What conservatives don’t understand is we know you’re full of shit because you raised us. You idealize about a time that never was and we know it because we watched it destroy you. We were all raised in broken homes because you broke them. We watched the war on drugs destroy our neighborhoods because you were the ones who were xenophobic. We know this is all fantasy because we watched you fail and we don’t want that for ourselves or anyone.

So please. Keep your fetishes in the bed room.

  • acargitz
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    202 months ago

    The only reason the blue collar man in the meme can afford a suburban home, a large family and free time on one income is because of very large taxes on the rich and very high rates of unionization. If people have these and choose to be trad-idiots, fine, so long as other people can also have these things and be free to choose to not be trad-idiots.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      Ah yes: jealousy. The driving force of all leftists/socialists/communists.

      YOU CAN’T HAVE MORE THAN ME!!!

      • acargitz
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        2 months ago

        Lol, more like “you can’t have so much more than me that I end up being forced to serve you just to survive”.

        If you think that’s “jealousy”, you don’t understand what wealth is.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 months ago

        It ought to be the driving force of every person you meet, at least until the playing field gets leveled a bit. Remember, the periods where the American Dream was achievable were paid for by a 70% corporate tax rate, which got tossed out for “trickle down” Reganomics. And we have indeed trickled down.

        A single person shouldn’t have enough money to buy the government of the richest country on earth, yet here we are.

      • @[email protected]
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        Dude, I honestly think you might need remedial language courses if you think that’s even close to what he said. No joke your reading comprehension is concerning. Do you understand? Do I need to dumb it down even more for you? Do you need pictures?

  • @[email protected]
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    02 months ago

    I know this is hard to believe, but many Americans do enjoy a nice suburban life. This stuff reads like nonsense to a good portion of the country.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      2 months ago

      “Oh, you think you’re funny calling me ‘white supremacy mario.’ I’ll show you funny you little fucker.”

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      “I’m just toughening you up! Grab some sack, rub some dirt on it, and walk it off, ya fuckin’ snowflake!”

      ETA: rogue comma

  • @[email protected]
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    52 months ago

    The issue is not the ideal. The issue is the methods used to achieve those ideals. Made worse with their denial and repression of others ideals that don’t align with their own.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      No, the idea is inherently patriarchal and racist. The idea is fantasy because, no, people can’t afford a home and three kids on a single person’s income.

      The people who made this work were privileged whites benefiting from generational wealth while the rest got clothes lined by the real fucking world.

      • ZeroOne
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        02 months ago

        What is this Patriarchy you speak of ? Is it a new flavour of ice-cream ?

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Patriarchy is the systemic bias that men in charge make policies that put more men in charge simply because they are men.

          If you’ve ever seen a Republican panel on women’s health, you’d understand.

          • ZeroOne
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            12 months ago

            So it’s a system that keeps women down right ?

            • @[email protected]
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              12 months ago

              Less about keeping women down, and more about elevating men above them purely because they are men.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 months ago

      The issue is also the ideal, one man, one woman, 2.5 kids, a dog, an incredibly inefficient suburban lifestyle. The American dream was a racist, classist far right fantasy that can’t exist at the same time as evel surface level equality under capitalism. Even if you randomize the races and genders involved, you’re still effectively living your ideal by submitting to the ideal economic unit for advertisers, not yourself.

      It’s rotten from the core, and downright evil to want. No matter how you work towards this ideal you’re going to trample the rights of others and objectively make the world worse with your existence.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        22 months ago

        I’m reading this and I’m not sure you clearly demonstrated your point. Not that you need to answer to me but I wouldn’t mind hearing you out.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 months ago

          Fair, rephrased and reorganized:

          The picture depicts the “American dream” or “nuclear family.” This consists of a straight white Christian man with a moderately well paying job, a wife that’s exclusively a home maker, two kids of different sex, and at least a dog and two cars in a house with a lawn surrounded by a white picket fence.

          This ideal was developed by marketing companies and the US government for a few purposes:

          One; it is an incredibly diverse marketing unit. You have an adult male to market towards, an adult female that needs new appliances and groceries, a little bit that will need sports gear and whatever throwaway that like baseball cards, a girl that needs clothes and makeup, a lawn that needs accessories, a stand alone house that needs constant maintenance, two different cars each requiring regular new purchases to maintain. If every family is like this, companies know exactly what to market to who and how to present their products. It also increases and diversifies consumer spending compared to any other household makeup allowable in 1950s America.

          In otherwords it’s the perfect setup for a capitalist consumer class that will never want better, never want equality, never strive for more. Especially as it’s setup as the American dream, the end goal for every true American.

          Two; its the opposite of the ussr atheistic communism. While it’s a fairly prototypical patriarchal idealist fantasy, it’s also well support by the Bible and all major denominations of Christianity, even the American ones. It avoids any controversial beliefs also supported by that faith, say polygamy or underage marriage or anything of that nature. It also acts to separate families into distinct units that can’t easily rely on each other for support, promoting individualism versus more traditional multigenerational households common in the ussr.

          Because it emphasizes family and individuality while uniquely emphasizing conformity to the norms the government and companies want it’s the perfect counter to communist and socialist grass roots support; which traditionally start with comparisons to how (multigenerational) family households take care of each other to achieve a higher standard of living for everyone.

          In very short this ideal itself is evil, it is not how most of any humans have lived before the 1950s pretty much anywhere, and was artificially created as an ideal to promote consumerism and fight communism. It’s antithetical to the idea of community, commonality or equality.

          Not only are the means previously used to reach this ideal evil (see us actions in the early 20th and 19th centuries in regards to colonialism) the concept itself is abhorrent to anyone that has experienced non consumer societies.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 months ago

            I’d be really interested to see who had a stronger sense of community in the 1950s -Americans who were largely unionized and members of religious communities or Soviets living in a nation that was undergoing purges and famine. Im not sure which one of those had a stronger sense of community but I see no reason to accept that the Soviet union had a greater sense of community just because of a bias against America.

    • @[email protected]
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      The issue is also the disconnect from reality: achieving such an ideal would require policy that is diametrically opposite to what they’re pushing for.

      (apart from the inherent sexism and racism)

  • Dr. Wesker
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    32 months ago

    You said “we” 8 times without once consulting anyone else if this was actually their experience.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      Ok, tell me about your fantastical childhood.

      Edit: I speak for the people who hid the fact they collected food stamps because they were made ashamed. I speak for the kids in “banana splits” because they didn’t understand divorce meant risk. I speak for all the kids in detention and after-school programs and given the label “troubled youths”.

      So, please tell me about you.

      Edit2: “my” trauma comes with data

      • Dr. Wesker
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        This was not my experience, except I do agree that the war on drugs has done way more damage than good. The shitty, modern sociopolitical climate you’re projecting onto the past simply is not what I remember of the past.

        EDIT: Again, speaking for others, as if you’re some sort of savior and they are voiceless invalids. Just speak for yourself.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          2 months ago

          You say that but you were there. Your friends were there. You might even have felt awkward and had to lie about your parents being divorced to fit in. Don’t give me some tall tale. Tell me what you saw.

          Edit: I’ll speak for the people who actually need a voice. It’s not trad wife role-playing conservatives. It’s people who are now just trying to make ends meet while the world falls to shit around them.

          • Dr. Wesker
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            2 months ago

            I don’t know what to tell you, I had a pretty great childhood despite being low income. My family were fairly apolitical rednecks. I remember them voting Perot at one point, though. I grew up in a multicultural community in the country, mostly white and hispanic. The only drug problems we witnessed were our hippy stoner uncles.

            Sorry to burst your bubble, bub.

              • Dr. Wesker
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                02 months ago

                I don’t recall my father’s take away, but we lived in a trailer in the woods, shopped at Ross, and couldn’t take vacations.

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  2 months ago

                  Just because my previous comment was removed:

                  This is not the the fetishized idea of america conservatives get off on. While your life experience is valid it does not represent what this picture is depicting.

  • @[email protected]
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    102 months ago

    In the 1950s Americans bought almost nothing they couldn’t afford in cash. Consumption of non-necessities was very low by comparison to today. If people want to live like they did in the 1950s USA we need to all join unions, stop buying stuff, and have the industrial capacity of the rest of the world be destroyed by war.

    Personally I’d prefer focusing on the present and future rather than glorification of the past.

  • Ghostalmedia
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    22 months ago

    That man is a stripe shirt away from being a life size My Buddy doll

    • @[email protected]
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      62 months ago

      My favorite was the one who made cereal from scratch which took hours. It turns out her husband is related to Joseph Smith the creator of Mormonism which is why she had the money to spend her day making a bowl of cereal as she has nannies to do the actual mothering.

  • @[email protected]
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    52 months ago

    That was my abusive parents view of the perfect family. When I see photo’s like that it makes me angry.

    • Liz
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      32 months ago

      The dad looks like he’s about to pelt his kid in the face with that football.

  • @[email protected]
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    132 months ago

    I know left wingers who look like that. Thing is they want it for themselves and don’t force it on the rest of us

    • @[email protected]
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      Sure, I’ll admit it. My ex and I took fairly traditional family roles, but that was because we both chose it. Also, I could afford it by virtual of a good college education and a well-paying white collar job.

      So if you prefer that style of family life, you really need to focus on

      • much stronger support of unions and a much higher minimum wage, to make it possible for one person to support a family
      • much better financial support for a college education to anyone who might benefit, or at least fixing the student loan sword of Damocles
      • a society freer of repression and expectations, so people can fairly choose the role that fits them best, not be forced into a role they don’t want
      • early childhood support, including medical and childcare: it takes a village and we need local governments to help fill that role
      • much larger affordable housing supply
      • greatly expanded transit and walkable cities/town centers, so you’re not forcing the additional expenses of a private car

      Here’s your challenge, republicans, this is how to support such a lifestyle successfully. Do this and people who want such a lifestyle can choose it without being forced, and they can afford it: empower those people to succeed, while not trying to force it on scenarios it will fail. This is the right wing agenda we can all aspire to

  • @[email protected]
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    Is this image AI generated? That football almost looks literally egg-shaped. I know that some call the sport American Hand-Egg, but this is uncanny.

  • @[email protected]
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    162 months ago

    There is no path back to this idyllic lifestyle the children of the right wing want to reestablish.

    It has been destroyed by the very extreme capitalism they espouse. Mom has to work now. Times have changed. These people live in an alternate reality. Want to fix shit? Get rid of billionaires.