there was a huge wind storm out (the same one that knocked this portable toilet sideways)
it knocked a tree down, which fell across a 2.5 lane street, completely blocking it
it would take maybe 3-4 able bodied people to move. this is in fact what happened when city workers showed up to remove it. but in a pinch, you just need to be able to drag it far enough to open up one lane so people can get past
this absolutely did not happen. all the big manly men in their tough offroad childkiller trucks couldn't be bothered to step outside for like one minute and fix an incredibly, practically solveable problem. they couldn't even use their big tough guy trucks to move it
at the very least, we live in a city, the streets here are... close enough to a grid that you could just detour around it in an extra 1-2 minutes, tops
instead what everyone did was back up traffic and honk and yell at each other like a pack of assholes. some people got their cars stuck sideways on the street trying to be the first one to force their way out. other people said "fuck it" and just drove down the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians out of their way (i wish i had been there to break their fucking windows)
anyway, this all happened because a crowd of people couldn't get three of them together to do literally a minute of work to solve their problem for everyone and get on with their lives
i think about things like this a lot because i don't think we can collectively work together. it's been beaten out of us as a society. this happened with covid too, we talked about protecting each other for like a week and even that was too much for some people. and then they went and laid siege to parliament with a truck convoy because this was so literally unthinkable
i honestly feel like this situation we're all in is hopeless most of the time. we simply can't do better as a culture
