Eurotrip 2024 (picture heavy, open thread at your own peril... and bandwidth)

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

It's a long story really... You'll get the tl;dr; version

First off, I'm out of your archetypal "working class" family. My paternal grandparents were a day labourer and a seamstress working in the textile industry and my maternal grandmother was a farmhand. The less is said about my maternal grandfather, the better

Esbjerg at the time of my birth was a Socialdemokrat stronghold, only threatened by the libertarian party, because the industry was surrounded by farmland on the land side and independent fishing men on the sea side...

But, that wasn't really what formed my world view, that was a number of experiences in my teen and pre-teen years. A friend on the street I lived in hung himself in his parent garage because he got bullied in school. Said school couldn't care less, trying to sweep it under the rug. Hear no evil, see no evil etc. I also mentioned at some point, growing up with my mothers half-brothers (only a few years older than me). They were left with an orphanage after their parents died and stayed there until the police raided the place and closed it. Systematic sexual abuse of the children, physical and psychological torture being the norm.

At 14, I was convinced the world was inherently unfair and the 95% served only one purpose, being fodder for consumption by the 5% that wielded real power. Most people having little or no choices in life, many never getting a real chance to even get a foot in the door of life.

At 15 I would have been a prime candidate for any orator able to channel anger against the world. I could have seen myself at that age being a member of Hitler Youth and Hamas. Anything destructive. Often wishing someone would finally getting their act together and finally push the button (the MAD button). I was also a bit disappointed when the cold war ended and it looked like the world was doomed to suffer the slow death of entropy and social media.

Eventually I just resigned to let the world mind its own business and I went about minding my own business in return, not having any high thoughts about power structures and the way the world is run. For me, politicians serve themselves first, their party second and their constituency some distant third.

You might have noticed one of my pet peeves is people in power being held accountable for their actions and resentment towards those who "game the system" to avoid paying for power abuse.

I knew  there had to be  an interesting story to  your views,  it makes  sense considering your lived  experiences 

And most  people  tend to  relax  there more  extremist  views  as they get  older. So when I  say "you have anarchist views "  I doubt its  the same degree  of anarchist views  you had in your 20s