I kinda wanted that clip to introduce the hot dog car’s actual driver and teach everyone a lesson about making snap judgments based on appearances.

Thanks for explaining the joke I guess...?

I needed this today.

Thanks for an early morning laugh.

But what’s especially funny is imagining dinosaurs like Mitch McConnell drowning in warm shit.

Your second paragraph is so true and gets to the heart of the matter. The way our society works, in a lot of ways but specific to healthcare, is completely messed up. I have worked in all aspects of healthcare for the better part of 30 years, including many in a children’s hospital as financial counselor, where it was…

No no, he had Making Shit UP...

Another poor white rural scion made good over here: I think the problem with that book is that it takes the learned helplessness that absolutely exists and works to divest it of any origin other than personal choice. If we’re talking about internalizing self-hatred and low expectations because you were born into…

Even according to the books own anecdata, his conclusions don’t make sense. His grandma and grandfather were alcoholics who were clearly not great parents. But they still managed to eek out a life for themselves because they grew up in a time where you could get a job that paid a living wage.

Vance’s mother is clearly…

Especially these days, thanks to privatized student loans.

Definitely. Lots of rich people with addictions, domestic violence, mental illness. But they also have the resources to deal with those problems more effectively. To me, that “learned helplessness” among the poor is actually just good old fashioned depression.

I haven’t read it and probably won’t (or watch this either) but what stuck out to me was the comment about his discomfort at being in an Ivy League environment. Perhaps he should be amazed by the fact that despite growing up in such circumstances, he was nonetheless able to attend law school alongside some of the most…

any book that ignores economic conditions in favor of making a hazy “cultural conditions” argument is not worth my time.

On the one hand, yeah, it was pretty clear trolling of the “Eh, I know I don’t have a point, or want one, but I sure have a lot of shit to smear on these here walls.”

because people seem to look solely at the bad decisions, the fact of the matter is that more economically advantaged people probably make just as many bad choices, but they aren’t as detrimental because they have access to health care, to therapy, to addiction services etc. Bad choices are part of the human condition,…

I grew up in rural VA and agree a bit with both of you. My experience was nothing (or very little) anyone did would change their circumstances, therefore they derided “book learning”. There was some not-so-veiled jealousy there, for sure.

blah, I am from a rural community, this is a bad individualistic take, and just very American. these people are entitled to feel fucked over because they were, and these people also aren’t necessarily any worse because they don’t have the same wealth that others have, but they do have the same problems, which are strip…

I agree. I don’t know about the movie, but the book was not as terrible as made out to be. The author looked at the people he loved and tried to make sense of how they got to be the way they were. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but it was written with affection not stereotypes unless he saw those as…

Yup it’s definitely a problem of classism, it also doesn’t help that lower education has been whittled away over the last 40 or so years and higher education has mostly become primarily a profit generating industry.

He’s not, other than perhaps by conflating “smart” and “educated”. There really was a tendency (not that long ago; I’m 50 and it was still there when I was growing up) for the working class to think education was a sucker’s game because they could make just as much if not more without it. It wasn’t until the 1980s…