I saw this Tweet:
One was designed to be practical for average suburban folks to carry stuff on a regular basis. The other was designed to make guys feel like they are tough and rule the road. pic.twitter.com/qGSDA0BvbK
— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) March 12, 2022
If you go into the threat it is full of like-minded twats who feel a deep compulsion to tell you what you should want and what you should be allowed to have, and do so entirely from ignorance.
There were several who insisted that if you really needed a pickup, one of those Japanese mini-trucks (the kind that are not street legal in the US) is just as good as an F-150 because thr bed lengths are nearly the same.
Yup. And the thing is, the smaller truck has 90% of bed length (the useful part) as the bigger truck pic.twitter.com/SNvxufs2GJ
— ben doherty (@bendoherty161) March 13, 2022
I’m not going to tell you what sort of truck you should have.
I have two, a big 2500 and a smaller Toyota.
I love them both for different reasons.
And as an American, it’s my prerogative to spend my money how I want.
(I agree with the great Iowahawk that there should be a 2A for cars and personal transportation.)
But as a friend reminded me, the great Robert A. Heinlein wrote in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:
“Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: “Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.” Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them “for their own good” — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.”
Fine, I want to fight fire with fire. And one fire of the Left is to impose taxes as a punitive measure against things they don’t like.
I don’t like busy body twats who want to tell you how to live.
So I will impose a tax. Every time a busy body twat does something like this they get taxed and that money subsidizes the purchase of an assault rifle, high capacity magazine, big block V8 pickup, or whatever else the busy body wants to eliminate because they are a miserable twat.
Update:
This proves my point.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1503785848411770883
Yglesias is a Harvard educated writer for Vox.
His goal at family gatherings is to get his hard working, salt of the earth, rather father in law to shit on guys who drive pick-ups in the suburbs.
The idea being the typical Leftist appeal to authority fallacy.
I.e.: This man is a farmer. I, the Leftist writer, have decided that he qualifies to own a big truck for work. I will use him as an authority to declare that suburbanites so not need the same kind of truck he does. If the farmer days you don’t need a truck, you don’t need a truck.
Fundamentally I ask, why the fuck is it Matt Yglesias’ business what you or I choose to drive if we can afford it?
It’s not.
But Yglesias cannot help himself. He must be a busy body that that must be the arbiter of who does and who does not need a truck of a certain kind.
My tax will bankrupt Yglesias and I might even possibly annull his marriage for being a that of a son in law.
Who is the Director of the Department of Permissions, and is it a cabinet level department?
The ‘war on pickup trucks’ is becoming a cause de jour among the lefty set. As w/ guns, they always seem to equate it to pen!s size and know little to nothing about the topic except they don’t like it.
It’s the same condescending elitism as when they say ‘voting against their best interests’. Those stupid rednecks don’t know what they need.
Please tell us “I’m a wussy who feels threatened by strong, capable, manly men” without telling us….
Not too long ago I needed some topsoil to level out some depressions in my back yard. I happened to drive by a construction site where they were removing topsoil as a prep to build. They were just dumping the removed soil into dump trucks and hauling it off.
I stopped and asked them what they were doing with the dirt. The foreman told me he didn’t know where it was ending up, but they were paying to have it hauled away. I offered to take a couple of yards off their hands and they said “great”, so I backed my truck up and they dumped two scoops from a front end loader into the bed of my truck.
I wonder how Mr. “your truck is too big and intimidates me”‘s rice burner mini-truck would have fared with having a ton of dirt unceremoniously dumped into the bed and then driving home with it?
Not well, I imagine.
By the way, I got home, emptied the back of the truck by shoveling the dirt into my wheelbarrow and wheeling it to where it needed to be, realized I didn’t have enough and went back the next day for another load.
The real reason I drive a big truck though is because I regularly need to tow 5000 – 10000 lb loads. I’m pretty sure that my class five receiver hitch would make the back end of that baby truck sag, let alone hooking a heavy trailer to it.
Real men who do real work need real trucks.
Of course that’s not to say that I need to justify owning a big truck to anyone. If I have the money to buy it, maintain it and feed it, what business is it of anyone else’s?
Oh….that’s right…you’re “saving the planet” by telling me how I should live my life right?
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
— H.L. Mencken
Excellent and spot on.
..A 250 owner
And not a single one of them will acknowledge that those ‘mini-trucks’ were all but outlawed by CAFE standards pushed by their-very-own-selves.
There are LOTS of people that NEED a truck, but not necessarily a BIG truck, which thanks to busy-bodies, are all that’s available now.
“Why do you need a big truck?”
“BFYTW.”
Or, if I’m NOT feeling personable, ” Because, when you ‘Reee!’, I get erect.”
I’ve got a small Silverado and a dually Ram 3500 diesel. You don’t want to use the latter for commuting to work or driving to the ATM — it won’t fit in the parking space and will scrape on the side of the ATM. It’s also a pain for in-city parking decks because of it’s turning radius. But it’s great for pulling a trailer and the full size bed can carry three front loader buckets full of topsoil or coal, or a pallet of retaining wall blocks or flagstone. Or a pallet of 4×8 plywood. The former is useless for hauling heavy stuff. One big front loader bucket of soil in the bed will make the thing almost impossible to drive.
The people who say that nobody “needs” a large pickup should spend a few days doing real work. And anybody who says that a small pickup is sufficient for hauling anything one needs should try taking a corner with a pallet of flagstone in the back.
I’ll also add that it only takes one accident with an overloaded small pickup to kill someone. When people see my big pickup and give me crap about it, I tell them it’s worth it if it saves “just one life.” That’s one of the things that these people who champion small crushable cars simply don’t seem to care about. There’s a well-known direct relationship between car weight and survivability. Forcing people into small crushable cars increases road deaths — and these people *don’t care* if you die..
I remember when the Smart Car came out and was crash tested against similar sized vehicles. It was highly rated in those tests. Until it was crash tested with a Ford Crown Victoria. The Crown Vic went THROUGH the Dumb Car and it’s passenger compartment wasn’t hurt.
It’s a pity that you can’t get the indestructible 2.4l diesel Hiluxes these days.
It’s the #1 choice for technicals the world over for a good reason.
What do I usually haul in my f250 Superduty? My wife, son, daughter and granddaughter. Nothing safer. I figure if a speed racer T-bones us one day, we’ll get out, look under the truck and go “ewwww”. Far safer than a Fiat 500. Occaisionally it works – sod, a pallet of flooring and the 6000lb trailer. Putting in a Cummins 12v so it will last longer than me….
I’d love to have one of those itty-bitty Japanese micro-pickup trucks or micro-vans.
As an avid HEMA/SCA/re-enactor, I find myself having to transport lots of things that are large, but not especially heavy, such as armor, longbows, spears, javelins, hay bales, and so forth. Often across muddy fields, gravel parking lots, and unpaved roads… No true “off roading” but definitely the sort of turf that a full-size North American minivan would balk at.
But, of course, the progs have all but outlawed them. CAFE standards and tariffs have driven up the cost of them so that only specialty importers bring them in and only eccentric dot-com millionaires can afford them. For a working stuff like me, a giant Earth Fucker 2500 pickup is more affordable.
My Tacoma spends most of its life with an empty bed. Except when it doesn’t.
We could pay to have somebody pickup our garbage but we haul our garbage to the transfer station, do the recycle bit and then home. Watching somebody pulling a leaking bag of garbage from the back of their SUV or van reminds me of why I bought a truck.
Hauling my lady with full gear to an event. So much easier with a pickup truck. Pulling trailers. Transporting lumber and wood. There are just so many things that I need to carry.
Why does some of jackass who might have to carry a passenger from parking lot to parking lot think she knows what I need?
You don’t need a truck, says the guy who probably has never needed one or owned a car in his life.
Also disingenuous, if vehicles contemporary to one anotger were compared, they’d be much closer in size. The full size pickup is obviously still bigger, but a 90s small truck compared to a newer full size pickup is going to make the new truck absurb because they’ve gotten bigger or at least designed to look bigger.
I’d love a Japanese mini truck, they’re cool. But you arnet going to haul a yard of dirt or all the lumber to build a deck in that or our small pickup.
Note the size of the mini-trucks cab. It probably holds two Japanese dudes OK. I’m thinking I’d have trouble fitting. Wouldn’t be the first time. Back in the day, a normal Ford Ranger’s seats didn’t go anywhere near far enough back for me. My shoulders are probably 3/4 as wide as that interior.
Now that gas is back up, I’m starting to hear the nattering about those with big trucks bitching about having to fill the tank. I heard a dude doing that, who drove like 80- miles to work and back each day. I told him he ought to buy a beater Toyota to commute. “That’s bullshit. I like driving my truck”. Fine, I said, then stop bitching about the cost.
Way back when I was heading to a customer with one of my left leaning co workers, We got in a bit of traffic, and his eyes landed upon a Ford Excursion. this started the “No one should have one of those” rants. Whatever. So I started:
What about a van. Can I have a full size van? He said yes. What about a stake body truck. What if I had one of them? Is that OK? it was. Then what’s the difference? Shape? I reminded him he had a Mitsubishi with the hot v6 he was proud of. You don’t need that do you? Couldn’t you do with a 4-banger?
I notice they used what appears to be an early 90s Toyota standard pickup next to what appears to be a 4 door 4×4. Even the newer tacomas aren’t that much smaller these days. I’ve heard this lament more than a few times in the last year – that pickups are oh-so bigger and dudes are compensating. Whatever. Back in 85, I had an ’83 silverado 4×4 with factory 32″ tires that was every bit as big as that Ford in the picture. I’d argue a 74 F350 4×4 was actually bigger, and certainly wider than today’s offerings.
It all comes down to this: “What do I care what another man drives?”
Matty doesn’t realize that all the urbanites driving ranch trucks make ranch trucks cheaper to maintain and purchase. “Hey, I see you needing this thing. Why don’t you support outlawing it to other folks who don’t need it?” Is quite a dumb take.