You'd have trouble finding a more apt symbol for American dysfunctions than the lawn. Replaces diversity with monocrop that requires poisons. Utterly unproductive waste of land. Separates the public into isolated units. Ugly. Etc. etc.https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-american-obsession-with-lawns …
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This is what
@hmcghee's whole (excellent) book is about. Her central parable is about communities draining their public pools rather than integrate them. White Americans basically chose to destroy the public realm rather than share it.Show this thread -
The results obviously hurt the excluded minorities, but *they also hurt the white people*. When you move the public into private spaces, you get inequality. Not everyone can afford their own pool. Most people just lost access to swimming.
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Most people ended up in suburbs with shitty private simulacra of public spaces & services -- and it's been going on so long they don't even remember what they've lost. They don't know there's another way. They don't know that there can even BE a robust public.
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Which brings us back to the lawn. You lost public spaces, where people can gather & encounter one another & learn to live together & form actual communities. In exchange, you got this: that weedy, labor-intensive brown patch in front of your house, which is empty 99% of the time.
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Thanks to capitalism & racism, we traded the public for the private, thus ensuring massive inequality, atomization, loneliness, isolation, declining trust in public institutions, & a whole generation of suburban men who need militia cosplay to feel like a part of something.
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And to make it work, we covered everything in pavement & made daily life utterly dependent on 2-ton machines which poison & kill tens of thousands of us every year -- machines to which we've developed hostage-style attachment.
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In conclusion, fuck lawns, thank you for coming to my ted talk. </fin>
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If you enjoyed this twitter rant, click on over and read the full blog rant version!https://www.volts.wtf/p/a-rant-about-lawns-in-america …
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Current evolution of the "Suburban Estate" is "Fortress of Solitude" as fencing & gates are added at a certain real estate value assessment, followed by further security measures such as cameras and perimeter alarms as we recede into fortified bunkers to appeal to paranoid buyers
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I’m not getting a Ring door bell. F that sh!t
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