donald Trump.

The quality of life in this country has deteriorated greatly for all but the more affluent in the more affluent parts of the country. .Is that better? And if even those people aren’t either seeing or feeling the quality of life decline then they truly are privileged. The working and lower middle classes have been bled dry (sorry, another figure of speech) by the more affluent by decades of wage stagnation, loss of health benefits, busting of unions, complete employment sectors of the economy disappearing overseas and an ever rising cost of living.

But there are many more more horrific examples that I haven’t touched on. And I hope I don’t have to in a thread that’s supposed to be about the upcoming election.

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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[patsweetpat]

Assuming jammer is not gonna commit to naming a specific prior time period in which America was better/greater (or not a “shithole”), I’m just gonna generally note that aging human beings like ourselves seem to have a natural pre-programmed impulse to romanticize how things were in some hazy, non-specific “back then” period, relative to today. It’s not a new impulse, though current technologies like social media and the ideological silo-ization of news delivery allows us to indulge that impulse to extreme levels.

But in almost (though not necessarily *every*) objectively measurable way, the median American citizen is better off now than he or she was at any point in the past. And that’s no less true for American citizens from historically-marginalized populations.

Of course, some rando on a message board (i.e. me) saying the above is no match for the power of the afformentioned nostalgic impulse, especially once said impulse has been supercharged by Facebook or Fox News. So I’m really just wasting everyone’s time right now. Most especially mine. For that I apologize.

[jammerbirdi]

[jammerbirdi]

[jammerbirdi]

You know what’s funny? But not actually funny. Is you’ve got millennials and gen z’ers CRYING about their economic struggles right now and how it is impossible for so many of them to keep their heads above water with minimum wage jobs or service or gig jobs with NO healthcare or benefits.

And they are BLASTING boomers saying WE don’t understand that they don’t have the kind of more fair employment economy that we came up in.

Check out this PYT. https://x.com/financialphys/status/1746588549355327696?s=46&t=mZ-Mo4lgJ4IlCoxTM82C2g

Uh, hello. You can’t have it both ways. This is what so many of us have been saying for years now. What they DONT understand though is that those great times for American workers rapidly came to an end during the Reagan administration. And today many boomers are having to work till they drop in drug stores or Walmart for $7.50 an hour. And if they can’t they’re cutting their pills into thirds.

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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[pilight]

The 80s are not the time Boomers came up in. That's Gen X that got screwed.

_________________
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[patsweetpat]

jammer, back in your vaunted 1977...

*The U.S. unemployment rate (6.4%) was almost 1.8x higher than it is today (3.7%). The unemployment rate for Black people (14.0%) was 2.7x higher than it is today (5.2%).

*The U.S. rate of inflation (6.5%) was almost 2x higher than it is today (3.4%).

*The percentage of Americans with no health insurance (13%) was 1.7x higher than it is today (7.9%).

*The U.S.'s infant mortality rate (13.9 per 1,000 live births) was 2.6x higher than it is today (5.3 per 1,000 live births).

*The US's murder rate (8.8 per 100,000 people) was 1.6x higher than it is today (5.4 per 100,000 people).

*The median Black household earned 34% less annually ($34,950) than it does today ($53,500)... note that both figures are in today's inflation-adjusted dollars.

*Same-sex intercourse was illegal in the majority of US states. Same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 US states today.

*Only 35% of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Today it's at 94%.

The above are objective, statistical facts, jammer. So yes, I *do* find it possible that oldies like us might be over-idealizing 1977 ("A place where NO ONE had financial insecurity or envy"), just as I find it simultaneously possible that zoomers on TikTok might lack a full grasp on the state of this nation in the decades preceding their births.

None of the above is to say that America has no problems today. It does! Nor is it to say that no folks are suffering today. They are! You *should* demand better! I should too! We all should!

We just shouldn't delude ourselves regarding how things used to be.

(P.S.: I should note that the median hourly wage in 1979 was $4.44. So if you were earning $7/hr. within one year of your 1977 hiring at that mill: congratulations! You were getting paid 1.6x the median U.S. wage! That might might help explain why you look back on that time so fondly, jammer. By definition, you were one of the lucky ones, earning significantly more than most American workers did.)

[Howee]

[jammerbirdi]

This is why I resisted providing you, pat, with a place or a time when things were better than they are now. Because I knew you would pull up statistics to counter my claim that the country is a shithole. A shit hole compared to what, jammer? A shithole compared to where and when? OH, a shithole compared to what YOU think it should be, jammer?

YES on that last point. It's KEY to understanding my use of the word shithole and why I think it's a critically important factor at play in our politics at every level right now.

It's a shithole because I call it a shithole and that's my subjective assessment of the state of the country. You can lap up your statistics and satisfy yourself that the country is NOT a shithole according to someone else's viewpoint using that word but it doesn't erase or affect my perspective and my judgment.

And those statistics invalidate NOTHING that I've said. Here are some factors that I'm not going to bother to qualify by pulling up statistics.

The destruction of the manufacturing blue collar unionized working class base in this country which has been replaced by low wage service jobs and now a gig employment sector neither providing health insurance or other benefits once enjoyed by a vast sector of the American workforce.

The destruction of countless towns and small cities with thriving and safe downtowns full of locally owned businesses run by so called pillars of those communities that provided Americans with COMMUNITY. I come from one of those places. It is a SHITHOLE now. As is the once quaint and thriving town across the river and countless others in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and on and on. Most of downtown Aliquippa has now been bulldozed. The once thriving community it once was is now ancient American history like so many other towns and small cities in this country.

You can't come from a place like that and not recognize how widespread this collapse of American small towns and communities is and is the destruction of an all important sector of the American economy and the trajectory of the destruction of this equally all important societal base has been repeated tens of thousands of times across the country. WE SEE it maybe a lot clearer than others because we recognize that something that was once there is gone.

The fallout of that has been devastating to the health of the American society. You have to have a SENSE and the SENSIBILITY (apparently) to recognize these things for what they are and what they are doing to the people of this country. The oxycontin scourge that killed and otherwise destroyed so many lives. Now the fentanyl crisis that is doing the same. The spread of homeless drug addicted and otherwise mentally ill from California, where it is now impacting everyone who lives here, to almost EVERY major city in the country where it is likewise impacting the lives of everyone who lives in those cities.

Let's stop there. What all of those homeless encampments LOOKS like to those of us who aren't homeless and who are otherwise productive or employed. And our children. How that impacts people's perspectives on the horizons of their own lives. How they feel about the society they live in. How we all have to tune out the societal destruction that nevertheless is eating away at most everyone living in these cities on some level.

Yeah some of this shit is statistically quantifiable and some of it is a HUMAN SPEAKING about what is WRONG about the country he is living in. Statistics cited or not, what I'm saying is VALID. Calling the country a shithole is a VALID statement.

Look at San Francisco. Look at the destruction that occurred there of what was once America's most beautiful city. All the stores on Market Street are CLOSED. Commercial real estate has collapsed entirely downtown. Homelessness which is characterized by drug addicts and encampments is the urban landscape there.

Los Angeles. What aren't you seeing, pal? Do you accept it? Do you understand why it is happening. Why it is allowed to happen? Do you know? Do you care?

You can find much the same in Philadelphia, Chicago, St Louis, Houston, and so many other major cities across the country. We have SUB third world conditions in so many places in America today. Did we NEVER have third world conditions in the country prior to the present? Of course we did. Does that have any bearing on how we should be thinking about the present and what we should be doing about it?

Let's talk about LA. Have you NOT witnessed a disintegration of the societal fabric and the overall quality of life here in the last five to 15 years? Is it not OUTRAGEOUS to you?

What does all this say to YOU about this country? What is says to me is the place has become a shithole. It's VISIBLE and is verifiable by opening our eye and allowing ourselves to witness it. I'm sorry. Comparing my perspective that it is a shithole to anything other than what it is by use of statistics is actually tone deaf and offensive.

What's YOUR case? You say we SHOULD want change. This is an election year and this is an election year thread. I am demanding change. I'm demanding corrective action be taken on behalf of the American people in this thread and during this election year. What are we supposed to be talking about other than the state of the country we're living in and what is supposed to be done about it?

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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[patsweetpat]

We seem to be talking past each other, jammer, and it doesn't appear to be a very worthwhile use of our time. I'll leave you as you were.

[pilight]

I don't know why you're surprised jammer wants someone to Make America Great Again. It's a common feeling amongst Boomers. It is unusual to want to return to the Carter stagflation years.

In any event, the federal minimum wage is hardly relevant these days. Barely 1% of workers are minimum wage and almost all are part timers earning spare change, not people trying to make a living on that pittance. That's very unlike the late 70s, when 15% of workers were making minimum wage and many of them were actually trying live on it.

_________________
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[jammerbirdi]

You're so funny, pilight.

You know I love you, don't you? From day one. I said, THAT dude... is someone I want to hang out with.

Not saying I shouldn't have my head examined.

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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17

[Howee]

Thus far, I've read enough valid arguments both ways re: What Is/Is Not a Shithole Country. TONS of subjectivity, but whatever....Jammer, it sounds like your life experience has each foot in a vastly different-but-shitty scenario: Rust Belt Aliquippa or LA. I have family in both scenes, but I'VE never lived in either extreme. I currently live in a town of 14K that has terrific schools, excellent health care, low crime, etc. Within short driving distances, there are tony new developments, where Gen-whatevers live in grand homes they can work from, earning 6 figures easily. But I also see/know the dark underbelly of nearby cities. The context of life experience certainly shapes our opinions. But....

[jammerbirdi]

[jammerbirdi]

[Howee]

[Ex-Ref]

DeSantis drops out and endorses Trump.

If "None of the Above" was on the ballot, it would win in a landslide victory.

There is nobody running, or not running, that I'd feel good about being in the WH.

NObody.

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"Women are judged on their success, men on their potential. It’s time we started believing in the potential of women." —Muffet McGraw

“Thank you for showing the fellas that you've got more balls than them,” Haley said, to cheers from the crowd.

[toad455]

DeSantis probably disappears once he's no longer governor of Florida. Adios DeSatan!! Of course he's trying to kiss a$$ to Trump to be his VP.

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LET'S GO LIBERTY!!!!!!

Twitter: @TBRBWAY

[StevenHW]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/22/michael-ramirez-cartoon-ron-desantis-donald-trump/

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"The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine." -- George Bernard Shaw