Damn kind of thought this would be an uplifting post.
If the “melting pot” actually does it’s thing and reduces how many differences we see between ourselves and others, then… maybe kinda good?
The melting pot is no longer fashionable idea. You’re a racist if you suggest immigrants should assimilate by today’s standards.
I know. And it blows
Agreed. To me, the root the issue with American politics, is that everyone wants free lunch. Everyone wants the benefits, but doesn’t want to pay the costs that come with those benefits.
Like with housing. People think it’s too expensive, but nobody wants their own houses value to go down. And if you point that out those are mutually exclusive, they tell you you’re an asshole. They start spouting off insane nonsense about how it must be possible, but someone ‘evil’ is preventing it. They just go to magical thinking rather than admit any collective responsibility.
You should be proud to be human.
Not to be born within some imaginary line drawn on a map, in an area that later got “cleaned” as much as possible of everyone else not speaking the same language or worshipping the same god.
Pride comes with accomplishment.
Being human, being American, being male, being white, these are all accidents of birth. There’s no reason to take pride in any of it.
Bring born in to a disaffected class of people, being gay, or a person of color, and overcoming that adversity to any measure of success, that merits some pride.
But just being human? Anybody can do that.
Being American isn’t necessarily an accident of birth.
Almost everything about the situation you were born in to is an accident of birth.
As in, you had no hand in it. Your parents may or may not have had some say in the matter, but for the vast majority of Americans, they didn’t choose to be an American either. Any more than they chose the color of their skin or the texture of their hair.
If you’re the child of immigrants, or an immigrant yourself, then sure, be proud of the accomplishment. It was hard and they (or you) earned the right to be here. But for most of us, it’s just where we happened to be from.
There is this video about some American traveling and complaining that everywhere he goes people look at him with disgust and disdain. So there is that.
Curious: As a Chinese American, is it technically possible for me to just… pretend to be a Chinese National (I’m talking about after getting through borders and putting away the US passport), and fake a Chinese accent when speaking English… and like “conceal” my American identity? (I can speak basic Mandarin btw)
Is it actually better? Since I heard that Chinese Tourists sometimes get hated on too…
Or since I speak Cantonese too, I could pretend to be a Hong Konger…
Or I could pretend to be from Taiwan… most people probably can’t tell anyways, its just the same Mandarin to them
hmmm 🤔
American and Chinese tourists are the two most hated tourists and it’s not even fucking close.
American because they are loud annoying impolite and destroy shit
Chinese because they are ignorant disgusting foul and destroy shit
Uh, we have the best military, the best medicine, the best universities, broadest cultural reach… etc.
Life in liberal blue progressive areas, is highly desirable and really great, but it’s very expensive.
It’s just that you aren’t getting access to any of it unless you’re part of our social elite. If you’re in the bottom 90% of the economic status, you are only ever going to get access to the middling/average stuff.
You have the most well financed military. Jury’s out on whether it is the best.
By what metric? It’s far better trained and equipped than most any other military, especially elite units.
Unless you’re talking about how the Finnish army whooped us in some exercises, on their home turf in winter, at which their entire nation is super-specialized in? I’m sure if you stuck the Finnish army in Florida for an exercise they’d be the ones whooped.
The point of that exercise was to ID training deficiencies for Arctic operations.
We are the very best arms maker on Earth!
The USA produces more military arms than Russia, China, Germany, and three or four other countries COMBINED.
That’s not even counting small arms. Firearm sales have TRIPLED since 2000.
Every state in the union is part of the arms industry, even Hawaii.
5.3 billion in small arms says to civilians.
The small arms market in the USA is so large it would be the 155th largest GDP if it was country.
the lgbtq+ rights in your country seems amazing compared to my own
they are being eroded fast tho
check literally any LGBTQ+ focused news site
No they aren’t. They are being eroded in red states, blue states are expanding them.
Hell, San Francisco has a UBI program that’ exclusively for LGBT folks.
American here.
No. We’re living in the early stages of a fascist dictatorship. And we’ve been doing this to the rest of the world for way too fucking long. The sooner we come to grips with the fact that the hens have come home to roost and we’re reaping what we’ve sown, the sooner we can actually take it down and build something better.
You think there’s nothing going on behind the scenes that an American citizen should be proud of? Note this is different from “Americans have a lot to be ashamed of AND a lot of to be proud of”
Some people just have a mentality of pure negativity.
I once dated a doctor, who was a fellow at the best hospital in the world, who had a pretty amazing life, from my perspective. They grew up with wealthy parents, they went to Standford, for free, and had a degree from Harvard Medical school, and they’d completed their residency and had a salary of about 350K at the age of 30.
From their own perspective, they hated their life. Nobody likes them, they were a failure, they were poor and struggling, etc. etc. The same rhetoric you get from so many people here. And I’m sure when I walked away from them because of their extreme self-negativity, they thought I was just also another mean terrible person to them. And they kept lecturing me about how ‘naive and dumb’ i was for being happy with my life…
People just become prisoners in their own minds and can’t see any good in the world or their own lives.
This is so sad!
Yeah it was brutal. She was a really good doctor too. But just… had zero perspective on her life and was super bitter than other people had more money than she did.
She also wanted a cat but then kept saying how she can’t get one because it will mean she is a pathetic sad lonely single person. It was so weird. I had a cat and she would come over and play with him all the time… then start in on her self-hating rants. She could never just enjoy something.
Not US here. I sometimes think that Americans are nice individuals, generaly speaking, but they are collectivly ferocious.
Americans are radically different depending on what region, and social class, of American you are interacting with.
But that’s true of any country. Every country hates and is embarassed by the poor uneducated douchebags, and loves their elite well-off cultured population.
UK has way more chavs living in shitty places with bad economics, than it does ‘posh’ people with nice accents living in London. USA is no different.
Let me tell you the good news: we’ve always been fascist, racist, bullies. This admin is just not covering it up at all. Glad you’re awake now my guy.
Pretty much this, my friends and family thought I was being negative. But now, a few either, don’t like admitting it or they act like I’m a wizard.
yea that was really good news. I ment so a small part of me can be proud again to be American?
As a fellow American, I’m going to make a big assumption here and advise you to engage with more people outside. Lemmings are great and all but we do not represent the real world. I can say this has helped me and man, am I worlds better for it.
Right now, the internet is quasi-weaponized against everyone’s better mental health. A lot of people are being fed propaganda that aligns strongly with their beliefs, with many people being sucked into a narrow, amplified, and semi-fictional view of reality. You have to dig deep to find real journalism, facts, and then puzzle together a less biased worldview; few people are there to do any of that legwork for you these days. It’s all exhausting and a recipe for mental illness if you do it constantly.
Instead, try to get out there and just talk to one person; better yet a stranger. Even if it’s just smalltalk. Even if it’s about the weather with a librarian or a checkout clerk. ANYONE. If you can make your way to a club, mutual-aid hub, local meetup, whatever… that’s even better. The goal is to just verbalize with other humans. The rest will follow from there.
Bingo. People here tend to be very extreme in their beliefs and they vastly over generalized their niche interests.
The vast majority of people out there don’t know what Linux is nor will they be ‘liberated’ by it.
But making small talk can also backfire. The idea that you will just chat people up and all will be well with the world is naive. A lot of people only find community and belonging through creation oppositional identity (us vs them). Frankly I have had to leave many communities over the years because the ‘community’ had warped into that mentality of ‘those people not like us are bad, and we are the good guys’ nonsense, usually because it got infused with political bullshit by insecure weirdos who need to see everything through a political struggle.
There are several websites about current good news, some of which is happening in this country right now.
In October 2025, following pressure from United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered cities across the state to remove LGBTQ+ Pride crosswalks and other road markings that “advance political agendas” and “ideologies.”
Abbott cited safety concerns and violation of state and federal guidelines as reasons to invoke the measure, which required cities to comply within 30 days or risk losing transportation funding.
…
But, in the meantime, the new, colorful sidewalks do not violate any local regulations, and Kaur and McKee-Rodriguez hope they signal an ongoing commitment to LGBTQ+ Pride in San Antonio.
Hi. Random straight guy here.
looks at picture
…not sure why anyone would have an issue with this.
I’m more confused/concerned why there’s a series of traffic cones turning a 2 lane road into a 1 lane road without any obvious reason why.
Also, holy shit! That’s a lot of random solar panels! Someone call that phone number, and ask them what they power.
The old design has the rainbow across the crosswalk, which actually does go against traffic safety standards, so the reason for it gaining the attention to get removed may not have been valid, but the actual removal reason was. And to show faith, they just redesigned it to meet standards. Here’s the original design:
Wait, what safety features are unmet? The white lines are the borders of the crosswalk, and the half white line is the stop line for traffic at the intersection.
What’s it missing?
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/resources/crosswalk_marking_selection_guide.pdf, Page 22. It’s not one of the official crosswalk selection options. Page 23 talks more about how decorative options fit into it and how it should be low contrast.
