Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-10-2016, 04:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm a take no crap Republican voter. I've spent years battling with the more extreme partisans on your side. The majority of whom are around anymore You don't know extreme because you've never seen an extreme. What's extreme to you? An American who isn't afraid to call you out and get in your face isn't extreme based on my standards. If it's extreme, you don't go out or get around very much within America. Dude, I am a typical American raised in 1970's suburban culture. A culture with civic rules and moral standards.  An American who can relate to most Americans who can handle being around the use of bad words, open displays of anger and an occasional fight. Who are you? Where are you from? Do you live in a world full of blue cream puffs or the real world? A blue uppity world where swearing and open displays of anger are illegal for those who aren't liberal. REALITY IS WHAT REALITY IS BASED ON ONES EXPERIENCES AND KNOWLEDGE. THE REALITY IS YOU DON"T LIVE IN HEAVEN WHERE THE HEAVENLY VALUES EXIST. You don't like what I have to say to you or say to you in regards to your beliefs or views of other people and your views. Well, TFB, you live in America and America just reminded you clowns where you live. In my opinion, if you can handle anti-sentiment and dish it out then you can handle anti-black and brown as well. If not, you have a partisan issue that I do not have and an issue with convincing me that your any better than those than your always bitching about. I'd eliminate you and replace you with someone real. In short, if I offend, you fucked up and I will tell you/show where you fucked up. I've never applied a negative term that wasn't earned. Rational conversation requires people who handle negative comments and accept failures. How many posters here are capable of handling either one? I've never seen as many thin skinned people who can't take shit or criticism as I see on forums like these.

When I was young enough that someone might want to pick a fight with me, I had studied martial arts.  As I figured it, anyone immature and undisciplined enough to want to start a fight would be an unworthy opponent.  I found that if one was confident enough of this fact, it was trivially easy to avoid fights.

I'm from greater Boston, was a professional software engineer, and have gotten along with folks well enough that I have not and had no desire to hurt people.  I do not consider myself unusual in this.  Then again, most of my time in Boston was spent at Northeastern, MIT and Draper Labs, not in Roxbury or Southie.  There is Boston, and then there is Boston.

I'm currently in a role playing game group where most everyone but me is a veteran.  Surprise, surprise, they occasionally use pungent language.  I don't faint or get upset when it happens.  However, one of the veterans, the owner of the game store, tries to welcome children and their parents.  The store sells games appropriate for youth, tries to keep the ugly language down, as Jay's living to some extent depends on the store maintaining a family friendly reputation.  The tradition is, if someone uses salty language, a second person turns on a third person who hasn't said anything and rebukes at him.  It's a joke at one level, and no one is really upset, but everyone does acknowledge that we're in a civilized place and everyone should try to be civil.   We've had a few folk who have no interest in civility.  They don't last long in our gaming groups.  As I figure it, that's the way things ought to be.

The first week at work as a janitor for the old Bell System, the others based at the garage noted I didn't use foul language.  One of them predicted that this wouldn't last long.  Wrong.  Still going...  Yet, the language didn't bother me in the least.

I've been reading Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance's loving yet scathing description of the rural Scotts-Irish culture.  It provides a glimpse of sorts into an alternate culture.  One doesn't start a fight unless they insult your family, family is important, but it is OK to insult the other guy's family.  One never beat's one's wife unless she throws the first blow, then it's OK.  The book provides one perspective on a deplorable culture, a culture of poverty, prejudice, drugs and violence.  The author viewed Hillbilly culture as a trap to be escaped.  Not everyone sees it as a trap.  Not everyone tries to escape.  Some accept poverty, prejudice, drugs and violence as the norm.  Well, accept might not be the right word.  They take pride in being dysfunctional.

Sure, I wouldn't do well in a Rust Belt Hillbilly culture.  I'm doubtful that you would do well on Route 128 or in Silicone Valley.  We both grew into our own cultures, and might not be content living under a different set of assumptions among people who live in a different world that requires different values.

I don't expect to convince you that being deplorable is a bad thing.

But being deplorable, violent, abusive, dysfunctional, etc...  is not the only American culture.  The Hillbilly culture is one aspect of America, but one should not confuse this with Hillbilly Culture being America.  The Lockheed Aircraft facilities south of San Francisco properly fly bigger flags on top of higher flag poles than the average uneducated deplorable and proud hillbilly.  This is a metaphor for something or other.