When it comes to American elections … I lost faith in their political leaders a long time ago … I also lost faith in the people doing the electing … or not doing the electing … or just plain not doing anything to stop this train wreck of a nation.

This isn’t entirely on Dumptruck Don or his administration

The entire government and nation as a whole is complicit for just standing there and letting it all happen

What a shit show of a nation America has become

I bought it when it was ten years old and from a friend of a friend who was selling it privately. The only real way to grab a good vehicle is if you know of someone who had a vehicle from new. It’s just constant searching and luck that one is able to find vehicles like this. The guy I bought it from had it from new and took care of it and by the time I got it, it had minimal rust. He knew the truck’s life was limited which is why he wanted to get rid of it. As soon as I took hold of it, the rust started growing on the damned thing and I’ve been fighting to keep it going and away from any further rust as possible. The engine and transmission are good and will last a very long time, its just the rest of the truck, especially everything from the wheel wells down (minus the engine and transmission) that will fall apart first.

I agree … I think the cutoff is about 2010-2015 vintage vehicles. I like Volvo cars and station wagons, they are literal workhorses that were designed by a Swedish company for winter use. And in that vintage, it is just at the peak when the company was still producing good vehicles and just before the point where they were heavily Americanized, then taken over by Chinese interests. The vehicles are still produced in Europe (I think) but of a lesser quality because the company got taken over by foreign interests. And like all manufacturers, they are moving away from the piston engine technology and transitioning to all electric.

Yes it is inevitable that everything will move away from old piston engines … but I think it will all last another 20-30 years before it all becomes impossible or way too expensive for anyone to maintain their old clunkers after that.

I can say this proudly because I live in northern Ontario which basically salts our vehicles for about six months of the year. We might as well live on an ocean coast, we have so much salt on our highways. I do my own undercoating every year (it’s a real pain) and I put it on thick and in every nook and cranny. The work that I do just delays the rust, it doesn’t prevent it because there is just too much salt up here. Mix into that ice and snow and all that stuff just cakes on, falls off, takes away the coating, exposed metal, more salt and repeat all winter long. I’m lucky if I can hold onto a vehicle longer than ten years up here.

Buying a new vehicle hasn’t made sense for about 30 years now.

I’ve been driving for about 30 years and in all that time, I’ve never owned a new vehicle. I kept buying used vehicles for about $2,000 - $3,000 per vehicle. The oldest one I’ve ever had is a 2004 Volvo station wagon and I still maintain it and it’s still running as one of my main vehicles. My other main vehicle is a 2010 GMC Truck which I also maintain. They don’t look new, they show a bit of rust around the edges, but they are still very good vehicles that will last several more years.

Once they break down enough … I’ll buy another used vehicle. In all, over the past 30 years, I’ve spent about $30,000 on multiple vehicles (I think I’ve gone through 8 or 9 in that time).

It has never made sense to me to buy a brand new $40,000 car that will only be used for about five years before you buy the next one.

Same here … I just didn’t like the atmosphere there any more and jumped on Lemmy

I realized that I jumped on Reddit years ago when it was smaller and less known and I grew with it over time … I thought the same thing about Lemmy and now I feel good about growing on this new platform.

It’s a matter of numbers and community.

If you want to be a jerk, people will ignore you. If there are ten other people in the room, you can only be a jerk ten times before everyone in the room starts to ignore you.

That’s the Fediverse, it’s a small community and word gets around fast with people who see and notice a bad character and start blocking them, their posts, their comments and their activity.

That’s the thing about numbers … if you are a small group, word gets around quickly who the jerk is … if you are a big community, there are more systems in place to deal with jerks

So the only way for jerks to survive … is to build a community of jerks for themselves … and surprisingly enough, those communities don’t last very long.

The government of freedom that won’t interfere with people’s lives and personal freedoms

Exactly … if enough people had gone out to just vote, America wouldn’t have had this problem

What’s the use of fighting for something AFTER THE FACT … it’s far easier to fight for things as soon as possible and when it counts the most, not when you have lost most or all of your power to change things.

Are you sure about that? Thousands of years of ancient knowledge might disagree

Exactly … the world won’t admit it to being a fully fascist state of affairs until the entire world is literally falling apart and people are dying by the tens of thousands of millions due to war, genocide, famine, death and destruction.

Until then, everyone will keep arguing that things aren’t that bad yet

I’m Indigenous Canadian and I still have friends or new people I meet who joke with me about Native stuff, like do I know what time it is, what’s the weather forecast, can I read the stars? Where are the animals? How’s the fishing?

I tell them that there is a traditional way of being able to tell which way is north.

I tell them to look for the nearest satellite TV dish … they always point south.

Obviously, this only works in the northern hemisphere … if you are a Native person in the southern hemisphere, the dishes point north.

Hitler? … What are you talking about? … we need to have full blown genocidal war, concentration camps where millions are murdered every day, mass military invasions of countries, nuclear war and complete lawlessness throughout the land with people murdering, raping and mutilating each other … anything less than that is not yet Hitler.

So stop your alarmism all the time, it’s not yet Hitler.

lol … far into the future … Americans will remember famous quotes and lines from presidents like JFK, Eisenhower … even Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton and Obama

… and all anyone will remember about this idiot is just how dumb and stupid he was and how dumb and stupid America was to put him and keep him in power.

There is violent treason in the streets of America … perpetrated by government sanctioned thugs in masks, no identification, unidentified cars and are actively kidnapping and arresting people without restriction

Instead of these public protests where government can take an opportunity to just go after people in a very public display of power … the country should just employ a general strike in as many places and areas as possible.

The government and the corporations won’t care about how many protests you hold … it even works to their benefit because it allows them an excuse to escalate violent reaction to everything.

Hit them where it hurts them the most … money, economics and finance. If you shut down the system in as many places as possible to force them to lose money, it will be the only way that they’ll ever listen.

Otherwise, hold as many protests as you want and they’ll beat you into submission and it gives them an easy excuse for them to do so.

The Age of Entitlement

My favourite scenario like that is with King Charles … he sat around all his life waiting for his mom to kick the bucket but she hung on for decades … now King Charles’ body is basically shutting down and he now gets to put the crown on while feeling miserable

Isaac Newton put it best:

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

It’s completely stupid, short sighted and ignorant of us to think that we know everything there is know about the universe and natural world. There is still so much more to learn about and understand and probably far more than we can even comprehend.

But we also have to regulate how much we know and don’t know and how we can understand or not understand … because as Richard Feynman put it …

“Keep an open mind … but not so open that your brain falls out”