Trump says immigrants "infest" the United States

boing
107

I have been in this same very real conundrum.

I’m very liberal but I work as a precision machinist.

The job I had held for a couple years before the 2016 election I left voluntarily without notice two days before Christmas that year.

I had American flags hung directly behind the machines I ran after I took down a small one when I thought no one was looking from my machine that I did not put there and I threw it out in disgust.

They did this intentionally and weaponized the American flag to piss me off.

Alcoholics and white supremacists did work there. Basically working in this field is like going to Ground Zero of Trumpville. A guy even OD’d on something in the bathroom on another shift. The white supremacist drove around hailing Hitler as a joke along with showing people pictures of black people lynched. To be fair to him he was a kind person and he explained that he was raised this way and he is trying to make peace with it and get Beyond it but it was still there.

I don’t like stereotyping people as I have been around the world in a previous career and I’ve met people of every walk of life, but sometimes the stereotypes are real or at least the people who fit them are. Rural Pennsylvania even machine shops in Allegheny County in the Pittsburgh area a major liberal area are like this.

I feel like people have weaponized the American flag against anyone who would speak up against this evil. I feel like there is no common idea of even the basic concepts that used to make America great, such as this being a country that took in people from all over the world for a chance at a better life. It was a country where facts mattered science was respected and people treated immigrants like human beings and didn’t lock them in cages.

I look at the American flag even though my father is an ex-marine and conservative (though thank god he hates trump too), and I can’t salute it anymore. I drive by a cemetery where my grandparents are buried a few hundred feet from a billboard that constantly has Pro Trump political ads in LED lighting blaring over their graves and one of the ads is a command- “HONOR THE FLAG” (ironically using the 13 colonies flag incorrectly in the background) and I drive past their graves frequently and have to consistently give the middle finger to the billboard.

I want a movement to reclaim not a liberal America but an America that at the very least we can all salute the flag of.

I don’t want to drive past the graves of my grandparents on a daily basis and have to have them see me giving the middle finger to a billboard right in front of where they’re buried because some people have no class.

I know I’m not the only one out there that works inside the lions den.

Someone come up with a way to reclaim our flag for values we all believe in. Please.

11 Likes
108

Cill the landlord.

Dark and lonely on the summer night.
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking - Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Slip in his window,
Break his neck!
Then his house
I start to wreck!
Got no reason –
What the heck!
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L …
My land - lord …

1 Like
109

I have friends in the Pittsburgh area. What you say sounds exactly right. Salt-of-the-earth, give-you-the-shirt-off-their-back folks, but some of their attitudes…they frustrate the heck out of me. And that was before Trump…

1 Like
110

I just found work in a new company as a tool and die machinist, still around Pittsburgh but this time I will be working in much better conditions and only with four or five other people in such a small specialized department.

I can only hope that these four people I can at least get along with.

I’ve had a weird life to transition from Japanese linguist to precision machinist and watchmaker, but I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the people over all that I’ve had to work with.

There are some very kind and reasonable people that work in the industry too don’t let me fool you they are there and there are some progressive people in it. But we are the extreme minority.

I was actually out of work for about 10 months trying to find a single shop that didn’t strike me like a nightmare and I’ve seen almost every machine shop around the Pittsburgh area and I’ve seen enough Trump and Infowars bumper stickers on vehicles in the parking lots.

One place I nearly took an offer until I saw a racist tirade by the owner against Mexicans and a bunch of others.

If there is such a thing as a machine shop full of progressives I would love to work for them. I think that is probably the unicorn of the industry though.

It would have been nice to work as a prototype machinist on my own to avoid all this bullshit but in time I can specialize in that. I’ve done it before and not have to work for others and it was highly enjoyable not having to have Trump discussions with anyone else in the room.

6 Likes
111

Fifty Licks was distributing ice cream to the protestors.
The protesters were pointing at the ice cream and then the building chanting “Good ice! Bad ICE!”

8 Likes
112

I recall some similar, albeit more risque, protest signs during the Bush era.

2 Likes
113

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