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Now, I'm bringing this up because of the big deal that has been apparently made about Senator Brown's truck. It's not about his politics, it's about the fact that this truck was made into a symbol of him being "folksy".
I was a construction worker for 11 years and owned trucks and work vans which were used for their intended purpose.
Now, my view is that when someone owns a pickup who doesn't use it for real work (i.e. not helping your friends move every now and then or driving to their "job", but as a tool utilized while pursuing a career in a field where they actually work for a living.) they are just using the truck as a fashion accessory to try and look "cool".
A real truck is dented. It's got **** all over it... a bit of concrete hardened in the bed, dirt and stray nails rolling around int eh bed as well.
It gets used as a truck, not as an oddly shaped car. It's got a bunch of empty coffee cups on the dashboard from the cold days when you take your coffee breaks inside of it to stay warm.
To me, a truly "folksy" person doesn't use a truck as an accessory, because they've had to use it for it's intended purpose. Which is work.
IMO, a pickup truck with 200,000 miles that isn't covered in ****, dented to hell and gone, but still plugging away doing it's intended job is a sign that the owner of said truck is the exact opposite of being "folksy". It's a sign of being a white collar person who thinks he or she will look really "cool" if they drive a truck. It's superficial.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that. If people want to look cool, that's their business. But I can't ****ing stand the fact that this purely superficial attemtp to look cool is being portrayed as a sign that the superficial person trying to look cool is some sort of a "man of the people".
Most of the people I know who use or have used trucks and vans for their intended purposes feel the same way.
But my opinion on this is clearly biased by my own experiences. I want to know what people think of the general idea about people pretending to be blue-collar as a reflection on them as a man of the people, not about Senator Brown's politics.
So what do you guys think? Is owning a pickup truck a sign of being a "man of the people"?
I was a construction worker for 11 years and owned trucks and work vans which were used for their intended purpose.
Now, my view is that when someone owns a pickup who doesn't use it for real work (i.e. not helping your friends move every now and then or driving to their "job", but as a tool utilized while pursuing a career in a field where they actually work for a living.) they are just using the truck as a fashion accessory to try and look "cool".
A real truck is dented. It's got **** all over it... a bit of concrete hardened in the bed, dirt and stray nails rolling around int eh bed as well.
It gets used as a truck, not as an oddly shaped car. It's got a bunch of empty coffee cups on the dashboard from the cold days when you take your coffee breaks inside of it to stay warm.
To me, a truly "folksy" person doesn't use a truck as an accessory, because they've had to use it for it's intended purpose. Which is work.
IMO, a pickup truck with 200,000 miles that isn't covered in ****, dented to hell and gone, but still plugging away doing it's intended job is a sign that the owner of said truck is the exact opposite of being "folksy". It's a sign of being a white collar person who thinks he or she will look really "cool" if they drive a truck. It's superficial.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that. If people want to look cool, that's their business. But I can't ****ing stand the fact that this purely superficial attemtp to look cool is being portrayed as a sign that the superficial person trying to look cool is some sort of a "man of the people".
Most of the people I know who use or have used trucks and vans for their intended purposes feel the same way.
But my opinion on this is clearly biased by my own experiences. I want to know what people think of the general idea about people pretending to be blue-collar as a reflection on them as a man of the people, not about Senator Brown's politics.
So what do you guys think? Is owning a pickup truck a sign of being a "man of the people"?