Ehh. There is a particular sickness among white men. It’s a failure of masculinity. It’s also a failure by the Left.

Men are screeched at about toxic masculinity, especially young men. Many societal ills are blamed on white men, (hell, I blame them, rightfully so).

The Right welcomes them with open arms, tells them it’s a liberal conspiracy. It fills their heads with empty hate and silly alpha/beta crap.

The Left says not much in the way of what positive masculinity should look like.

Men experience heightened levels of anger, aggression, mature later, poor impulse control. This is a natural part of having a male hormonal system. Without a good support system and role models, this can lead to ugly places for young men. When it’s young white men, the Right scoops them up.

The men that look like me, talk like me, have interests like me almost always have abhorrent political beliefs and are full of conspiracy theories. I’m a redneck and often hate my own people. It’s like the self hating Jews or black folks you hear about.

Positive white masculinity is absolutely in crisis in America. I don’t know what the answer is, but it is absolutely a problem that affects all genders, orientations, and minorities. It’s a problem because white men hold so much power and will continue to have that power for a long time.

The Right has won the hearts and minds of many white men. The Left needs to pull its head out of its ass and figure out a strategy to win back at least some of these men. It needs to help young white men grow into manhood in a positive way.

It’s definitely a problem. It’s up to metalheads to handle it as well. Throw their bitch asses out of shows. Give them shit reviews. Any day is a good day to punch a Nazi.

More often than not, I meet another metalhead, instant brother or sister. Tend to be cool people.

We moved this summer using an old box truck. Had a breakdown in the middle of Ohio, stuck at a gas station, no cans or uber. Totally told a kid that was gothed up and covered in tats, “Are you a metalhead? Metalheads are cool people, my kid and I are broke down and need a ride.” Joey was very cool, gave us a ride to the parts store and a hotel, wouldn’t take my money. He likes that Screamo stuff that I’m not real into, we both agree that Maiden, cool jazz, and OTEP are the tits.

For the few assholes: the Dead Kennedys said it best.

Don’t forget: this weirdo wants his green chocolate candy to be gendered and fuckable.

RAPE! RAPE! MURDER!!!1!

This bullshit doesn’t help your cause at all. I’m the rare omnivore that is actually sympathetic to moral issues of factory farmig and animal suffering.

You need to like unfuck your head and try to turn down whatever preaching you’re listening to. That’s some bad religion that’s got ahold of you.

You’re no different than those ‘pro-life’ whack jobs.

There it is.

So, as an ignorant teenager, cleaning chicken houses of rotten corpses and chicken shit for $5/hr: I was actually fucking those chickens? I was kid chicken raper? The steers I raised in elementary school, I suppose I fucked them as well.

See, that’s the thing. I saw how bad it was and have worked and saved for many years so I will no longer have to participate in a system that involves industrial suffering.

But nope, I’m totally such a raper. Fuck you and your sanctimonious bullshit. You don’t know me or my circumstances. I know plenty of Southern Baptists and Church of Christ that spew this same shit. Y’all would get along real well, if you only listened to your tones and didn’t pay attention to the words.

Fucking fanatics can suck my fucking balls, all y’all the same.

Here on Lemmy I’ve been accused of torturing and raping animals as I’m unashamedly an omnivore. I’m a hunter as well.

I worry about animal suffering enough that we’ve bought a small farm and hope to raise all our own meat. I’ve actually worked on factory farms and know firsthand the suffering of animals under that system.

However, there are fanatical vegans on Lemmy that do a fantastic job of driving away those of us sympathetic to vegan ethics and morality.

Yes, them calling me a rapist totally made we want to be like them and adopt their ideology.

Their strain of it appears to be poison religion like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. A fanatic is a fanatic, whatever paint they’re dipped in. Guess they’re just trying to fill a hole in themselves.

IDK, my son took the pictures for me. His phone has a better camera than mine. 98 Ranger XLT. It’s my fourth vehicle, lifetime. Throws no codes, I keep it running tight.

Lemmy isn’t letting me upload a better pic of it right now.

Looking into it more, I agree that it’s slate. Didn’t realize it could be this size, only ever heard of it being used for tiles.

It may be slate, now that I read more about it. Don’t have any experience with slate, shale, or phyllite. Not sure.

Went to highschool in an Alabama school. Football is a religion, and the football coaches were given the respect of preachers. They were also given cushy teaching jobs like health or drivers ed. They were generally not very bright.

The school might be run down and underfunded, but the football field was immaculate with huge bleachers, the locker rooms were nice.

In contrast, I had one coach teacher that taught history. Baseball coach. He taught me to love history. His tests were almost all long answer, didn’t care about dates. He wanted you demonstrate understanding of the causes and results of events. Brilliant man with deep knowledge and love of his subject.

Got tired of the two week long headaches and quit football, switched to cross country even though I wasn’t built for it. Forget the term, but my body type is large muscles and bones.

Had a cross country coach. He didn’t care if you won races or were able to be very competitive. He just expected you to do your best and would push the hell out of you. I saw him take lots of fat little freshman and turned them into lean endurance machines over several years. Don’t remember anyone ever quitting the team. I will always remember him leaning out the window of his 60’s pickup yelling at kids to push through and push harder. He was poor, shitty salary, tires on his truck were bald and leaky, he had screws in them he couldn’t remove cause they would go flat.

Those two men earned the title of Coach in my life.

The Thirteenth Floor.

Holy cow! I have my TST card and everything. Kink has been incredibly important to my girl and I building a feeling of community.

Was in the hospital once. My family organized prayer circles and shit and I had to shut off Facebook. Then they tried to do some deathbed conversion shit while I was on heavy opiates. I giggled at the guy they sent to my room and called him an alien. The kink community brought my girl, and our former partner, food and ran errands for us. Ran interference with the hospital over our poly realtionship. The kink community took care of my people when I couldn’t.

Like any other community, it has its problems, but has been pretty wholesome.

I bet you and I would get along well.

Ahh. Thank you! I like it. It’s like Santorum: the frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal material formed on the base of the penis during anal sex between men.

Yeah, it’s sick. I’ve always been amazed by how many people actually believe the company line and feel intense loyalty.

Once worked at a place that required everyone to show up 1.5 hours early to watch a video from the CEO cheerleading about “rationalizing” plants. Rationalizing was code for layoffs. Then they gave us buttons to wear about it. I tossed the first one in the urinal, real proud that there was a pile of them at the end of the day.

I think it’s normal and human to appreciate hard work and dedication. That drive makes us survive. Then it gets used as bait, the hook goes in, and people misplace that drive onto something inhuman. I guess it’s a successful strategy if you’re a no soul snake.

One of the greatest pleasures in my life is pissing off the back porch when it’s cold, looking up at the Milky Way, and listening to the coyotes pack up.

Yeah, they ain’t much in the face, but they working some truly hypnotic mammaries. Mermaids would probably catch me as well. I’m a simple man.

“see how any religion applies?!”

Atheist of fundamentalist protestant extraction. Aren’t like some of the Buddhists pretty cool? Especially the Zen Buddhists. Also, Sikhs seem cool. And the Jainists.

I could totally be wrong. Organized religion is a terrible thing in almost all of my experience.

Wiccans have been real cool in my experience. They have really fun orgies.

I’ve always figured that if you gave the Duras Sisters some fine blood wine and got them drinking hard, you could then switch them to Romulan ale. Then they would snuggle with you. You could probably avoid them cutting you up but you would need to sneak out the next morning.