Don’t judge them too harshly. If everybody surrounding you starts talking about how Portland turned into a shithole, you’d start eventually believing it, too. I know people that live 20 km South of San Francisco, who claimed they would not come see me in town when I was visiting because it was too dangerous. They were baffled not only that I walked everywhere, but that I survived the ordeal unscathed.
Propaganda is strangely powerful. I still remember the run-up to the Iraq War, when Bush et al. were talking about weapons of mass destruction and everybody believed them. I thought to myself: if the Iranians are not concerned about Iraqi WMDs, and they are sworm enemies and right next to each other, why should anyone else be?
A similar thing is how if you listen to anyone from the Inland Empire talk about LA it will sound like it’s a toxic waste site. In reality we just don’t like their attitude and also fuck LA traffic. We don’t have anywhere to squirm on crime, ever been to San Bernardino or West Highland?
Don’t judge them too harshly. If everybody surrounding you starts talking about how Portland turned into a shithole, you’d start eventually believing it, too. I know people that live 20 km South of San Francisco, who claimed they would not come see me in town when I was visiting because it was too dangerous. They were baffled not only that I walked everywhere, but that I survived the ordeal unscathed.
Propaganda is strangely powerful. I still remember the run-up to the Iraq War, when Bush et al. were talking about weapons of mass destruction and everybody believed them. I thought to myself: if the Iranians are not concerned about Iraqi WMDs, and they are sworm enemies and right next to each other, why should anyone else be?
A similar thing is how if you listen to anyone from the Inland Empire talk about LA it will sound like it’s a toxic waste site. In reality we just don’t like their attitude and also fuck LA traffic. We don’t have anywhere to squirm on crime, ever been to San Bernardino or West Highland?