2340 Slab.

Patreon
Subscribestar
Comic Vote
Reddit
Wiki
Holiday List
Twitter @betweenfailures
Contact me for a Discord invite.

It was raining really hard when we went to watch the fireworks, which I look forward to every year, but it let up a little bit after it was supposed to start. So we waited for just under an hour for them to start it up. Then we noticed the safety vehicles driving away, so we waited a little longer then decided to give up. As consolation we were getting McDonalds but the line was very long. The fire works started once we were too deep in line to leave. Once we got the food we drove up the hill out of town & watched the fireworks from a very high & distant point. It was not ideal, but that has been a theme for America for a few years now, so I guess it’s fitting.

America isn’t perfect. Its history is as dark as any other country’s, but its presence in the world has improved the quality of life for everyone over time. I hope I have contributed, in some small way, to the arc of improvement.

32 Comments

I feel like that’s something a lot of people forget. Yes, America has done some terrible things. Yes, it is often a land of injustice and inequality. However, there have been many, many advancements in the world spearheaded by America that may never have come about had our forefathers not dared to try, and that deserves remembrance and celebration just as much as the evils of our past deserve to be reflected upon and made right.

Which ones specifically ?

If the US wasn’t doing something right people wouldn’t be coming from around the world to live here. Legal immigration lines are insanely long and there’s stupidly large amounts of illegal immigration since Biden* took power.

For all the propaganda talk about “white supremacy” and “structural racism”, the US is the single most open and welcoming country on the planet. There are few places in the world that care less about your skin tone or accent.

The US isn’t the only place on the planet where someone with nothing can came and succeed, but it’s the place with the highest chance of it panning out.

Quite true. Just ask any Jewish person living in the US if they’re even vaguely concerned about pogroms. They are almost certainly not.

Hi there! I’m Jewish, my family fled the pogroms of Russia/Ukraine, and I think your argument is wrong. When hate mobs march down my streets chanting about violence against me and the cops look the other way, you bet your bippy I’m worried about pogroms. That’s what a pogrom is! Don’t be fooled by them finding darker people to target, we’re right there in their cross-hairs as well.

In America you can be any color and succeed, as long as you act white.

Most of my family fled the pogroms in Moravia. Those that stayed, well, only one made it to England after WWII…

That aside, I 100% agree with you. I bought my Mom a Secret Jewish Space Laser Corp shirt and pin for Mother’s Day, and she refuses to wear them outside the house. We both cautioned my kids (bio & step) to not mention they’re Jewish or closely related to Jews in public places. They live in the PNW, and I’m near Chicago, both fairly liberal places, but we’ve still seen / been subjected to threats of violence for being Jewish. It’s frightening that we’re 70+ years away from the bigotry and hatred that fostered the 3rd Riech, yet the guy down the street feels perfectly safe in standing on his porch and screaming bigoted garbage at myself & my kids. So… yeah.

It’s weird that you’d speak for other people. Even if you’re Jewish, don’t speak for Jewish people who aren’t you.

see if it’s on a floating track that pushes in then across. They would have noticed anything ceiling mounted at this point. if the slab is thick enough you wouldn’t notice the track or the rollers if they’re far enough away from the facing side.

Not likely visible. The entire slab would likely be on a set of tracks and rollers with the track as well as the ends recessed into the surrounding foundations. The slab is likely two slabs with an exterior finish to the appearance of a single piece. More than likely they should be looking for a kind of pin hole mechanism to release a counter weight that moves the slab much like the old speak easies of yester year.

America has improved the quality of life for everyone? Don’t let your Southern American brethren hear that. For starters.

There’s a book whose title I can’t presently recall, where the author went and asked people from peoples America liberated about it. The stories are quite a lot less flattering than those Americans tell themselves about their world-wide exploits. Doesn’t look like America has learned much in the meantime either.

Of course, there were worse options. But America time and again did entirely stupid stuff for entirely selfish reasons that, with just a little bit less selfishness, could have been done differently with less loss of life and less suffering elsewhere, for no ill results for itself. I really do think that the self-appointed world-cop needs to act a little less selfish and a little less self-congratulatory to actually earn that accolade of world-improver.

The thing with meddling is that it makes you complicit and that brings responsibilities with it. Responsibilities that America is pretty good at shirking. Yes, unique position. And yes, that brings unique responsibilities with it. You can’t just sit there and tell the world how special you are. You have to earn that seat too.

Well happy 4th of July to you too, asshole.

Bit of a difference between “yay we freed ourselves” and “lookit us we saved the whole world”. I have no beef with the former. The latter needs work.

Would refer you to a little thing called World War 2. Saving the whole world might be a good way to put it. Recognize that it’s an ongoing thing.

Apart from WW2 being a team effort – how exactly does that excuse the US’ mistreatment of Latin America or the propping up of Middle Eastern dictators?

The war ended almost 80 years ago and the US has done plenty to squander a lot of the goodwill since then.

Actually, Jackie, Doc Tari functionally agreed with you in that there were good things done, just some of them could have been done better. Not sure if that was his goal, though.

It sure as fuck didn’t read that way.

Naturally, because his goal was to spout anti-American Marxist propaganda. But the little phrase “[o]f course, there were worse options…” is very telling.

Seems the propagandists can’t help but undermine their own narrative somehow. “The truth will always out.”

No, he didn’t. He slagged America’s contributions to the world. Trite and shallow.

You mean contributions like the coups in Latin America?

I might instead point to contributions like keeping Europe out from under the bootheel of a genocidal lunatic and keeping Seoul from becoming Pyongyang South, but like that.

Neither of which was done of out the good of their heart.

America got involved in WW2 because the Axis declared war on them and.

And their involvement in Korea (as their later involvement in Vietnam) was to “contain” communism.

The US also managed to squander a lot of the goodwill earned from ther participation in WW2 over the decades.

If wasn’t for those meddling Americans Europe would be run by Nazis, South Korea would be North Korea’s plaything, Japan would still be ruled by a power hungry military, etc. etc…. Honestly I think people hate the American way of life these days because it means others can have different views and ways of life.

Want a perfect society go communism… of course it never lasts long because it is a dictatorship disguised as a people’s utopia. America isn’t perfect and it’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s just suppose to work and despite it’s flaws it’s worked for over 200 years.

I for one am not ready to sign up for the Raymond Cocteau way of doing things yet…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKP3cAp5z2E

I don’t think humans can create a perfect society. Mostly because everyone has a different idea of what “perfect” means, and we ourselves are an extremely imperfect creation. I think we’re supposed to be imperfect, because that allows us to learn from our mistakes and avoid stagnation.

I say, that for all our mistakes, and there were plenty, America is still trying to get it right. You got to understand that compared to history, America is actually a very “iffy” experiment. We’ve lived with it our whole lives, so we don’t really realize how weird this whole country and it’s founding ideas are.

I think we’ve done a lot of good for the world, but we still make mistakes. That will continue to happen. But I still believe the founding ideals of this country are good and worth fighting for.

I 100% agree with both of you.

Not that many people today will remember a book called Utopia, written in 1516 by Thomas More. It had a bit of a resurgence in the mid/late 60’s & again in the 80’s, oddly enough. It described an island society that was ‘perfect’, & the hidden costs of that perfection.

I was having this argument with my eldest stepson last night, actually. They were talking all sorts of smack about how horrible the US is & how they can’t wait to move OOC. I pointed out that every country has its flaws, #1, & that the echo chamber he & his friends had created amongst themselves didn’t seem to have many opinions based on fact & experience. They are all staunchly anti-military, anti- government, 18-20yo SJW’s with a lot of opinions & no actual experience.

For instance, they’re all firmly against the ‘military industrial consumer complex’, but my stepson is the only one in the group that even has relatives that served. His father retired only a few years ago, I worked civ duty on & off for years, my mom is Army, my eldest is Marines, my dad was Army then AF, etc. Yet they all insist that the military has no benefits and only destroys people. *insert eyeroll here*.

There are definitely things that happened over the past 4 years that terrified me. Things that made me scared for the safety of my family & friends. But, I know that the best way to eradicate those bigoted & racist mindsets isn’t fleeing to another country, it’s getting involved, voting my conscious, & not backing down (ideologically) while knowing that sometimes the best thing to do is to walk away & not engage.

I love this country & I plan on fighting to make it a better place for everyone. Even if the people I’m fighting are my fellow citizens.

I guess disagreement is one of the paths to growing less attached. As to the past, the facts abound, one can spin the argument either way, based on the points one wishes to highlight. Some will stress the technological advancements, like development of the Internet, others will put forward the political and military stances from pressuring for a single economic system and resource exploitation worldwide to development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction, whereas some will retort that keeping people in check through deterrence and mass surveillance is the only path to staying safe in the face of idiocy, though how safe exactly versus how enslaved really is the question – I think we can do better than that, but many kids in the administration have some growing up to do. Again others will stress the empire-like economic politics and domination structures built around the world into a dependency pyramid. Well, what matters most for today is the resource and biosphere overuse, for which the materially ‘developed’, but mentally still fledgling countries in the north are most responsible for and which will likely get us all killed in the short to mid run. … Others will stress the advancement of science and the high quality of discourse and social movements that shine as beacons, a sense of the meaning of equality, after having pushed it to the extremes of inequality. Europe is in as much as a horrible, as grand spot, on a recently slightly smaller scale. China is playing fast catchup. The entertainment and advertising industry has delivered both impressive psychological development as well as loads of bias, bullshit, and distraction. The financial system has evolved into a monster.
So, it just depends on which aspects you prefer to highlight to judge it and how much pain in others you are ready to take – either perspective can be justified with a selection of the facts. The point is, are the advancements possible while we also hedge against the downsides? I.e. with less monopolizing and a humbler lifestyle. I don’t know, but I’d hope so.
I guess the crucial lesson is to not accept hard feelings for the actions committed by others including in ones’ own community and past, while still acknowledging truths and encouraging and acting on and rewarding the best behaviors in people.
But allowing yourself to sense the good and the bad in its depth gives a way richer experience than simple pride. Patriotism here is a crutch, where one places one’s well-being on others’ actions or the coin toss of one’s own team winning – and there is a losing side as well. It’s an unreliable source of happiness, and if people screw up – what, am I supposed to feel bad just to stay loyal or should I then lapse into denial of common sense…I don’t know. So, I’ve decoupled my sense of self from the crowd and there it is, inner peace. Identifying with the entire folks around on the marble, one can observe more impartially what humans are up to: a lot of nonsense. Many idiots running around like lemmings trying to earn a Darwin award on a daily basis, while some succeed from time to time in creating an aesthetic masterpiece. It’s good comedy. Overall there is quite some improvement in the human experience, but significant deterioration in what’s left out of it. And that’s not great. Like dumping one’s trash in the kindergarten next door. So overall we are still failing miserably, but getting better and getting better at sensing what less ‘developed’ peoples have sensed, but not understood as well, way before. The scars that the unaware ones among us keep tearing need tending to and healing; this is why sanctuaries that provide a safe space are so important – like this site.

“America isn’t perfect. Its history is as dark as any other country’s, but its presence in the world has improved the quality of life for everyone over time. I hope I have contributed, in some small way, to the arc of improvement.” In much the same way that Patreon and Subscribestar can improve the lives of content creators like me. But only if you participate…

I missed your segue, Jackie. ;)

For what it’s worth-
me + several relatives of mine had a very harrowing day, (in my part of the USA).

I was with my Dad, today.
We have a relative who lives far away from us. To keep her anonymous, in this message, I’ll call her an aunt.
She’s a senior age person, + my family often worries that she has enough money for her food + bills, + that she’s doing OK. She has money problems, sometimes.

A total stranger, who lives in my aunt’s town, called up my Dad, + said that a letter of my aunt’s was found in my aunt’s neighborhood.
This total stranger, + her son, had found the check, + called my Dad’s phone number, from the letter. These two strangers, not knowing who we are, or what ethnic groups we belong to, or what political groups we belong to, [or anything about us], helped my family, + the police, get to my aunt’s house + find out that my aunt was just sleeping + stuff, + that my aunt was 100% OK.
We were worried that something really tragic could have happened, in that town.

So, total strangers- not knowing us at all, went way out their way, + helped us [find + check up on my aunt], with them wanting…I think, nothing more than to help out worried people,…and to help people who needed help. They wanted nothing for their help.

I know…People who like to help, as much as this, are likely not unique to the USA.
But I am very proud of my nation’s people today, and I am very, very thankful to a number of strangers today.
I’ve found- There are some very good people out there.

You’d be amazed at how small things can contribute to much bigger things.

Remember this?

“Long ago, in the Galaxy Euryops, a great, menacing comet was born. Colossal in size, deadly in trajectory, it hurtled unstoppable through the Universe, on a collision course with many inhabited planets. Among the doomed was a small green world called Earth. But on planet Philydion they still sing songs of the man who made it possible for the comet to be destroyed. The man who saved Earth and a hundred worlds, by providing fuel for the ships which diverted the comet. And that man is… AL BUNDY.”

Leave a Reply to TRA Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.