I think there's a certain leftist/progressive hate for car cultural that I'm utterly repulsed by, and you're right to lay the blame at the feet of leftists. In Pre-WWII America, it wasn't uncommon for White Americans to live in cities and raise families there. In fact, it makes perfect sense that they would: living in the city would mean a short commute to work for the white collar professional or even the blue-collar factory worker; why would someone who works in the city want to live far outside the city and have to commute? As
pointed out:
(04-15-2022, 10:12 AM)BillyONare Wrote: [ -> ]There are many other reasons that the Chungus urbanism that leftists pretend to love is unprofitable to create. ALL of these reasons are due to leftists. These include: overregulation in general, overtaxation, no freedom of association, environmental protections, disability requirements (fat elderly people), homeless encampments, etc.
The biggest one for me is
freedom of association. With the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, representing the inauguration of the Civil Rights Era, American life was to be forever ruptured. With desegregation of pubic schools came leftists criticisms of redlining and mortgage discrimination. Middle and upper-class whites who were once able to live among themselves while
also being within city limits had to live in increasingly diverse neighborhoods. As the northern states were more leftist, they accepted federal pressures for desegregation and racial integration more quickly, which also resulted in a massive flux of southern blacks moving to northern states. The only answer for whites who wished to remain among their own kind, and to escape plummeting housing prices and the rise of crime, was to move outside the city -
White Flight. Now a new system of roads between the newly-created suburbs and the cities had to be created, and as more and more suburbs get created, you have the whole issue of massively congested traffic and long commutes and all the other things people complain about. But even though this can be tied back to leftists, as Billionaire said, they still find the time to complain about it. Perfect example:
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-ca...-again?s=r
[Image: nishi-oyama-eki.jpg]
If only America could be like Japan, thinks Noah,
with it's cute walkable cities and adorable train stations. The problem, Noah, is progressives like yourself admonish rural citizens and want to see them all driven to the cities, so forget the rural-to-city pipeline. Second, the suburbs you so hate are the product of your own infringement on the right of free association. Third, and attempt at 'cutesy' train stations here in America would be trashed by inner-city niggers who never developed the respect for public property or the commons in general. He cries:
Quote:Like many Americans who live in East Asia, Europe, or other places with dense transit-centric cities, I returned to the U.S. wishing that I could transform the suburban wastelands of my youth into something closer to what I had enjoyed overseas. I wasn’t alone.
Well Noah, I can guarantee you all those places in East Asia and Europe had something America doesn't: ethnic homogeneity, and (as a result) a high-trust society. We saw a new wave of this discourse recently as a result of a Netflix show:
https://twitter.com/netflix/status/15136...O2ntL7zMUQ
And the QT of some tr00n trying to blame this on 'car culture':
https://twitter.com/Natcromancer/status/...O2ntL7zMUQ
But the real reason you could never send a young child on errands in an American city has
nothing to do with the proliferation of roads and cars. If a young child was sent out on an errand in say, New York City, it's not the cars that would be his biggest worry. He'd be more likely to be robbed or abducted, and everyone knows this deep down. The cities simply aren't a safe place to raise children because of the degenerates and miscreants who live there.
And while I get where you're coming from with saying that the 'car culture' is a leftist program (it wouldn't exist without the massive spending programs that built the interstate highways), I dislike the reflexive leftist hatred for car culture because in some sense I actually have a deep love for it. Not the bullshit commute between the suburbs and the cities of course, but I love
the open road. The way I feel towards the open road is highly reminiscent of what I feel men from previous centuries felt towards the open sea. Take this opening passage from
Moby Dick for instance:
Quote:Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time tozz get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
While Cato throws himself upon his sword, and Ishmael quietly takes to the ship, for many decades, we Americans have taken to the road.
When I see leftists try to shit on car culture, in some sense I feel like they're hating on what was the last element of the American Frontier Spirit. It's shitting on American culture itself. Whether it's road movies like Paris, Texas and Easy Rider, or novels like
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and
On the Road, for a period of time the highway system and the open road were in inspiration for American culture, and served as a mode of adventure for the young american male. And they want us to trade the freedom of the road in a car we own with a crowded train or bus? They want you to trade in your private estate and return you to the
longhouse.