[ben young]

Originally Posted by pslresident444

Every time someone on one of the City Data forums makes a critical remark, the goodsie twoshoes come out of the woodwork and challenge it. I for one believe the comment about rudeness is true, else it would not have been noteworthy for the writer, but mostly because humans are the world's worst animate objects and so rudeness is an understatement.

Our civilization is devolving at a very rapid pace. Look around. There are actually Confederates again for heaven's sake!
There is a grotesque lack of empathy for others due to the extreme psychological stress on an oversized world population. The population is exploding when a comfortable level for our planet was reached in the mid-18th century. We are all competing for everything, (jobs, water, food, shelter, fuel, attention, sex, etc.), with more and more people every day.

Everything went wrong in a perfect storm of consequences after hundreds or perhaps thousands of years of bad decisions or lack of decisions by policy makers and other types of leaders in business and government; corruption, globalism, obscene concentration of wealth, class war, economic decline, abundant lies, plutocracy, mass emigration and immigration, false employment and inflation statistics, militarization of the police during a period of historically low crime rates, mass incarceration, resurgent racism, failure to properly tax the wealthy, the legalization of political bribery by the Supreme Court, offshore accounts, extraordinarily bad media coverage of corporate and political fascism, lack of accountability because of a woefully unjust system of justice, and I could go on and on. Basically, who you are born to in an indicator of your destiny unless a fortuitous throw of the Chance dice get you on a different track. Life is all Chance.

Climate change and overpopulation will not kill humanity, but rather our fundamental stupidity and greed. Sociologically and psychologically speaking, we have been placed in a socio-economic-political system which is untenable, but the optimistic and hopelessly self-deceptive conditioned masses want us all to "SMILE!" "BE POSITIVE!" We all know the bull.

Take my advice, don't blow your horn at some slowpoke fooling with a cellphone or picking their teeth in Florida, because they become angry and aggressive should anyone remind them the light is green or they should be in the right lane to move slowly. I remember in Virginia commuting around D. C. that if you failed to drive very fast bumper to bumper around the beltway you were dead meat. Same around Rt. 128 in Boston, which I drove for years. I am sure that Vermont, like Rhode Island too, has its share of bad driving habits which usually escape censure.

Well ,I now know where Eugene from Walking Dead ended up.

[Phorlan]

I just came back from a week in VT, again, I didn't see any rude people there. Before that I lived in New England for 7 years, went to VT a lot for vacations, etc, never thought people were more rude there than for example if that messed up area I live now called the DC area that I'm working hard to leave. If anything I find New Englanders much less bothered by BS that a lot of Americans. Rude, nope. But hey, maybe I have different standards, I'm French, so rude for me might mean something different?

[Riley2]

Originally Posted by sasie123

What is a "flatlander?" Thank you,

"Ain't from here." no matter if where you came from actually has hills or mountains. You're (we're) all flatlanders if you're not 10th generation Vermonters.

[gentlearts]

I’m not a Vermonter, but a native New Englander. People are not rude, they are reticent. There’s a difference. Just because we are more comfortable keeping new people at arms length at first, doesn’t mean we dont like you, it’s just that we don’t like pushy people, or people who come at us like a basket of puppies.

[Riley2]

You should have seen them last night driving during the white out/blizzard/snow squall, whatever that nonsense was on the highway! Frightening, although I guess stupidity and lack of driving skills is not the same thing as being rude.
Reticent and not liking people coming at that them like a bunch of puppies, while funny, really just means that many VTers don't know how to interact socially with those from a different personality type. I am a bubbly (if you want to use that word), enthusiastic, outgoing individual. That said, I don't approach people like a bunch of puppies, I honor personal space, and I think show a genuine interest in talking to people. I once had a therapist tell me I was 'too much sunshine' for this place (VT). I was flabbergasted. I'd gone to see her - about a year after I moved here - because I was so depressed about how unfriendly people were and how I was feeling about not being able to make many friends (an issue I've never experienced in my life). I think that will be my last word on this topic!

[timberline742]

Bubbly is annoying.

[ben young]

Heck,even Ethan Allen was a flatlander from Connecticut.

[gentlearts]

Originally Posted by Riley2

"Ain't from here." no matter if where you came from actually has hills or mountains. You're (we're) all flatlanders if you're not 10th generation Vermonters.

That attitude is true of many places, not just VT.

[Demolitionman2]

Don't be pushy, rude, dismissive or arrogant. Nobody likes an a-hole, whether you live in Jersey, Virginia or Vermont.

So true. Well said.

[OpinionExperience]

Originally Posted by ben young

Heck,even Ethan Allen was a flatlander from Connecticut.

Bernie Sanders is a Flatlander, born in Brooklyn NY, moved to Vermont in 1968 after college in Chicago.