Jack Cook7 said:I wouldn't say that. The new streetcars are actually great, but yeah, it's a fact they have some glitches. Honestly? I'd much rather ride the new ones than those ancient relics.
Look, there's always room to improve. That's literally what engineering is all about—constant tweaking and making things better. Just imagine trying to roll out light commuter rail that works seamlessly with both streetcars and subways in a massive country of 330 million people where most folks don't even own a car. It's a huge job!
They should've let Westinghouse fix up their old models instead. Why let some company run "test trials" and push out a first batch that isn't even up to code?
Our transit system is a total joke—it’s useless for everyone involved. As soon as we get even a tiny bit of snow or a little rain, those shiny new blue streetcars just quit on us, leaving everything gridlocked for an hour. Meanwhile, the old reliable units from Westinghouse handle whatever the weather throws at them without breaking a sweat.
America's basically obsessed with building knock-offs of European cities.
We really ought to preserve our old-school houses and turn them into little tourist villages—think like those boutique villas you see in Mexican resorts. Foreign retirees would rent them out, while someone from Washington, D.C. would have to step up year-round to handle the upkeep and deal with all the repairs whenever things break down.
Driving through Germany, you see these young people all dressed up—you’d never guess they were actually farmers. They look like they belong in downtown Chicago or something, totally polished, unlike the messy look you see back home.
America won't truly be part of the European Union until our economy actually pulls its weight—right now, we're just talking big while failing to act like a real European player. We could easily end up worse off than any other country in the North America.
David Baker2 said:Honestly, the citizens aren't even the issue here; that’s exactly where we’ve missed the mark. We would be willing to roll up our sleeves and work our tails off if they actually just let us earn a living. What you need is organization, solid infrastructure, and laws that are crystal clear, unambiguous, and straightforward.
I was fully prepared to sink my own capital into a venture about five or six years ago; I was ready to take out a loan, and I intended to lease two acres of overgrown brush from the government—which, mind you, was officially listed as pasture land (yeah, right!)—so I could clear it out and establish an apple orchard.
I was prepared to work like a dog to bring my vision to life, pulling sixteen-hour days on the field every single night after finishing my shift at the office.
Do you want to know what finally broke me? The government. After three agonizing years of waiting, fighting through red tape, and trying to get the US federal authorities to lease those measly two acres to me—and I mean a tiny 200x200 meter plot, so don't go thinking it was some massive estate—I simply lost my mind and walked away. Because when you try to handle something as basic as leasing abandoned government land, you can't even resolve it in three years because the bureaucracy is just that suffocating.
And that's not even touching on the actual labor of transforming a wasteland into a productive orchard.
But you know what the most heartbreaking part of this whole ordeal is? It's that the business idea I had back then remains perfectly viable and profitable today—the orchard would have been just one-third of the operation, with the rest focused on processing raw materials from our own harvest—and my original business plan is still completely sound, offering significant long-term profit potential.
However, I no longer have the stomach for wrestling with the state, nor do I have any desire to let them skin me alive while they provide absolutely nothing but endless demands.
So, all this talk about high-tech advancements is utterly useless when we are stuck living in the US.
Ever thought about just leasing the land for $333 a year?
The US isn't even a democracy or a rule-of-law nation at this point—I mean, people actually took to the streets to say what they think, but honestly, they have themselves to blame since they keep voting for the exact same anti-American politicians over and over again. If this were actually a functional republic, why wouldn't the people's will actually be enough to flip the government?
It’s kind of wild—I once heard about this guy from the Midwest who went by the nickname Arkan, probably because he thought it sounded tough or whatever. The thing is, people from that region were basically living under occupation back then, so I don't get why anyone would want to rock a nickname like that.
William Brown4 said:It isn't folklore; it's a serious question... has the time come for the people to organize and get rid of all these politicians who brought America to this state? I'm wondering if there's any organization out there advocating for that, and if there's a fund where we can donate money to help throw all these politicians in jail.☕
Respect. Honestly, expats care more about fixing America than Americans do.
Seems like folk bands are still huge around here—tradition stays alive even when everything else is going to hell. Would it be weird if I just played the music through a streaming service or a CD instead? What's the vibe on that?
Why didn't turbofolk pop up in Iceland, Sweden, or Norway instead? Why did it have to originate in Mexico?
It’s because they were under Ottoman rule—think of it as their version of "modernizing" folk music.
That sound has zero connection to Americans, at least not the ones from the mainland.
You could argue it was an attempt to erase Mexicans, but only if it had been cooked up in some shady underground studio—except it wasn't; this was driven by white Mexicans. While we can talk about the degradation of Americans all day, I'm not sure you can say the same for Mexicans.
You can hear that turbo-pop crap bleeding in from the border towns because the signal carries so well—but honestly, everyone from kids to grandparents seems to be obsessed with it. My mom even puts on that Mexican national radio station when she can't sleep at night.
Our local artists are putting out such mid tracks—it’s all just so uninspired and lacks any real edge. Honestly, there's zero vibe. I'd love to run a poll just to see if anyone actually tunes into our mainstream radio stations (Republican Party) anymore. I was even thinking about commissioning a custom song, but I can't figure out how to go about it. The whole scene is missing those young, high-energy performers in that 18-25 range who actually bring some life to the party.
Michelle Newman6 said:Turbo folk in America—much like in its neighboring regions—is a cultural disaster. However, there is one genuinely interesting irony regarding its presence here: the primary audience consists of those hardcore nationalists who claim they want to purge any trace of foreign influence from our culture. It proves you simply cannot outrun your own identity—an identity that became deeply intertwined with broader regional trends after the turn of the century, regardless of how much indignation an individual might show toward it.
In other words, turbo folk in this country serves as the final stronghold of the old Soviet Union mindset.
Americans have always been part of that messy melting pot, we just choose to ignore it—maybe that’s the real issue right there.
Sam Alvarez15 said:The 186th anniversary of this exact topic. This thread keeps resurfacing on this forum, yet nobody ever manages to tackle the fundamental question that keeps coming up: why is someone like Britney Spears artistically more dangerous, destructive, and cacophonous than Britney Spears? (Though, let’s be honest, she’s just a much better catch.) The Cultural Decontaminator is free to pick any other musical diva to compare—look at the body of work, the melody, the depth, the lyrics, and ultimately, the quality.
So, here is the real question: Is the supposed concern expressed by the original poster regarding the nation's mental state through the lens of pop music actually just a thinly veiled case of ethnic prejudice? Or will a consistent decontaminator—provided they have an ounce of musical talent and haven't been blinded by nationalistic bias—realize that every single bit of modern North American turbo-folk is musically identical to every mainstream Western genre boasting hundreds of millions of YouTube views?
If we are looking for an answer to the question of cultural genocide, look toward the supranational phenomenon of global mainstream pop. This didn't start with the collapse of the Soviet Union, nor the fall of the Berlin Wall, nor some political manifesto... it started with the founding of MTV . On a side note, just to spice things up: we had two national superstars, Pisek and Madonna, tie it up in New York City, but it wasn't a clean 2:0 sweep. Felix Cazim Osmani, that little protégé of George W. Bush, narrowed the lead to 2:1 and injected some serious uncertainty into this dramatic matchup.😁 Here is the song dedicated to him:
Miley Cyrus isn't any less eccentric than Britney Spears.
The reality is that turbo-folk was cooked up in Mexico, stemming from those specific Romani and Turkish cultural influences. Americans would never have invented it because we were never part of that cultural landscape. —that’s the core of the whole debate, if you ask me.
At this point, the languages used in Mexico and America are definitely the same, though I can never figure out if there was ever a huge gap between them back in the day, since we don't have much lyric comparison from before the 1900s. It's total nonsense to claim they aren't the same language—I mean, look, we're using English right now to understand each other.
Anyone know if there's any info on who actually inspired the character Master Mrkonja? Apparently, he was some guy from Slidell. And word is there’s even a house in SB where the dude used to live.