‘... Troy is an exurb of St. Louis, the city with the highest crime rate in the United States. Portland? Portland has the 62nd highest crime rate of any city in the United States, even with all them liberal policies what so frightened the Huckinses. Oh, and St. Louis only has about a third of the population of Portland...’
All things of course which the NYT piece could have deigned to mention hahahahah I crack myself up.
OP nails the false equivalence exactly. And it ain’t just dumb as a bag of hammers NYT pieces. I hear this kind of utter fucking bullshit from people who should know better in the wild all too often. Oh, we’re ‘polarised’... But surely the left is also at fault.
Fuck the hell off. Yes, you’re ‘polarised’. That’s because those who give a shit want those who’ve been excluded to be treated decently, and those on the right want someone to exclude, and so want to stop them. The equivalence, here? None. Absolutely fucking none.
As someone who spent twenty years in a small town, there's plenty of crime in small places, it's just committed by people who don't look as scary to George and Martha.
Living in a town of 4500, my car was regularly rifled - every couple of months. Now I live very near the city centre in a city of a million people, and it's been rifled once in eight years, and nothing stolen.
We also have plenty of homeless and drug use, pop. 20,000. Rural areas for some reason are more trusting and leave their doors unlocked and stuff (including keys) in their cars...then they're surprised when someone steals it. We came from a big city many years ago. Car and house always locked.
I never left keys in the car but I did leave it unlocked so the windows wouldn’t get broken when I lived in a small town.it got to be pointless locking ‘em.
I felt "unsafe" in Missouri, old hippie that I am. And I like Tennessee greatly.
Also in all states (probably) incidental use of agricultural equipment is exempt from most rules, although display of reflective safety placards is encouraged.
In fairness, there are two sides here. One is a family oppressed by absurd republican laws that humiliate their child and make healthcare impossible. The other side are absurd people who don’t want to help homelessness, but don’t want to look at it either. They want American flags waving everywhere, hyper-patriotism and maybe even mandatory flag raising! They want to rub elbows with the old-school white folk, who reminisce wistfully about a time when blacks stayed fearfully in their lane, you could freely use satisfying slurs without consequences and boys had weeners and played the football and girls took a husband right after high school graduation and produced 4-6 children to work the farm. In my case, I actually love the idea of small town life and living in the country. But we can still try to help the less fortunate, respect lgbtq+ people and embrace equality.
Another supreme post, Robyn. I keep saying this, practically daily, and I know it's repetitive, but it's your own fault, Robyn, for being so insightful, persuasive and articulate, with great values to boot!
Ta, Robyn. There are plenty of homeless people in NYC. One of the things we need most is MICA housing (mentally ill/chemically addicted). There's some here, but not nearly enough to go around.
Thank you for breaking down the bullshit in this stupid article. There was another thing that bothered me as I read the thing. The couple who fled Portland because they were so persecuted by the woke, also moved to Missouri to be closer to their grandchildren. They weren't just leaving their home and heading into the unknown. They moved to be closer to family, as many seniors choose to do. This fact was mentioned, but minimized in the article. The couple came off as two elderly cranks, who couldn't admit their real reason for moving, but had to blame the city of Portland
The family who left behind their own families and friends to protect their son weren't bitter and hateful. They were sad to be forced to make such a drastic change, but working hard to ensure the best possible outcome for their son, and make the best of their new community.
The article would have been much better if the writers had made the slightest attempt to show that people who move from blue state to red state are not remotely similar to people who move from red state to blue state. Instead the writers bent over backwards to try to portray the families and their motivations as different, but equivalent.
Great post Robyn. But, as a kid who grew up in the PNW, I was gobsmacked by the state of homelessness in Portland. It did have the look of a city that didn’t give a shit about the homeless in its midst.
Mr Moonshine is a realtor who sells homes the Portland area (the whole big metro super soup from Salem to Vancouver). He regularly meets retiree-age sellers who say they’re moving to a red state because they don’t like how the area has changed. Bye then!
Here, we can live our queeriest rainbow drag sparkle organic sustainable renewable compassionate lives, and we just blend right in like the most averagely boring people in the room.
So, welcome new neighbors who aren’t so cranky about pronouns and land acknowledgment.
When I moved from Canada to the US I certainly was surprised by how many US flags I saw hanging in front of people's houses because that's not really a thing in Canada. But to be actually offended by that? Yeah, I call BS.
Well, if you are used to living on a block where people of different races and nationalities have been living in peace for decades with no flags and suddenly a huge US flag appears on a 2nd floor blacony, and it is left out there all night with a light on it.
And then one day the power goes out one evening and the resident of that house comes out with a flashlight and starts shining it in the bushes all around the house - I presume looking for reds under the flowerbeds.
THEN tell us we don't have a good reason for not flag-waving in this country.
It's just that it is huge, and in my opinion very obnoxioius, but that does not explain the flashlight and searching all around the house as if Antifa turned off all the power to plan an attack on him.
An oversized American flag left out all the time, big-ass truck in the driveway, security lights blazing all night, and signs saying things like, "Can you run faster than my doberman?" or "Protected by Smith and Wesson". When you see these things you can be 99% sure that a right-winger lives there. I gotta wonder, we lefties and minorities are under far more (real) threats and you don't see that on our homes, so why are THEY so damn scared all the time?
Because they wouldn't hesitate to harm someone they don't like, or who has views opposite theirs. And they don't have the empathy to recognize that other people think differently from them, so they assume we would do violence as easily as they would.
‘... Troy is an exurb of St. Louis, the city with the highest crime rate in the United States. Portland? Portland has the 62nd highest crime rate of any city in the United States, even with all them liberal policies what so frightened the Huckinses. Oh, and St. Louis only has about a third of the population of Portland...’
All things of course which the NYT piece could have deigned to mention hahahahah I crack myself up.
OP nails the false equivalence exactly. And it ain’t just dumb as a bag of hammers NYT pieces. I hear this kind of utter fucking bullshit from people who should know better in the wild all too often. Oh, we’re ‘polarised’... But surely the left is also at fault.
Fuck the hell off. Yes, you’re ‘polarised’. That’s because those who give a shit want those who’ve been excluded to be treated decently, and those on the right want someone to exclude, and so want to stop them. The equivalence, here? None. Absolutely fucking none.
Well, PDX just got fractionally better.
Yeah, but mine just got fractionally worse :( At least they're still about 40 minutes away from me.
As someone who spent twenty years in a small town, there's plenty of crime in small places, it's just committed by people who don't look as scary to George and Martha.
Living in a town of 4500, my car was regularly rifled - every couple of months. Now I live very near the city centre in a city of a million people, and it's been rifled once in eight years, and nothing stolen.
Yeah it’s super common for rural areas to have higher rates of crime per capital than urban places. Sure is true here.
We also have plenty of homeless and drug use, pop. 20,000. Rural areas for some reason are more trusting and leave their doors unlocked and stuff (including keys) in their cars...then they're surprised when someone steals it. We came from a big city many years ago. Car and house always locked.
I never left keys in the car but I did leave it unlocked so the windows wouldn’t get broken when I lived in a small town.it got to be pointless locking ‘em.
It's because of shit like this that I'm ending my NYT subscription. I actually planned to do it last year, but missed the date to stop the renewal.
I’d like to welcome the Nobles to Minnesota. I hope Julien is happy in his new school!
Portlander here - the American flag is one of the flags I fly from my porch on occasion and not once has anyone given me shit about it.
I felt "unsafe" in Missouri, old hippie that I am. And I like Tennessee greatly.
Also in all states (probably) incidental use of agricultural equipment is exempt from most rules, although display of reflective safety placards is encouraged.
In fairness, there are two sides here. One is a family oppressed by absurd republican laws that humiliate their child and make healthcare impossible. The other side are absurd people who don’t want to help homelessness, but don’t want to look at it either. They want American flags waving everywhere, hyper-patriotism and maybe even mandatory flag raising! They want to rub elbows with the old-school white folk, who reminisce wistfully about a time when blacks stayed fearfully in their lane, you could freely use satisfying slurs without consequences and boys had weeners and played the football and girls took a husband right after high school graduation and produced 4-6 children to work the farm. In my case, I actually love the idea of small town life and living in the country. But we can still try to help the less fortunate, respect lgbtq+ people and embrace equality.
Another supreme post, Robyn. I keep saying this, practically daily, and I know it's repetitive, but it's your own fault, Robyn, for being so insightful, persuasive and articulate, with great values to boot!
Ta, Robyn. There are plenty of homeless people in NYC. One of the things we need most is MICA housing (mentally ill/chemically addicted). There's some here, but not nearly enough to go around.
This. It's not just affordable housing, though that is part of it. It's supportive housing, because a lot of people just need a little help.
Thank you for breaking down the bullshit in this stupid article. There was another thing that bothered me as I read the thing. The couple who fled Portland because they were so persecuted by the woke, also moved to Missouri to be closer to their grandchildren. They weren't just leaving their home and heading into the unknown. They moved to be closer to family, as many seniors choose to do. This fact was mentioned, but minimized in the article. The couple came off as two elderly cranks, who couldn't admit their real reason for moving, but had to blame the city of Portland
The family who left behind their own families and friends to protect their son weren't bitter and hateful. They were sad to be forced to make such a drastic change, but working hard to ensure the best possible outcome for their son, and make the best of their new community.
The article would have been much better if the writers had made the slightest attempt to show that people who move from blue state to red state are not remotely similar to people who move from red state to blue state. Instead the writers bent over backwards to try to portray the families and their motivations as different, but equivalent.
For fun I sometimes listen to true crime podcasts. It seems like a lot of serial killers like Missouri and Kansas.
Well, to be fair, there's not very much to do there....
I’m so sick of the NYT both sides-ism
It’s frog-marching us straight into fascism.
Great post Robyn. But, as a kid who grew up in the PNW, I was gobsmacked by the state of homelessness in Portland. It did have the look of a city that didn’t give a shit about the homeless in its midst.
should come to richmond
They solved their problem by rousting them all out and letting them not exist at all. Well, where people might see them
Don't care so much about abandoned warehouses or under interstate bridges, so long as no one in a car has to look at em
Portland's homeless population problem could vanish almost overnight if they could get themselves selected as the host of the next Olympics.
Mr Moonshine is a realtor who sells homes the Portland area (the whole big metro super soup from Salem to Vancouver). He regularly meets retiree-age sellers who say they’re moving to a red state because they don’t like how the area has changed. Bye then!
Here, we can live our queeriest rainbow drag sparkle organic sustainable renewable compassionate lives, and we just blend right in like the most averagely boring people in the room.
So, welcome new neighbors who aren’t so cranky about pronouns and land acknowledgment.
When I moved from Canada to the US I certainly was surprised by how many US flags I saw hanging in front of people's houses because that's not really a thing in Canada. But to be actually offended by that? Yeah, I call BS.
Well, if you are used to living on a block where people of different races and nationalities have been living in peace for decades with no flags and suddenly a huge US flag appears on a 2nd floor blacony, and it is left out there all night with a light on it.
And then one day the power goes out one evening and the resident of that house comes out with a flashlight and starts shining it in the bushes all around the house - I presume looking for reds under the flowerbeds.
THEN tell us we don't have a good reason for not flag-waving in this country.
Maybe it's they are making sure that they don't break the law, or at least the flag code, by make sure that there's light on it after sundown.
It's just that it is huge, and in my opinion very obnoxioius, but that does not explain the flashlight and searching all around the house as if Antifa turned off all the power to plan an attack on him.
Yeah, fuck em.
An oversized American flag left out all the time, big-ass truck in the driveway, security lights blazing all night, and signs saying things like, "Can you run faster than my doberman?" or "Protected by Smith and Wesson". When you see these things you can be 99% sure that a right-winger lives there. I gotta wonder, we lefties and minorities are under far more (real) threats and you don't see that on our homes, so why are THEY so damn scared all the time?
Because they wouldn't hesitate to harm someone they don't like, or who has views opposite theirs. And they don't have the empathy to recognize that other people think differently from them, so they assume we would do violence as easily as they would.