#americaposting

[andmaybegayer]

go there

[annarobots]

Walgreens pharmacy app wrapped: congrats on your diagnosis!!! You’ve spent more money on Rxs than everything aside from your mortgage this year

[problematic-twink]

*takes a loooooong sip* wow. that was truly the hotdog rocket of the 4th of july. burger king could never.

*glances at my boyfriend, who has been acting suspiciously american lately*

[transfenris-truther]

As people scramble to blame third party voters, or nonvoters, or certain demographics, or Kamala's campaign, please remember the harsh truth: The election turned out the way it did because Americans prefer fascism. It turned out the way it did because our country is built on racism. It's built on misogyny. It's built on oppression. This is the way America is, and to change it we need to change way more than just our voting behavior.

I'm very tired of seeing us identify imperfect leftism as the villain of the story. It's going to be imperfect, and the imperfect leftism of people trying their best is literally all we have.

I get that liberals are frustrating if you're hard left. I get that leftists are frustrating if you're a liberal. I get that you specifically are the very best political strategist ever and would've engineered it all perfectly if you were in charge. But it's over now, and that shit is not helping us prep for what's coming. 72,725,000 Americans chose fascism. And that's a problem no matter how third party voters or non voters or whoever else you're mad at voted.

Please find people to be in coalition with and commit to them. Find imperfect allies. And find "good enough."

[machine-unlearning]

[lil-tachyon]

Car dependency does suck. What's your thoughts on rail systems?

I think there should be a hell of a lot more of them and they should be better-funded, that’s for sure.

I’m fortunate enough to live near a station with regular service and I take advantage of it when I can but therein lies the problem-unless I’m going into NYC (something I rarely have a need to do) it almost never makes sense for me to take it. And while I personally believe there are good reasons to take transit over a personal vehicle whenever possible, it’s pretty hard to sell most of my friends on spending more money and more time on a train when a car trip would be quicker and cheaper. 

You see this US High Speed Rail meme map get tossed around a lot and while it’s fun to imagine (why yes, I do think it would be dope if I could hop on an Amtrak train and be in Cleveland in 3 hours), is it really what we need? I’d be overjoyed just to have access to a well-developed regional rail system where I could show up at a station with no planning, wait 5 minutes, and take a cheap trip a few towns over to go to work or to visit friends and family. I look at a 99-year-old railroad map of my delightful home state and think, “What the hell happened? Where did this all go?” A century later and it feels like our infrastructure has completely regressed.

To be totally honest though, I’m not so much a rail/transit nerd as I am just continually frustrated by how the US has gone beyond car-dependency and arrived at complete car-centrality. My experience growing up in New Jersey is that it is almost impossible for you to walk so much as one town over or even more than a couple miles in any direction without running a non-negligible risk of being mowed down by traffic. Strictly speaking, I guess you could take the D&R canal towpath from Princeton to New Brunswick but it’s pretty clearly only intended to be used for recreation and not as a serious piece of infrastructure.

These days I live in a beautiful (in my opinion), walkable (by US standards), town with multiple transit connections but it’s still completely dominated by the automobile. There’s a hard border of multi-lane highways on three sides and on the fourth a gradual shift to post-war single-family housing developments, then strip malls, big box stores, and parking lots. The sidewalks come to an end precisely at the town border. I live at a corner lot on a busy intersection- since the beginning of 2022 I’ve witnessed three car crashes right outside my front door. My next-door neighbor is an elderly woman who, upon my first meeting her, spoke unprompted about what a shame it is since they paved the road back in the day and how it’s never been quiet since. I need only to step outside to be assaulted by the noise she’s talking about- accompanied by the smell of exhaust. And keep in mind this is still a place that I love and consider a huge step up from most other American towns I’ve been to. But this is all I’ve ever known whereas my neighbor is just old enough to have seen every street turned into a strip of heat-absorbing asphalt, rigidly separating houses, businesses, people. Rivers of tar, non-places where you can cross furtively but never ever stand still.

I’m not writing this all out to be a downer or to complain. I want to talk about this because for the longest time I didn’t have an understanding of why this upset me. I grew up in the ‘burbs and knew nothing else so how could I put into words what I found so unsettling about this? I thought it was just the way things are.

It doesn’t have to be like this. I think it’s important to keep in mind that all this has occurred over the last century and really only after World War II. The hopelessly car-centric environment, hostile to people, nature, and common sense, that has been built up around us is a historical aberration that’s only been around for about as long as our grandparents. It doesn’t need to be like this and historically it hasn’t been. I think it’s important that people know that things can be better than 100 million miles of stroads.

Pictured above- Amsterdam's transition from walkable to car-centric and back again over the last century or so. Wanted to end this on a positive note.

[cuproprime]

The TRUE American borders.

[wafflehousegothic]

ok NON AMERICANS i need your help with something

sound off IN THE REPLIES with #american stuff you'd want to do/experience or foods you'd want to try if you ever visited the states