domain:web.law.duke.edu
Can anyone explain America's love affair with the pickup truck? This is prompted by this Matt Yglesias post talking about abundance politics, and acknowledging that for working-class Hispanics (among others) owning a pickup is a key measuring stick for material prosperity and that it would be politically stupid for abundance-orientated Democrats to argue this point.
This isn't a question about why Americans drive much bigger personal vehicles than people in other countries - that is obvious. (Generally richer country, cheaper fuel, wider roads, more idiot drivers such that "mass wins" is seen as an important part of being safe on the roads). I think I understand why so many of these are built on a truck chassis (mostly CAFE arbitrage). But the thing I don't get is why the pickup as the big-ass form factor of choice. If you look at the big-ass personal vehicles in the London suburbs, you will see at least 5 full-size SUVs (as in the US, the most common form factor in affluent suburbia is the crossover, which no longer counts as big-ass) for every clean pickup. And if you look at work vehicles, you will see at least 10 vans for every pickup. Most of the work pickups I see in the London suburbs are owned by landscapers who regularly haul large quantities of fertilizer, so "ease of cleaning the bed" is the obvious reason for them. The pattern seems to be the same in other European cities, and googling "Tokyo traffic jam" brings up pictures with more pickups than Europe, but still many fewer pickups than vans or big-ass SUVs.
So my small-scale questions are:
- Is it true that there are more clean pickups than full-size SUV's in the US? Everywhere or just in Red/Hispanic areas?
- Is it true that there are more work pickups than work vans in the US?
- Does anyone have a sense of why Americans choose pickups over other big-ass form factors?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
The argument wasn't whether the West has "any role". Of course there are risks involved, though there would have been (and are) considerably greater risks related to letting Ukraine fall. The argument was whether what the West is doing in Ukraine is the same as if US had decided to send American B2s with American pilots under American flag to drop bombs on Russian targets. It isn't, even in the ballpark.
FistfullOfCrows
1d ago
All of this myopic talk of nukes, in a world where thermobaric/ air burst fuel mixture bombs exist. They are comparatively just as destructive and as a bonus don't leave a fallout. A few MOAB equivalents together can absolutely annihilate a town
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Disagree. Historical evidence is strong that being a housewife in deracinated, suburban 1950s America was pretty damn miserable.
What's the evidence? Progressives used to like bringing up Valium and the like, but drug consumption among women has, if anything, only gone up since.
Consider that it was their daughters in particular who became second-wave feminists - in open repudiation of their mothers’ lives. Why would they do that if it were something to look forward to?
Because society requires active maintenance and not just mere inertia, and propaganda based around sowing resentment towards specific subgroups is quite effective.
Maybe the most moralistic version. But even the most detached and amoral babysitter has reason to keep their most deranged wards away from the knives.
kky
1d ago
Disagree. Historical evidence is strong that being a housewife in deracinated, suburban 1950s America was pretty damn miserable. Consider that it was their daughters in particular who became second-wave feminists - in open repudiation of their mothers’ lives. Why would they do that if it were something to look forward to?
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Warheads on missiles are removable. All they'd need to do to launch a nuke is replace the warhead in one of their missiles with a nuclear one.
For a ballpark number of an early nuclear bomb, we might look at Little Boy, which weighted 4.4 tons. Sure, a warhead would have different design constraints than a bomb which has to fit in a B-29, but it is reasonably to assume that any early warhead would weight a multiple of its fissile mass, perhaps half a ton, not something you can easily move around.
More importantly, to play MAD, you have to have launch-ready nuclear weapons. You want to be sure that your enemy can not take out your ability to retaliate with a first strike. Iran does not have missile submarines and also does not have any aircraft which can be reliably make it to Israel, so the only arm of their nuclear triad would be ground-based missiles fired either from stationary silos or vehicles. Either of these only work if you get the missile in the air before your launcher is hit.
If you opt to keep your retaliatory warheads in a deep bunker safe from harm, you will find that you do not have enough time between the first warning of an impeding attack and your bunker being hit to take your warheads out of the bunker and mount it on a missile. Even if the warhead itself is kept safe, after being hit you will not be in any position to launch it -- your access tunnels to your bunker will be full of rubble, your nuclear-capable missiles and launch pads near the surface will be destroyed, and the only retaliation your nuke offers is blowing up your own bunker. All your enemy has to do is to make sure that you have other priorities than digging through rubble in a nuclear crater in the middle of a war which you are fighting with severely degraded capabilities, which seems plausible enough.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
I get being against what is happening in Gaza, but so many people seem to be completely ignorant of the history of conflict, perhaps willfully so.
What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?
I seem to be coming from a broadly similar background as you (I was a grad student around when you say you lived in Israel, and visited the country around the same time, and am an "alt-left" outlier on this forum), and I see much of the same facts on the ground as you do (Israel is quite livable, Arab-run countries are shitholes, etc.) (though your benchmarking against the West Bank, which is kind of an Israeli-run open air concentration camp, is a bit disingenuous), and yet I'm increasingly falling in the delenda est camp just because the Israelis have proven time and time again that they are unwilling to compromise on their monomanic obsession to capture and subjugate. For me, this does not even come from a particular reflex to support "the oppressed", as I for example am leaning towards kicking all the Islamic refugees out of Europe to the extent achievable under the law. It's just that I do believe in some baseline of human rights including some degree of freedom, bodily safety and self-determination, and the very existence of Israel from the point of its founding seems to just amount to a wanton cruel ploy to deny these to the previous residents of the clay they took.
I think the Palestinians should be allowed to govern themselves in a miserable theocratic shithole, if they are so inclined; if the Israelis want to build a purposeful country with nice infrastructure and great food production, more power to them, but they should have done so on land they obtained fair and square. I'm sure I could run a very spiffy software development startup in tidy quarters where I also cook two delicious meals a day, but would it be acceptable for me to do that by commandeering a random crack addict's shack and keeping the previous owner locked up naked in the basement, subject to regular beatings (frequency and intensity increased if he lashes out against me) if I also sometimes share some of my food with him (surely better than the slop his buddy who got to keep his shack next door eats)?
kky
1d ago
I only went there as you describe once, some ten years back. I was very young and dumb and spoke none of the language so most of it was wasted on me. Most of my experience is of the hellhole sort… oh well. At least I met some very nice people each time I went!
functor
1d ago
A private system could work as well. Holland, Switzerland and Japan also have private systems. The difference is that their prices aren't abhorrent. Regardless of who pays the US medical system has a cost problem. This problem will not get solved because the vested interests want delivering a baby to cost 40000 dollars.
I don't think anyone really disputes that the Palestinians, collectively, are oppressed. Where we differ is who we blame for oppressing them (the modal leftist pins the blame solely on Israel, whereas I would say that the Hamas leaders, the broader Arab world and Iran bear some of the blame); what the fact of their oppression implies for the moral rightness of their behaviour (the modal leftist believes that, because Palestinians are oppressed, they cannot be held accountable for their actions in the same way an oppressor could; I disagree); and what the fact of their oppression implies for the pragmatic pursuit of their goals (the modal leftist believes that, because Hamas was morally justified in committing the attacks on October 7th or firing rockets at Israel more or less indiscriminately, that therefore implies that doing so was a sensible goal; I disagree, as I am unable to fathom a hypothetical turn of events by which gunning down revellers at a music festival brings Palestinian statehood an iota closer).
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
At the point where the father prevents the boy from picking up a sword. That's where you should have stepped in, enthusiasticaly pressed the foam weapon into his little hands, and distracted or even confronted the "father".
Of course I'm heavily biased here. I'm doing what I can to teach fencing and grappling to my 3-year-old daughter, who at least humors me even if she has no drive to fight. Kid wants to pick up weapons? Great! What parent wouldn't want their child to develop a healthy enthusiasm for self-defence, or maybe even the capacity to defend others? Boys may be boys and girls not as given to physical fighting, but even then, kids of either gender benefit from learning how to handle themselves.
I have a habit of alienating my wife's friends and family members by telling them straight-up what I think on controversial issues. My own family members know better than to start, by now, and my own friends either have no opinion on childrearing or are conservative enough themselves. So I don't think I'm playing internet tough guy when I say that I would have no problem telling the parents in your tale that what they're doing is straight-up horrifying and that I hope the child grows up to escape their influence ASAP. If they want to virtue signal to provoke the squares, fine, consider this square provoked, but they won't get off uncontested.
Now, as for the state...eh. In an ideal world, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-competent yet all-benevolent state will have prevented that scenario from occuring in the first place. In our current world, with our current states, I think it's better for the state to stay out of it.
FtttG
1d ago
Which is to say, Israel postures like it is responding to an existential threat, but it isn't.
Hamas alone does not present an existential threat to Israel, agreed. But for most of Israel's history, they weren't just facing a threat from Palestinians, but from the entire Arab world; and even today, as little as two years ago they were facing a combined threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar and Iran. I think it's fair to say these four belligerents combined constitute an existential threat to Israel.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Regime change isn’t possible without a ground invasion
Yes
a ground invasion which isn’t possible
Debatable. Arguably, the US would pay a lower price in lives lost to occupy Iran than they did in, say, Operation Overlord.
Sure, currently the political climate is not very favorable to an invasion. The two failures of GWB are still fresh in the minds of Americans, and Trump did not campaign on military adventurism.
It would likely take a very stupid action on Iran's part to shore up US support for an invasion. Perhaps a 9/11 level terrorist attack, or a couple of 100 captured US servicemen being beheaded on video.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Ukraine's stated military objective is to keep independent despite Russia trying to annex them.
Hamas stated military objective is to destroy Israel.
Now, Ukraine's struggle is not an unmitigated success, sure, they lost territory but were still holding Kiev last time I checked.
Hamas struggle is an utter failure in military terms. If they murdered as many Israeli as they did on Oct-7 every day, they would still need two decades to genocide Israel. Nor is Israel going to use up all its bombs on Gaza and then being overrun by Arabs, or go bankrupt bombing Gaza.
I have long argued that Hamas theory of victory involves goading Israel into killing as many Palestinian kids as possible, thereby eroding Western support for them. This is a strategy which is notably worse than millennia of horrible warfare, and which I would label "crazy".
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
Brother, you do not interfere in the affairs of a neighboring tribe unless you want to start a blood feud. It's a shame for the boy, but the world is full of such evils, and there is no state powerful enough to root them all out. That tribe has their customs, we have ours. They have their rituals, we have ours. They have their god, and we have ours. The best course of action is to interact with them as little as possible, only to trade goods and reach agreements about territory. With the passage of time, we will see whose tribe flourishes and whose tribe withers.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
You have my vote, brother.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
The NPT itself does not specify any thresholds directly.
Each Non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes to accept safeguards, as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency in accordance with the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Agency's safeguards system, for the exclusive purpose of verification of the fulfilment of its obligations assumed under this Treaty with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
But the IAEA-Iran treaty also does not specify any thresholds.
I was surprised to learn that Iran kept being a party to the NPT after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. The 2025-05 report states that:
54 . Iran continues to cooperate with the Agency on matters of routine safeguards implementation, and the Agency implements a large verification effort in Iran commensurate with Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle and activities.61 However, in a number of respects as outlined in this report its cooperation with the Agency has been less than satisfactory, as described below.
86 . In light of the above assessment, the Director General reiterates his urgent call upon Iran to cooperate fully and effectively with the Agency. Unless and until Iran assists the Agency in resolving the outstanding issues, the Agency will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful.
Or course, after the Trump bombing, they are now rectifying that mistake, and likely will not be a party to the NPT in 90 days.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
I wonder whether perhaps it should be. Shatter the Overton window and be done with it, tell people exactly what you mean. Or maybe it can't be, for legal reason. I am not a lawyer.
2D3D
1d ago
The Israelis TRIED the Ethnic Cleansing, by offering Gaza and the West Bank back to the Egyptians and Jordan in exchange for peace! The genius of the Egyptians and Jordanians is that they REJECTED the inclusion of Gaza and West Bank into their territories and made peace anyways!
Israel could have at the tail end of its MANY wars with the Arabs just marched a division of troops through the capitals to prove decisively that their worldview was broken and that the Israelis were capable of fighting back without US support - the overwhelming bulk of Israeli equipment in 1967 was purchased French/Western European equipment, not US purchased/provided arms. The greater dynamics of cold war tensions is what caused the Arabs to cease hostilities on the recommendation of Soviet advisors, because otherwise the Arabs were continually believing that they were winning.
The Egyptians still celebrate the Yom Kippur War as a national holiday https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/172q5t3/who_really_won_the_yom_kippur_war_egypt_or_israel/ despite the evidence to the contrary and it just proves that without comprehensive defeat you can imagine you actually won even as your armies lay shattered.
Israels major achievement of peace is that the leaders of Arab nations all collectively like the money peace brings in to buy property in London and New York, and the indulgences of ostentatious consumption and degenerate whoremongering in the Gulf Arab states. The incentive for Arab leaders to wage war on Israel is much lower than the desire fermenting in their downtrodden populations, but that problem for once isn't Israels responsibility to manage or to have incited - the alliance with the Mullahs is all the fault of the Arabs themselves.
Again, Israel should just migrant fleet across the world for 4 years after sealing Jerusalem in a giant gelatinous cube. The region will fall apart entirely by itself without western intervention to keep peace, and the world will be better for it.
2D3D
1d ago
My extremely gay leftie friends whined about Fordow being hit and how Trump is uniquely evil for killing so many, then when I pointed out the Nigerian and Sudanese murders of Christians or their total silence when the Sri Lankan bombings or Maute Group took over an entire city to systematically slaughter Christians, they pivoted to ad hominem attacks on me for only caring about Muslim crimes. By observed outcome the left doesn't actually care about victims, they only care about castigating their preferred oppressor and piggybacking off real tragedies where possible. Conflating the LGBT cause with Palestine makes the LGBT relevant again, whereas without Palestine or Iran the LGBT has to confront how the T is the only cause actually left to fight for.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
So, if hypothetically, the elected leader of a country opined that a polity should be removed from their lands and a Mediterranean beach resort should be constructed on their vacated lands, they would be justified in destroying the country of that leader? Asking for a friend.
2D3D
1d ago
Palestinians have struggled to win western support, and this was in large part because they've historically made poor victims
In the modern era the palestinians don't need to find ways to be good victims, when plenty of leftists are eager to totemize them and make excuses on their behalf. Egypt blocks the border with Rafah and its leftists who say 'its to keep the Palestinian dream alive'. Hamas shoots its own people and 'its to fight Israeli-armed looters'. And thats all without the pure conspiracism that the left favors like 'the Israelis actually killed their own people'. The worthiness of the Palestinians as victims stems purely from their ineptitude as successful insurgents - failure is met with even greater support. Its the same reason leftists now cheer for Iran, because the failure of Iran to strike against the hated Jew oops Zionist is further proof of the iniquity of the vile Zio. Hamas and the Mullahs are happy to keep the torture of their own people like uncovered women displayed only to internal stakeholders, and the left is busy whitewashing that to keep Hamas and Iran morally pure angels.
What of course is eternally funny to me is that literally every islamist regime in that hellpit immediately turned on their commie socialist allies the very second the state apparatus lost its grip, and every single walking stereotype of Road To Wigan Pier will be immediately up against the wall faster than they can settle on the name for their fully automated luxury space communism utopia. To be fair, that name generation alone could probably take several centuries before agreement is made.
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