I can’t agree with that list at all.
President Trump in particular, and U.S. conservatives, generally.
Catholics - but only the holier than thou lot.
Any Irish person who feels obliged to bring up all the history back to the Battle of the Boyne (1690) in any discussion.
Welsh people who speak perfect English but refuse to do so in the presence of an English person.
Anyone who carries a gun, unless they are in the military.
Hello, bob++, and thanks for your kind reply.
Here in the U.S. many civilians who own or care for livestock, carry guns, especially rifles. The stock sometimes need to be defended from predators such as big cats.
Other civilians, especially those living on limited incomes in remote regions of the U.S., depend on hunting to put venison, rabbit, and grouse (or “prairie chicken”) on the family table. For this purpose they, too, carry rifles and shotguns.
And some families, also living in remote areas of the U.S., their ancestors having inhabited that land for generations, keep a rifle or a shotgun at the ready for protection from bears, big cats, and other predators, including human intruders with ill intentions, as their ancestors also did. (Official assistance may be an hour’s drive, airplane ride, snowmobile or boat trip away.)
Many people living in rural and small town areas of Texas own guns. And the usual attitude toward other people among small town Texans is not to harbor hostility toward entire collections of their fellow humans. What many of these gun-totin’ Texans will tell you is, “If somebody is friendly to me, well, then I’ll be friendly to them. And if they act like they want to act mean to me, then I figure, just leave 'em be, and let them go their own way, and I’ll go mine. And if sometime down the road, they decide they want to start getting along, that’ll be fine by me, too. Either way.”
Possession of side-arms, or no, I can’t think of a healthier, more wholesome philosophy of life than this.
They don’t seem to have such a chip on their shoulder: Give me a gun-totin’ small town Texan any day.
I understand, being your neighbor in Arkansas. But he is in the UK, where even the policemen don’t usually carry firearms. Some who did killed an innocent guy they thought was a terrorist, so his opinion is understandable.
My mistake, carnivorous, I neglected to indicate my location, which is the Washington, D.C. metro area; I have since corrected the problem. And thank you for your reply.
It’s some of my husband’s family who are Texans. A colorful lot, very warm and embracing, and very proud of who they are and where they come from. You couldn’t wish for a better “family-in-law.”
It is, of course, always a tragedy when a police officer fatally shoots an innocent victim. My few encounters with the police - crowd control, traffic stops, etc. - have always been positive. My impression is that most police officers are decent men and women who want to do good in the community; the last thing they want to do would be to commit an unjust act. (I realize that there are bad apples among the police forces.)
As a Briti, I try not to despise anyone - that’s a bit strong; a raised eyebrow will do most of the time - Trump is just the kind of saloon-bar loudmouth around whom you’ll find most people have left a clear amount of floorspace while they ostentatiously get on with their own conversations. If only one didn’t have the nagging thought about that button, though.
When it comes to guns, I wouldn’t have bob++'s blanket dismissal of anyone who has a gun, but I do wonder about those (relatively few) people who seem attracted to guns for their own sake (however controlled the conditions over the kinds of guns they’re allowed and over how they are to store and use them), as distinct from, say, farmers, who do need them for dealing with vermin (and no doubt if we had bears too, there might be people who need them for protection against them). I do believe our police Armed Response Units aren’t gung-ho and trigger-happy, and I’d prefer to stick with only that limited number of specially-trained officers having guns. I just don’t understand the people like the preppers who appeared on Miriam Margolyes’s programme around America, lovingly describing all their different guns, with seemingly no very clear idea why they needed so many, and so much firepower (it didn’t help that, putting it as politely as possible, few of them appeared to have managed their own physical condition with a view to survival, either).
On the other hand, I do tend to find it doesn’t take many months of Tory government before I’m eyeing up the lamp-posts for their load-bearing potential.
Okay, Patrick - I agree that a blanket dismissal of all gun ownership is a bit strong. Even here, farmers have shotguns for vermin etc. It’s really the whole gun culture thing that I hate, where a man’s (and it is usually men) self-esteem is seemingly dependent on the number and power of the guns (and other weapons like knives and crossbows) that he owns.
What the hell is this?
Hello, up the junction.
This is my compilation of people whom a very sizable proportion of the people of Britain would seem to despise, and that across the board, admitting of few or no exceptions. Not that all the British despise entire classes of people, as we see with Patrick, who says eloquently, “I try not to despise anyone.”
Beautiful!
If only this were true of everyone in my country . . on our planet! The world would be transformed, I think.
Bonkers.
I do not think that the thread is a serious analysis of British attitudes.
We on this side of the Atlantic wouldn’t know if you were joking or not.
:dubious:
OK . . . Fair enough.
Well put.
Yup. But I would extend that to all governments of the past 45 years, most especially the SNP.
Every time this thread gets a couple of serious posts with some actual information, trump derails it with another lie.
This is not a Great Debate and I am not foisting it off on another Forum.
Closed.
[ /Moderating ]