• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I had this as a bumper sticker on my electric car Chevy Volt a few years ago. Hehe. I got a lot of laughs and comments about it when pumping gas, or parking.

      Edited for clarity about why I would need gas for an electric car.

          • Lev_Astov@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            And that still connects the engine directly to the wheels because old car makers loathe our dreams of real serial hybrids…

            • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              The engine only helps to power the drive train in mountain mode. Otherwise it charges the battery, which drives the electric motor. The Volt is a pretty awesome car. I would still be driving it if I didn’t need something more rugged, or could afford two separate vehicles. But I loved owning it. I even took it on a long distance trip over the mountains and it did great! I barely had to put gas in the thing unless it was freezing outside and I had a lot of driving to do that day, or for long-distance trips. The first year I owned it I only put gas in it twice, and the gas tank is only 9 gallons.

  • CuriousRefugee@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Anyone else hate that the Gadsden flag has been appropriated by ultra-libertarian jingoists? It’s an awesome-looking flag with a cool history and symbolism, but I feel like I couldn’t fly it without looking like a twat.

    • Grayox@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 months ago

      I feel you, i had the flag of Culpepper’s Minute Men hanging in my college dorm back in the day. Just like the Nazis before them Fascists bastardize shit they didn’t create

    • prunerye@slrpnk.net
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      11 months ago

      Ultra-libertarian Jingoist? I’m as confused by that combination of words as I am the flags on the truck.

      • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Ultra libertarian == I’m free to be whatever I want to be despite your freedoms

        Jingoist == my country is the best ever no matter what you say

        “Ultra libertarian + Jingoist” == fuck you im a nationalist and don’t know civics

        • saltesc@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Ultra libertarian == I’m free to be whatever I want to be despite your freedoms

          Well, no. A fundamental of libertarianism is that one’s liberty doesn’t encroach on others’ liberty, since obviously that would be taking away liberty, ergo anti-libertarian.

          If someone claims to be “ultra libertarian”—an entirely different thing—and does this, they would ironically be in direct opposition of the thing they claim to be associated with; on it’s most fundamental level, no less.

          • lewdian69@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            So you haven’t paid attention to those who call themselves libertarians for the past 20+ years? Their entire m o is restricting others’ liberties in favor of their own. And I’m not conflating conservatives and libertarians accidentally, I’m pointing out libertarians in practice.

            • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              11 months ago

              Hitler also called his party socialist (maybe even believed in that himself), yet you’d find it hard to find people who agrees on that

              • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Surprisingly you can find people arguing that Hitler and his party were actually left wing (because they used the word socialist) both online and off. My usual response is to consider the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

                • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  11 months ago

                  Yeah well that’s another thing. Same way as many lefties are bashing borderline fash right as libertarians just because they claim so, many on the right claim Hitler was a socialist to throw dirt on socialism.

                  In both of these cases, I honestly believe it’s the 2nd group that’s actually harming the name of an ideology more than the first.

            • saltesc@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              No you’re not.

              You’re calling out a specific group mislabeling themselves and falling for it.

              Since libertarianism is a long, established, and large ideology in human society with a wealth of knowledge, information, figures, and history, I’d encourage you to take a few seconds to look it up and delve into all that knowledge, rather than just go with what some redneck somewhere has touted to you.

              In actual fact, an ultra libertarian would be encompassing ideologies like anarchism and far-left libertarianism.

              That’s not my opinion, that’s just literally what it is and you can go Google that. Stop listening to idiots and falling for their words, lest you’ll start misunderstanding just as they do and terms or ideas otherwise disassociated with them will get tarnished, ruined, and misappropriately loathed. That’s kind of an end goal of misinformation. Don’t fall for it and don’t spread it here, even if it’s not intentional.

              • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                You’re arguing pedantics semantics here and words change meanings over time. Libertarian, whether you like it or not, now also represents that particular group of people.

                • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  If we’re arguing semantics over a group of people, what they stand for & what the definition is, the label coming to represent a group of undesirables that you must now accept whether you like it or not…damn near everyone should be ashamed. ¯\(°_o)/¯

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                11 months ago

                It feels like you are being willfully naive of the real world and languages’ etymology in practice, and hiding within academia, whether on purpose or not.

                • saltesc@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Are you sure it’s me being willfully naive of the real world? The real world seems to be ipretty fucking clear on this one and has been for a very long time.

                  Its not academia. It’s just a couple wiggles of your fingers I’m lazy, so here’s just the first three to get you started…

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

                  Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, itself from the Latin: libertas, lit. ‘freedom’) is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value.[1][2][3][4] Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing equality before the law and civil rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice.[4][5]

                  https://www.libertarianism.org/what-is-a-libertarian

                  A libertarian is committed to the principle that liberty is the most important political value. Liberty means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs

                  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/

                  Libertarianism is a family of views in political philosophy. Libertarians take individual freedom as the paramount political value and understand coercion to be the antithesis of that freedom. While people can justifiably be forced to do certain things—most obviously, to refrain from infringing the liberty of others—they cannot be coerced to serve the good of other members of society, nor even their own personal good.

                  So, as you can see, your etymology at work—not that the morphemes could ever be confusing on such a term. If your view is otherwise, well that’s my example of the power of disinformation and misinformation. Literally deceived into believing something that is incorrect by listening to incorrect people. Be careful of it.

          • Grayox@lemmy.mlOP
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            11 months ago

            how does libertarinism keep corporations from exploiting workers?

            • saltesc@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Depends on the scale of it, but in an extreme libertarian view, it would not. It would say the natural order of things would play out and that micro-society would end up in a balance where workers get enough of what they want and the corporation would get enough of what they want. No state or body should get involved unless one side involved them or they were requested in as a mediator. And that libertarian would expect that it essentially, eventually, “sorts itself out”.

              Though, since extremes of all social ideologies are completely naive to human nature, you’d find the majority of libertarianism ideas would be focused on protecting freedoms which is often more sensibly done with a government, but one that listens and is not corrupted or swayed by either side.

              It’s interesting as this kind of thing can see libertarians fight each other over contradiction—the concept of a free market, for example. But I think the majority of them are more or less a bunch of Adam Smiths and his views were very libertarian while also sanely criticising libertarianism and where it does not work or does need to involvement of state or some form of authority, essentially to save people from themselves.

          • young_broccoli@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            Te word “libertarian” was redefined by an-caps to mean Ultra-neo-liberalism. It has no real connections with the origin of the term except for an-caps insisting on calling themselves anarchists.

            • saltesc@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              There was some unusual person here the other day claiming to be pro anarchy but had views starkly opposing libertarian ones… They seemed to be all for not being told what to do, but their concern for liberty didn’t seem to extend beyond themselves. My assumption would be that in a state of anarchy, they’d quickly be taking everything off everyone, then trying to establish an authority to try ensure other people didn’t take their stuff. Sitting in a beautiful colonial mansion, exercising their freedom to own other people, thinking how cool anarchy ended up being for them, while blissfully unaware of the pitchforks and torches marching onto their property to the beat of anarchist chants.

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            11 months ago

            Don’t libertarians believe in abolishing public institutions like public schools? That’s encroaching on my children’s liberty to educate themselves affordably. Or without a public fire department it’s kind of hard to have the liberty to not die in a house fire.

            Libertarianism is a joke.

            • saltesc@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              No. While it’s a spectrum, much of that spectrum is actually more for equal distribution in society and opposed to ideas like private ownership and capitalism, to a degree, since these unequally take away access or privilege for some and not for others. Thus, not everyone has the same liberties because one part of society has blocked or encroached another part.

              The fundamental idea is not to gain something, rather it’s not to lose anything,

              The exception to this is the somewhat unique and new right-wing libertarian branches that appeared in the US which are sort of more from a minarchism idea, so it’s more focused on not being regulated or controlled by a state. This is where free market concepts really took off, for example. The traditional libertarian views which, being much more mature and prevalent in the rest of the world, encompass society as much and originates from the left with stances of socialism, social balance, and of course the that any government is in service to the people and not an authority over them. This is why they are more for protecting liberty, rather than using it, and a state’s role is this. Basically, don’t let arseholes get loose and shit on everyone, because they will.

          • daltotron@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            This is sort of like the same phenomena of the politically correct (not in the PC sense but in the sense of like, what is and isn’t like, correct in the realm of political discourse. Like definitions of semantics and shit) definition of liberalism that leftists have to kind of churn through and give, every time someone says liberals and leftists are the same thing, and then it’s explained in some sort of hackneyed way usually that “on the global scale of leftism actually you’re wrong sweetie”, when realistically the better way to describe it is that liberalism isn’t necessarily left or right wing because it’s kind of a mercenary ideology that leaves up a free market which may either be left or right wing, depending on circumstance.

            And then everyone gets confused by that distinction between liberalism and leftism, and just go back to using the words how they were using them to begin with, and calling people libtards, despite themselves wanting a free market more than their opposition (usually). So what I mean to say is that your definition is technically correct by all given definitions, and is the only one that makes sense, right, but, despite that, when most people refer to libertarians, they’re referring to this exact type of twat who drives a yuge truck, is generally obsessed with firearms, may or may not be a pedophile who doesn’t like the age of consent, may or may not be an austerity hawk, and believes in the NAP as some sort of holy preventative doctrine that you can build a society on. Hackneyed, conservative-flavored anarchism, basically. That strain of conservatism where they actually believed Reagan when he said the enemy was the government. That’s what people mean when they say someone’s a libertarian, and it’s usually also what people mean when they self-define as a libertarian.

            It’s not a technically correct or logically coherent definition, but it’s the one that’s worked it’s way into common cultural parlance.

          • Static_Rocket@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            The above leans heavily on the idea that the political spectrum is a loop and swaying to either side too heavily incurs bias that eventually warps the initial intention

            Because things weren’t already confusing enough

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            11 months ago

            Yeah, Ultra Libertarian Jingoist, in the way I defined it as it pertains to the comment that was made, perfectly describes the cognitive dissonance you’re explaining too.

    • Kabutor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      Culpepper’s Minute Men

      I had the Dont Tread on Me on twitter as my profile picture, I put that more than 10-15 years ago. I had to remove a couple years ago, because anyone who sees it will get the wrong idea.

      Edit: also I was rewatching the movie Wind (about the American’s Cup) and the Geronimo ship had the Glasden flag on, that hasn’t aged well.

      https://twitter.com/Kabutor_/status/1407103551197822979/photo/1

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    11 months ago

    “Woman trampled in Capitol riots had ‘don’t tread on me’ flag”

    "I put my arm underneath her and was pulling her out and then another guy fell on top of her, and another guy was just walking (on top of her).

    “There were people stacked two-three deep…people just crushed.”

    Paramedics desperately tried to revive her but were unable to.

    Photos from earlier that day showed her carrying the banner with the phrase “Don’t tread on me”.

    The flag clearly doesn’t work 😂

    • waigl@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The way I, as another European, understand this, he’s flying an anti-oppression flag and a pro-oppression flag at the same time.

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          11 months ago

          First one is libertarian (do your own shit, protect your own shit by yourself), the other is pro-police forces. In the end it’s just pretty ironic.

              • someguy3@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                There was a story about a guy giving his sister a ride to court. When she was there she was in disbelief that they holding her to account because she was not ‘one of them’ gesturing to the other people there.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      The Gadsden flag, the snake, was a patriotic symbol during the American revolutionary war.

      The snake in general was a common symbol used at the time with a famous (Franklin?) illustration of a snake in 13 pieces representing how the snake needs all 13 colonies to be whole.

      The Gadsden flag was the “13 pieces of the snake united, coiled and dangerous” with its “don’t step on me” motto. This flag despite being anti-government oppression was actually supposed to represent the strength in our unity (sad they now use it to divide).

      The blue line flag is part of a movement that implies that the police are the only thing holding back chaos from society. It’s designed to mean the flag only exists because police keep society existing. This has and was always been a load of shit but now has moved more into meaning “our side is the side who makes stuff work” and sliding even further into a fascist strongman style ethos.

      Both are now effectively just “brands” of the American conservative right.

      The thin blue line flag is supposed to support police, the weapon of the state. But the Gadsden flag represents that “they can’t or won’t be oppressed.” The Gadsden flag made a big comeback during the Bush years and the spread of a more “(what they called) libertarian” sect of the American right. Which frankly is bullshit because it’s an American symbol not the hate symbol they’ve coopted it into these days.

      It’s a grab bag of US conservative branding but all in all on the surface you can make a measured bet that this person complains very hard about the taxes other people pay, don’t understand civics at a fundamental level, and likely while pretending they aren’t they are supremely racist.

      You could equate these two flags to be the equivalent of someone flying a Thor Steinar logo flag in europe.

      A better idea of how dumb this is would be imagine someone driving down the road in 2250 flying a Brexit flag and a EU flag on their truck

      • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        This. It’s a typical example of how conservatives are utterly clueless about American symbols. Like how they adopted Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” thinking it’s a patriotic jingle, when the song is completely critical of the USA. Just read the lyrics of the song for God’s sake.

        But the only thing Goober Nation hears is “Born in the USA.”

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          11 months ago

          They used the song for an American win at the 2012 London Olympics, as well as “Werewolves of London” for a British win, a song with the line “little old lady got mutilated last night”.

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          11 months ago

          Springsteen was a genius, knew exactly what he was making. I remember the first time I listened to the lyrics and my heart broke a little. The lyrics are all too familiar and sting, with the sharp positive turn to the chorus. It’s a perfect metaphor for society.

          Whenever I hear it I get angry with America, and I get angry with conservative boomers who use the verses as drinking breaks so they can belt out the chorus proudly thinking they are real patriots.

      • Easyreever@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I do believe it was Franklin who had the 13 pieces of the snake but I always thought the 13 pieces of the snake was printed with the slogan “Unite or Die” which had a slightly different context than the more commonly seen “don’t tread on me”.

        I expect that both were kicked around at the same time during the revolutionary or pre-revolutionary war and Franklin made use of it as he saw best.

        Of course I could just search for it, but what fun would that be……I already researched it a long time ago, why go back and try to correct memory, right?

        • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          The Franklin illustration and Gadsden flag are separate, I was just referencing the common use of the snake to represent the colonies

    • yeather@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Yes, the yellow flag is anti-government, libertarian, while the black and blue flag is pro government and specifically pro police.

      • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        It’s propaganda. Cops have a serious image problem in the US so they cynically co-opted an American flag for their cause, figuring that people won’t criticize the FLAG, right? It’s a marketing strategy that only appeals to folks who already have a child-like worship of authority.

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          11 months ago

          It’s hilarious that they do it in a way that blatantly goes against the flag code. How disrespectful it is to change the flag, to wear the flag, or use it for advertisements.

          I have seriously considered creating and printing pamphlets with the flag code on it to give to these faux patriots. Or maybe even those fake ticket things where I can check off what exactly they did to disrespect it.

          I even had a neighbor who painted the floor of their trailer with it. They literally drove vehicles and trampled on the flag daily.

          4 U.S. Code § 8 - Respect for flag

          (d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.

          (g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

          (i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

          (k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            You’re talking about cops who use the Punisher logo unironically despite the fact that Frank Castle kills cops every chance he gets.

    • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Bottom is just a classic meme, top is a guy flying near full size “don’t tread on me” and “thin blue line”( fanatic police support) flags. Many would argue these are varying levels of contradictory. It’s also a very MAGA thing to do so you can draw conclusions from that as well.

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    11 months ago

    Lots of interesting discussions over the flags and the hypocrisy and lack of understanding of the flags by the person displaying the flags.

    However, I think their message is crystal clear.

    “Don’t try to stop me from oppressing anyone I disagree with.”

  • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I once saw a guy with a bumper sticker featuring the US flag and the Confederate flag with the caption, “One nation under God.”

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    There’s a person in a town near me with a big pickup truck that confuses the hell out of people because it’s a Trump flag, except the background is a pride flag. What makes it so confusing is that the word ‘fuck’ above the word ‘Trump’ is in much smaller letters.

    Decent troll job if you ask me. I love the idea of MAGA assholes going apeshit over a Trump pride flag.

  • Ohi@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Angry Dennis is my favorite Dennis.

    “You haven’t thought of the smell you bitch!!!”

  • HamBrick@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    not sure what the censoring of the plate does. That truck is visible and identifiable for a five mile radius, and I guarantee you can hear it for more than that