Life, and in particular life in the USA

I gotta tell you feels like the USA is falling apart.

From Trump, elevated racist and nationalist narratives, George Floyd protests and national guard, shitty handling of covid, continual polarizing politicizing of normal life, one nauseating news cycle after another, social media dominating human discourse....

It all sucks.

To top it off the Midwest just got DESTROYED by a giant giant thunderstorm of indescribable magnitude with 100+ mph over the course of 500 miles... Just Google derecho Midwest ... I have my own photos and they're unbelievable, but Google should do the trick.

Seems like each year keeps making nthe previous year look good.

Spirits are in the can.

Can only hope Trump doesn't steal the election.

I cannot express to you the size of this storm. Ripped a 120 year old healthy oak tree down in our back yard. I've seen hurricanes, even tornadoes. In our neighborhood trees are laying on top of houses all ever the place.

Images

A bit of a sensationalist post on my part, but if life had an author, one would question the motives of all this symbolic misery being written.

Begs the question.... Same crap in the UK?

bloody hell that was a big thunder storm. looking from the outside from news and the social media stuff I thought it must look worse than it is in the USA that most was sensationalism and cherry picked story's. But the magnitude of shite comming out of the USA is mad and it makes me sad as i love america americana. Will the upcomming election push the divide wider ?? personally both candidates are not people i would want yo vote for but Biden is the lesser of the two.

can you feel the divide in everyday life ?? or is not as bad ?

head up.

The political divide is palpable.

The storm looked like the wizard of oz. I do not get scared, but when I saw a healthy oak tree fall down that has a 4 foot wide trunk in my own yard nearly obliterating my neighbors house, I paid attention. I went in the basement. I have never gone into a basement. 15 years of east coast hurricanes, never in a basement.

I don't know if the upcoming election will push the divide wider, but I don't think so.... Seems to me that Trump has gone too far with too little skill and grace.

He has given a lot of conspiracy theories and nutjobs a voice though.

He might (try to) steal the election. We'll see.

Sometimes I wonder whether history will show we are living in a proverbial dark ages, possibly rooted in the advent of social media. That may be a bit of an emotional reaction on my part though

Here's an image. If you can open it you'll see I'm standing on the trunk and the tree dwarfs everything around it. My wife and neighbor are below. Scenes like this are all over the place. Riding the cargo bike around with the kids is truly an adventure and a lot of fun. One bright spot and the whole event.

We're were quoted 7k+ to get the tree out.

My neighbor and I may just chip away at it for a month, seeing we can't get a tree service out until they're "finished getting the trees out of everybody's living rooms."

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Another. you can see the oak in the back and then two large walnut limbs tipped over as well, and the red bud in the foreground. This doesn't even show two or three other large limbs that were in our yard.

images on Google of the corn crop in the Midwest are truly probably the saddest images of all.

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Corn leveled. They quote 30 to 40% of the corn crop was lost this year because of this.

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wow.glad your ok and the houses were not smashed by the trees. sad to seethoes old trees up rooted

Top it off with a fresh 10,000 acre fire in southern California

He might (try to) steal the election. We'll see.

He’s and his lackeys are 100% guaranteed to try and steal the election.

With reports of mailboxes (also used as ballot drop off points apparently) now being removed citing financial viability due to lower daily usage, and automated mail sorting machines being removed from processing centres, I think it's already happening

Glad to hear you're okay @bright

It’s very hot here in SoCal... we had no electricity for fourteen hours on Saturday, so had to spend most of the day in the car for A/C.... wildfire smoke is pretty gross in the San Gabriel Valley too. Spending the whole week indoors 😒 I am normally okay with dry high heats, but 39 degrees with high humidity and wildfire smoke is not a good combo.

A very good friend of mine emigrated to the USA in 2008 to follow an academic career. She's a professor at a Texas university now. Two children under the age of 10.

As a person of slightly left wing opinions she feels trapped. She receives quite a lot of abuse for being a libtard and If it wasn't for her kids being in school she'd be back to the UK in a flash.

I also have a Hijab wearing sister in law who lives in Vegas and works as an architect. She has been in the US for about 13 years also. Her experience of being an obviously Muslim person in Vegas was a mostly positive one until about 2016 when the verbal attacks started. Things have gradually got worse and she can expect to be abused almost daily. She also has two young American born children.

It's just so sad.

Their reasons for being horrified are too many to list. I know for one of them finding out that some of her kids classmates have ballistic backpacks and that their teacher has a "shooting kit" which contains a sharpie to write the names of the dead on their arms was a final straw.

I’ve only visited the US a handful of times, not always in good times, but also some truly amazing times too.

But recently it just looks and sounds like hell @bright and @JB. Our thoughts are with you during these dark times.

Stay safe, stay kind
Al x

apparently Texas is polling well for Biden .. arent the cities in Texas thicc democrats though?

Biden is leading by 7 in Texas.

Edit: I misread, apparently Trump leads Biden by 7% in Texas now. A swing from last month.

It ain’t that bad, pal. Not for me anyway. Thanks though - hope you and yours are good.