Goddamn, I just came across this post in LA's Reddit and I don't think I've ever seen Los Angeles and the United States roasted so accurately and devastatingly. The state of our cities really should be a national embarrassment.
Yeah, hate to disappoint this individual but as someone who’s lived in basically every type of area but a major city or suburb (as in, extremely rural to less extremely rural to semi-rural to semi-urban) it does not get better. Meth is everywhere, cops are just as brutal (they just operate under the cover of darkness without nearly as much oversight, which is saying A LOT as there is almost none in major cities too). Sheriffs act like de facto warlords over their jurisdictions at times. Rural areas are great for robber barons (esp. landlords and franchise owners) as well, so it’s not like you escape the wealth inequality and everyone’s poor. It’s the wild west goddamn everywhere except maybe suburbs, because only prim and proper “upper middle class” (net worth varies state by state) salaried workers can hope to ever live in those areas, and cops love them (as long as they’re white). There is “still” rampant violence against BIPOC in these areas (still in quotes because it’s all a facet of the systematic apartheid that keeps those places wealthy). Amerikans are shitty pretty much everywhere, in different ways, because they’ve been socialized to be. Bystander effect, bootstrap-pulling, and I’ve-got-mine-fuck-you ideology are baked deep into the Amerikan psyche. And some of them are good people (just getting utterly fucked over).
An interesting phenomena I’ve been noticing is that the richer and whiter the area, the more Amerikan flags you see placed outside of peoples’ houses. The poorer and less white areas, less so.
Yeah, hate to disappoint this individual but as someone who’s lived in basically every type of area but a major city or suburb (as in, extremely rural to less extremely rural to semi-rural to semi-urban) it does not get better. Meth is everywhere, cops are just as brutal (they just operate under the cover of darkness without nearly as much oversight, which is saying A LOT as there is almost none in major cities too). Sheriffs act like de facto warlords over their jurisdictions at times. Rural areas are great for robber barons (esp. landlords and franchise owners) as well, so it’s not like you escape the wealth inequality and everyone’s poor. It’s the wild west goddamn everywhere except maybe suburbs, because only prim and proper “upper middle class” (net worth varies state by state) salaried workers can hope to ever live in those areas, and cops love them (as long as they’re white). There is “still” rampant violence against BIPOC in these areas (still in quotes because it’s all a facet of the systematic apartheid that keeps those places wealthy). Amerikans are shitty pretty much everywhere, in different ways, because they’ve been socialized to be. Bystander effect, bootstrap-pulling, and I’ve-got-mine-fuck-you ideology are baked deep into the Amerikan psyche. And some of them are good people (just getting utterly fucked over).
An interesting phenomena I’ve been noticing is that the richer and whiter the area, the more Amerikan flags you see placed outside of peoples’ houses. The poorer and less white areas, less so.