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With all due respect and not to have a pissing contest, but I've been traveling, first in a motorhome and now with an old Avion travel trailer, for about 7 of t

With all due respect and not to have a pissing contest, but I've been traveling, first in a motorhome and now with an old Avion travel trailer, for about 7 of the past 9 years (sort of hard to pin down exactly what "traveling" means in this context since sometimes I park in one place for a few months, but it includes multiple drives from coast to coast and from Alaska to southern Mexico), and I've met quite a few law-and-order Republicans who absolutely believe that the vast majority of people in prison deserve to be there, that if people just do what police say there won't be any more police brutality, and that maybe we should spend more money on law enforcement and give police more power. It's certainly not half, but it's a sizable portion of the US population, and clearly a sizeable portion of the voting population, since our government has been dramatically reshaped in the past year by them. It's sometimes surprising, too. I've met sweet old ladies that as long as topics were of the travel and weather variety seemed perfectly normal. The moment politics came up, they'd show a mean side that would really throw me for a loop. Racism with a shocking lack of self-awareness about their racism is one of the biggest surprises. That said, rather than arguing that you're wrong about the people you've met, I suspect you've experienced bias in the people you meet in traveling the way you do. I've noticed there is a bias in the people I interact with most, for sure; lots of hippies, train kids, as well as people who love the outdoors (in a hiking and biking in national and state parks sort of way, rather than a hunting and fishing sort of way), etc. frequent some of my favorite places to go. But I still meet enough middle-class white folks who have alarming (to me) ideas about police and race and justice in America. If nobody wanted 2.2 million people in prison, we wouldn't have 2.2 million people in prison. Somebody sure as hell wants it because they vote over and over for the people that perpetuate it. We can't pretend no one is responsible. There are people who made decisions that led us inexorably to this outcome, and people making decisions daily to maintain and even expand the prison industrial complex.

SauciestGNU 9y ago
As an aside, the train kids are my favorite. They can be a real handful (to put it mildly) but damn if that isn't an interesting culture.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  They are certainly interesting and most have nothing but kind intentions. They lead interesting but dangerous lives. I like chatting with them in measured doses but wouldn't want to hang out with them for long. There's a lot of fighting, a lot of yelling, a lot of drugs of questionable formulation, a lot of untreated mental illness, etc. But, they often know a lot about the areas where they roam and have fun stories.

SauciestGNU 9y ago

As an aside, the train kids are my favorite. They can be a real handful (to put it mildly) but damn if that isn't an interesting culture.

SwellJoe 9y ago
They are certainly interesting and most have nothing but kind intentions. They lead interesting but dangerous lives. I like chatting with them in measured doses but wouldn't want to hang out with them for long. There's a lot of fighting, a lot of yelling, a lot of drugs of questionable formulation, a lot of untreated mental illness, etc. But, they often know a lot about the areas where they roam and have fun stories.