...perhaps you aren't outnumbered, but rather it's just the tone that's driving the non-supportive responses. Please let me explain...
They are no better than Freepers, they got theirs, fuck the rest of us.
I make $12.00 an hour, I work for a small, home business in the human resources sector, and I don't know if I'll have a job after the first of the year. I have no benefits. My budget is so tight my partner and I have resorted to shopping for the generic Wal-Mart brands to keep us in food. We are victims of Hurricane Ike--I lost my car, we both lost our workplaces and are working out of temporary locations.
Speaking of that car--we had one vehicle that we shared between us. It was a 1995 Honda Accord. It was a good car and required little maintenance. I was forced to replace it after the storm, just so we could go to work everyday. I took our savings and got a used 1994 Geo Prizm for $2500. I looked into the car before I got it, and discovered that it was really just a re-branded Toyota Corolla. That didn't matter, I needed it and it worked so I got it...
The car is insignificant overall, as is the Wal-Mart shopping. We have to do what we need to in order to get by these days. But a quick look at a few of the threads in GD over the Thanksgiving weekend revealed a theme, and a nasty one. While the threads didn't come right out and say it, they heavily implied that to buy foreign cars, shop at Wal-Mart, or even take grocery carts in from the parking lot, was essentially being a traitor to America and America's workers.
What was lost in those threads was that people like me are Americans and are also America's workers, just as much as anyone else is. Most of these threads were started by those who are Labor Union members. These threads hurt people like me. Was I supposed to tell you how much I support you while some of you imply that I'm a traitor to the American worker? I AM an American worker. Just trying to survive.
ALL we are simply trying to do is save American manufacturing.
Yes, you were, but the threads posted seemed to be only about saving Labor jobs. And I'm only saying this in general--I don't mean anything posted by you personally. I know it sounds harsh, but from someone in my position, that's what it looked like. Buy a foreign car, go on ignore; shop at Wal-Mart, you don't support workers. But I've done both of those things recently and I only did it to survive...
Yet the majority here don't give a rats ass.
But we do. I do. I would buy American if I could, and would shop at some other store if I could right now. I have always done so in the past and will do so in the future, as soon as I can. But right now, those threads just hit people in my situation with a mallet square between the eyes. We're hurting, too, not just auto workers.
But don't mention anything about their lives or lifestyles...
The above phrase is what I am talking about. Don't mention...their...lifestyles? I'm sure you didn't mean it to look this way, but as a gay man I totally took that sentence the wrong way. You are equating your income to who I am as an individual? What I mean is, I know you didn't mean it that way, but the rashness of your typing of it made it look that way to me.
Perhaps it's time for a Labor/DU reconciliation thread. I think that DU hasn't done a good job of recognizing the hurt and pain that its Labor members have been going through. But maybe the board's Labor members haven't necessarily recognized the pain that other posters, (and I don't mean those smart-asses that have ducked into car threads saying GM is a piece of shit), are going through.
We should all do a better job of listening to one another. First on that list is me.
Well, I wasn't meaning to make this sound anti-worker. Just was expressing some feelings on these threads. I know I've probably done a poor job. I'm still trying to get a grip on a lot of the pain over what's happening in the auto industry. Somebody help me out here...
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