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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31885 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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I think am in rough agreement (though I cannot assume how willing you would be to "trade off" economic prosperity for a more difficult-to-quantify social and individual wellbeing).

In my view, a comparative advantage in economic power means jack shit to me when my options are to spend that wealth living in a city full of people I loathe for various reasons, or live in a rural area full of people I loathe for various reasons; most of those reasons have to do with continuously-declining standards of basic physical fitness, though in the case of cities (even some medium-sized midwest cities) I also struggle with constant pressure to kowtow to the left-wing zeitgeist.

With the current trajectory, I am left having to choose between (please pardon the hyperbole, but I am now speaking even deeper from the heart; to put a fig leaf of Motte-ness onto this rant, look at these CDC stats: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html) living alongside painfully dull and severely obese ambiguously "conservative" rurals whose only redeeming characteristic is a radical "live and let live" attitude that at least leaves me unmolested but who as a result are also bereft of care for the appearance of themselves or their property, or else living in close-quarters with packs of (also increasingly obese) vipers caught up in masturbatory, self-flagellating purity spirals driven by self-serving crybullies and useful idiots.

Suburbs I exclude from possibility as, like the scoffing masses referenced in Lovecraft novels by their traumatized protagonists, I refuse to even credit suburban life with serious consideration. This is not borne from mere meme: I have multiple acquaintances who regaled me with HOA horror-stories that make city-dwelling sound downright pleasant.

Please forgive me for being uncharitable, but as an outlier in all sections of the modern United States social landscape I am frustrated with it.

I'm sort of in the same boat. I live downtown in a big American city, and I know I should probably get out before it is too late ...

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