The forces around the world are just that...around the world. They aren't here.
That being said, a force large enough to successfully protect the American public, housed on American soil, might be bigger than you imagine and carries inherent risks that you are inured from seeing.
I would rather see universal military training of the citizens.
Did you really just ask me why a domestically located defense force would be easier to turn against a population they cohabitate and intermingle with, as compared to a larger force which is nowhere near the population and which is spread out over the whole globe? You think size has anything to do with it?
Venus is about 4 times hotter than an autoclave and 40 times the pressure. When you can design a microbe that can live in molten lead you have a shot, until then you will need to figure something else out.
Also, I think you are misusing misanthrope. If humans are good then more humans are better, eh? Ever think that humans are abusing themselves by abusing their habitat, not living within reasonable and rational limits, and as a result, overpopulation is the ultimate form of misanthropy?
The logic of "Its been super hot before and things lived!" is also very simple and you walk right past it. If the past repeats itself, in the same way it has been observed to repeat itself, and all we do to stop it is redistribute wealth and institute strange tax schemes, were fucking capital D dead, extinct, gone the way of 99.9% of species that have inhabited this planet.
If, however, instead of simulating the environment to find a way to steal money from people and industries and give it to Al Gore, we simulate the environment to figure out what the world will be like when the Earth does what it does, and then plan for our survival based on preparing the population for both extremes, we might get out of this alive.
Humans are not rational. They are superstitious herd animals, panicked by shadows cast from monsters that exist only in their mind. They prefer adopting viewpoints riddled with inconsistencies and never updating or revising them. They choose to live with self-inflicted wounds, re-victimizing themselves daily, performing ritual self-sacrifice cutting up their own minds and feeding them to their inner demons, rather than putting the past behind them and being present to the opportunities and infinite beauty in every moment of life on this giant spaceship with the only life we have observed anywhere in the universe.
They will not be "responsible" nor will they make "good choices." They will serve their basest instincts with as much power as they can muster, lord it over the other shrieking worms who have not, and go down to their miserable deaths clutching their prizes.
The kind of creature that does this, that acts this way, cannot be trusted with technology. They will misuse it for their own destruction, thinking they are enriching themselves, just as they do every circumstance that each day brings them. They are incapable of perceiving the truth: the all-things are connected. There is no separation. What you do to the Earth you do to yourself.
Therein lies the problem. No one will work together as long as it is beneficial to offload costs to the commons for their own selfish interests and economic advantage. Those countries that do work together to clean up their act will be outstripped by cheap energy/polluting countries.
When you get right down to it the main problems are globalization and population. That you can "make" goods cheaper on the other side of the world and ship them to the opposite side of the planet "cheaply" completely ignores the environmental cost of all of the vessels used to provide that logistical train, fuel it, support it, etc.. Furthermore, that goods need to be shipped in to support the population of a certain area just means there are too many people in that area.
Zoom out if necessary, and really look at that shit. Its fucking nuts. It can't be sustainable.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if any other species in the history of this planet achieved "intelligence" similar to humans they realized their threat to the existence of life on the planet and quickly re-engineered themselves back into a state of balance with nature, self-consciousness ejected from the corpus like a possessing demon.
I did. It is irrelevant to my comment or the facts. We have a military. It is what it is because it is what it is. You can argue all you want for it being different, or that a smaller force would be perfectly sufficient for defense, or that if we shove celery up our asses we will live forever. It doesn't mean it is relevant to what IS, or what I said.
"Something much smaller," as you say, would certainly still be called "The US military" provided it was sufficient for our defense. If it was not sufficient for our defense it would be called "the former US Military of the now defunct United States of America."
Plainly, what I said stands. I'll reiterate if you like: If we did not have it, we would have need of it...and it would be too late.
That said, here's my response to your specific line of reasoning:
The American people of today, in my opinion, are not sufficient to the task of defending this country. A military force based in the US, dedicated to defending our borders (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!! Oh fuck that's hilarious!!!!) would have to be much larger than what you think. They would need to be able to mount a defense against invasion while simultaneously defending against internal forces that would splinter and opportunistically attack their own country during an invasion. They would have to provide shelter, food, and logistical support for the majority of the population that would be nothing more than cannon fodder on a good day, and which would overrun and destroy domestic emplacements on a bad day. They would have to be capable of keeping order in the face of more than 150 million helpless, spoiled and screaming idiot children in adult bodies, and this doesn't even begin to mount a defense against the enemy.
Housing such a force with such capabilities within the US would be a vast temptation for all sorts of political fuckery and I cannot begin to enumerate the problems inherent in doing it. Haven't you seen the writing on the wall? Three letter agencies cannibalizing the American body politic, whistle-blowers painted as traitors, victimized Americans screaming for the head of someone who put their life on the line to help us...you want to make those problems worse? Let's just go ahead and form a secret police force now, erect some gallows and jump straight to the public hangings why don't we?
In short, I think you underestimate the manpower necessary to run a domestic defense force, in addition to underestimating the propensity for a domestic defense force to be opportunistically used against the populace.
Never was in the military. I just studied history, military history, and the fate of humans who forget the lessons of both.
Besides, advertising is how anything and everything is done in the US these days, don't cha know?
That said, cigarettes and alcohol have killed way more people than war, and yet we let those fuckers advertise.
What I hear you saying most of all is "The ends justify the means." In essence, you agree with the writer's intentions and goals, so his writing style, no matter how disingenuous and manipulative, is acceptable. I get it. You like lies and deception as a way of getting what you want and will look for opportunities to make something so important that you can freely violate social norms and your own integrity to accomplish it. It makes you feel good to be a defender of such a defensible position, so much so that you will do indefensible things to show your dedication.
FYI, that's called being a piece of shit and is what leads to wars, among other things.
I agree that in world war II the character of the citizenry and their access to armament would have been sufficient to repel any invasive force, especially considering the munitions available to the enemy, the cohesiveness of the society, etc.
If we were invaded today I believe a majority of the American populace that would be completely combat ineffective. In addition, there would be a large percentage of the population that would attempt to join the invaders. There would be another group that would surrender immediately, spewing tactical and strategic information to the enemy like a caught cokehead looking at 20 years.
There would be additional groups that would take the opportunity to attack and interdict our own government's buildings and assets, like in Oregon right now, only way worse. There would be race riots, rape gangs, attacks on corporations, banks, churches, food stores, and public facilities, all done by dissatisfied and self justified Americans. Ex military Americans would be attacked in their sleep by their neighbors, their hides, supplies, and armaments traded to the enemy in hopes of favorable treatment.
Toss in "just in time" inventories and people living paycheck to paycheck...well lets just say that you filthy humans would start acting like the animals I know you to be a lot sooner than you think you would.
So yeah, that famous assessment of America is not only apocryphal, its 80 years out of date and long expired. You can't expect Texas to pick up the slack for the rest of the country and I don't expect the forces of the populace straining to repeal the second amendment to understand what war is, especially one on their own soil. They would be the worst kind of citizens in a crisis like that: unregimented, hysterical, self destructive, lawless, easily panicked, lacking any kind of self sufficiency and therefore completely incapable of being anything better than a burden.
Because you're seeing them just like some people saw blacks and women early on in their campaigns to appeal to the humanity of their fellow Americans, to get their particular grievances out in the open so that all of us could advance as a society.
That you see their complaints as "whiny" and that you view them as "losers" speaks infinite volumes about who you are. You lack compassion and encourage others to condemn and attack people who are in pain. You feel not only justified in doing so, you feel it is the right thing to do and are seeking not only the approval of others but also their assistance.
Human rights are not a zero sum game. Taking care of one "group" in society doesn't mean that other "groups" get left behind. Compassionately listening for the truth costs nothing, and usually results in the individual seeing in themselves what has caused them to be so callous toward others. As a result, when human rights are pursued and codified into the common consciousness everyone benefits. The conduit connecting us all is strengthened.
Special treatment, on the other hand, is a zero sum game that results in division, subjugation, control, and genocidal attacks on other groups. This is the realm of "survival" level thinking and is the only choice when the objective of the exercise requires taking from others to be fulfilled.
Exactly my binary friend. This blurb reads like a hit piece on a product that some people feel would be better put out of the market, like cigarettes or Coke. Going to a second meta-level you can see the writer took particular care in choosing words that are intended to incite anger, fear, resentment, and mistrust while alluding to nefarious intentions and predatory motivation on the part of the military.
Sure, the US military has issues, but that's no reason to bash the shit out of them for advertising.
One thing to always remember, especially on Hiroshima day, or as I like to call it "Don't fuck with US day": if we didn't have the US military we would certainly have another country's military.
If it was the people vs a corporation we know what way it would have gone. Fortunately it was two companies with lobbyists vs one company with lobbyists, and the FCC came down firmly on the side of nepotism, greed, and graft, as usual. Only this time it was congruent with increased choice and market diversity, oddly enough.
All the American people need to do to get favorable decisions is to find a way to appeal to the shameless self interest of our government. It is their better nature.
I think it would be OK to have anthropomorphized robots that beg to not be turned off, but only if their off/reset button is placed in what would ostensibly be called their "neck" and it is only activated by powerfully choking and shaking them.
He makes himself feel that way. He doesn't attack himself...
That said, it is emotional immaturity without a doubt.
Emotional maturity is taking responsibility for your emotional responses before they result in actions, not taking responsibility after you let your emotional responses take control of your actions.
People think that there are only two choices. Either pay for legal distribution of licensed media, or fight the man by illegally downloading.
Both of those are the same choice. You choose to live within the boundaries set for you by your corporate masters and government overlords. You aren't fighting anything by illegally downloading the content you want. You're just hoping your masters and overlords are too busy counting everyone else's money to come after you.
When you actually start fighting the man you won't be posting about it on the internet. The people who betrayed all of us in perpetuity for their own monetary and temporal benefits are human, just like the rest of us. They have lives that can be affected, just like the rest of us. They have families and loved ones who would miss them and cry about how they were taken away, just like the families and loved ones of people incarcerated for "copyright infringement." They have soft points that are susceptible to pressure. Just as multi-million dollar fines for downloading a song and long jail sentences for fixing something you own have a chilling effect on the actions of the people, there are ways to place a chilling effect on the propensity of our elected leaders to take bribes, steal from the commons, and make laws designed to crush non-corporate freedom and creativity.
Complaining and snarky comments on the internet aren't it.
Jefferson had the right idea. Trees, liberty, the blood of tyrants, etc. Unfortunately, the idea of fighting for freedom is not in the American cultural DNA anymore. Not unless they can take it from someone else, not get their hands dirty, and as long as they can make it home in time for dinner. Doing it for future generations, their fellow man, or the ideal of freedom? HA! That's as un-American as white people.
Also, abstaining from media is still just the same choice. You're the equivalent of an ascetic monk who remains stoic and unmoved, even in the face of bandits predating his flock.
I don't have a problem with prostitution, provided the people engaging in it are doing it through their own agency and their consent is not unduly manipulated or undermined. I would prefer it were legal. Since it is not it suffers from the same problems as any illegal enterprise.
I do have a problem with people getting beaten, abused, brainwashed, raped, and forcibly addicted to drugs specifically to turn them into sex workers.
I do have a problem with a pimp taking over 90% of the money from a prostitute working for them.
I know AC's are stupid, ignorant, full of shit, and apparently almost always Russian now. I just didn't know they had gone so far as to support human slavery and the intentional infliction of deep emotional scarring and psychological abuse for profit.
I'm wrong about lots of things and for sure don't see the whole picture, ever. That being said, I won't be like a die hard A&M fan screaming "That's a foul!" at the TV, then watching the super-slow-motion replay from 5 angles showing that it was not, in fact, a foul. Nor will I grumble to myself after unmistakable proof that I was wrong is presented: "Well the refs are in the tank for the other team."
From what I have experienced personally, and from what I see constantly, "sidedness" is all the excuse people need to mistreat the truth, to hold on to unfounded accusations against entire groups of people, to bring a preset mental framework into a situation where it doesn't apply, and to falsely attribute a mindset to other people they are on "opposite" "sides" from.
The result of all of that baggage is usually predictable. If someone on one side meets someone on the other side they end up throwing other people's talking points at each other, placing blame on this person or that party as directed by their "leaders," and completely talking past each other. Neither can back down, de-escalate, or talking stick themselves into a position where they really listen to the other person. Learning why something is important to someone else is never discussed, only the wrongdoings and past hurts matter. Getting where they are coming from is the last thing on the list of things to do when they encounter someone they feel is the opposition.
People like Daryl Davis and Dylan Marron are some good examples of what can happen when you put away the talking points and sidedness and just talk to people like human beings. Doesn't mean they are right or wrong. I just prefer their results.
I wonder if anyone else is seeing a general breakdown of civil authority and social framework...
I ask this because I live in Houston, TX and work near an area of the city where prostitution is rampant. I can walk outside my building right now and take pictures of at least 2-5 prostitutes working the streets in broad daylight. They even traverse the access roads next to the freeway!
This has been going on day in and day out for the last couple of years. Every once in a while the police will do a sting, but they are only looking to shame and shake down the Johns. The working women never end up in cuffs. They just disappear while the policetitutes are entraping people, then reappear once the meat wagons roll off with their cargo of sex addicts.
Fortunately, the human feces quotient is small, but there are plenty of used condoms littering the ground (good they are using them!), the occasional bit of discarded stripperware, and a smattering of what I have been told are "drug baggies" (not that I would know what those look like.) It's almost hard to notice those things though, with all the young women milling about wearing inappropriate spandex, mesh tops with electrical tape on their nipples, shorts that only cover their hips, and the more-frequent-than-you-could-possibly-imagine skirt flipped up with no underwear combo, completely revealing their pubic grooming habits.
It's curious to think that major cities in America can't control things like homeless people crapping everywhere or prostitutes taking over a few long blocks next to an elementary school.
Never said he was. I referred only to the Vietnam War as a sham and a farce.
The enemy of my enemy is my...well fuck I don't even care, as long as they take each other out, or one preys on the other.
Not that you asked before putting words in my mouth that I didn't ever say, but the farce and the sham that was the entire buildup to the Vietnam war and the war itself didn't happen over the preceding decades without a ton of help from the news media.
You're such a good example of the kinds of behavior I see in partisan humans. I was just describing this exact scenario to someone yesterday. You see something you don't like, it grates on your world view, so you interject yourself into the situation in an offensive way and then use the reaction you create as proof and justification of the attitude you brought to the situation and the viewpoint of the other person.
You are nothing more than a curiosity at this point. How did your mind get so twisted? I think, just as I stated before, that you present a simulacrum of stupidity, when in truth you have ulterior motives.
Come clean, speak straight and plainly, and work out your kinks. You will be more effective in life. Cheers!
I disagree on one point. The US has been subject to false information and outright lies for decades. See the "Pentagon Papers" for an example. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It was a bumbling attempt by inept and unpracticed individuals. They have gotten better at it.
You are 100% correct though, that the filter bubble is the problem. Being a part of a political party in the US includes never admitting your party is wrong, never holding your own leaders accountable, never publicly calling out wrongdoing by your own party, never conceding anything to someone of another party, and always being on the attack. Any system that generates and requires so much animosity, derision, and division to sustain itself cannot be based in logic or reason. That's not political, it's religious, and fanatically so.
As for being critical, I suggest looking from a meta-viewpoint. For instance, one statement I made to my self taught me more about myself, people, and the world around me than any other: "If I want to have one God, I must first have no gods." There were thoughts I couldn't have until I relinquished my belief. Ditching the filter, losing my "sidedness," my horse in the race so to speak, allowed me to see more than I ever imagined.
Similarly, when I decided that I couldn't be a true American until I had no party, it allowed me to look at things in a new way. Things like the Congressional voting record. I started thinking not in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of actions and effects when evaluating the government. When words and deeds disagree, which seems to be the case 100% of the time in American politics, trust deeds. Or, things like political parties completely changing their stance on certain policies over a span of 10 years (sometimes even less!) without even referencing the previous stance or why they are changing. And things like "wedge issues" and "politically correct speech" and what they mean, where they come from, what they are designed for, and their intended result. And things like focus groups run by political parties which create ideas like the afore mentioned wedge issues and politically correct speech, in addition to their largely successful experimental attempts to brute-force reverse-engineer public sentiment.
My conclusions were pretty simple. The "parties" vote as a bloc whenever they can create an excuse to limit, circumvent, or hamstring rights provided to us in the Constitution. They won't hold anyone accountable for fleecing the America people, other than occasionally victimizing those already victimized. They have no qualms about creating division, strife, anger, and hatred among The People. Quite the opposite, their rule is predicated on it, they plan it, create it specifically with sharpened words, fallacious ideas, and emotional appeals which are twisted into faulty logic and motivation. They will use public support for something wonderful, like universal health care, and purposely turn it into a the largest tax hike in history all the while buttressing and reinforcing the unfair system of predatory profit channels that created the public impetus for the change in the first place. They will turn our freedom into a debt which is only repaid when enough of us are in prison.
Sadly, our American sisters and brothers have a political version of Stockholm syndrome. They attack and fight their allies, and lick the hand of those that conspire against them, abuse them, imprison them. They swallow false narratives left and right and ignore evidence that contradicts their worldview at every turn.
Now my party is the American people. There are, in my mind, two parties, or two sides may be a better way to put it. The elected and their moneyed overlords, and The People who vote and pay for everything. The people who are elected don't want you to know they are their own group. They want you to think they are on your side. They want you to think they are your champion, fighting the good fight against the monsters of the other party. Unfortuna
Here is exactly what I wrote. Show me on the doll where I called you stupid...
"Are you too stupid to realize the difference between being a citizen and an illegal immigrant? I don't think so."
So me saying you are not stupid means I called you stupid, which makes me a hateful bigot.
Got it. I was right: " I suspect you are trying your best to sidestep the issue because you have no way to rebut the facts."
I hit too close to home. Understood. You can't take it. Understood. You will lie to yourself and to me to protect yourself from seeing yourself as you truly are. Understood.
Wait a second. I'm a bigot because I want people living in America to be full participants in this country? Because I want people to live without fear of their families being taken apart i'm hateful? Because I don't want to hold people for ransom and don't rejoice when the second lives they have worked so hard to start and build are destroyed, I'm a hateful bigot?
You think because I subscribe to a version of America described by "The New Colossus" that I am a hateful person?
You are either the stupidest human I have ever met, or you are a sub-human piece of shit. Either way, I will state one last time unequivocally that exploiting people for political gain is anti-American, even though partisans will tell you completely different. Like you're doing.
I do not support hatred, especially the ingrained kind where people will tell themselves they are helping people while they use them for their own purposes. You seem to espouse this.
You can fuck right off to the depths of hell for all I care. You're aren't part of the problem, you are the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Never said that. You did.
The forces around the world are just that...around the world. They aren't here.
That being said, a force large enough to successfully protect the American public, housed on American soil, might be bigger than you imagine and carries inherent risks that you are inured from seeing.
I would rather see universal military training of the citizens.
Did you really just ask me why a domestically located defense force would be easier to turn against a population they cohabitate and intermingle with, as compared to a larger force which is nowhere near the population and which is spread out over the whole globe? You think size has anything to do with it?
Venus is about 4 times hotter than an autoclave and 40 times the pressure. When you can design a microbe that can live in molten lead you have a shot, until then you will need to figure something else out.
Also, I think you are misusing misanthrope. If humans are good then more humans are better, eh? Ever think that humans are abusing themselves by abusing their habitat, not living within reasonable and rational limits, and as a result, overpopulation is the ultimate form of misanthropy?
The logic of "Its been super hot before and things lived!" is also very simple and you walk right past it. If the past repeats itself, in the same way it has been observed to repeat itself, and all we do to stop it is redistribute wealth and institute strange tax schemes, were fucking capital D dead, extinct, gone the way of 99.9% of species that have inhabited this planet.
If, however, instead of simulating the environment to find a way to steal money from people and industries and give it to Al Gore, we simulate the environment to figure out what the world will be like when the Earth does what it does, and then plan for our survival based on preparing the population for both extremes, we might get out of this alive.
Humans are not rational. They are superstitious herd animals, panicked by shadows cast from monsters that exist only in their mind. They prefer adopting viewpoints riddled with inconsistencies and never updating or revising them. They choose to live with self-inflicted wounds, re-victimizing themselves daily, performing ritual self-sacrifice cutting up their own minds and feeding them to their inner demons, rather than putting the past behind them and being present to the opportunities and infinite beauty in every moment of life on this giant spaceship with the only life we have observed anywhere in the universe.
They will not be "responsible" nor will they make "good choices." They will serve their basest instincts with as much power as they can muster, lord it over the other shrieking worms who have not, and go down to their miserable deaths clutching their prizes.
The kind of creature that does this, that acts this way, cannot be trusted with technology. They will misuse it for their own destruction, thinking they are enriching themselves, just as they do every circumstance that each day brings them. They are incapable of perceiving the truth: the all-things are connected. There is no separation. What you do to the Earth you do to yourself.
You just stated an environmental refutation of globalism. Expect to be called a racist nationalist with sour cream any second.
Therein lies the problem. No one will work together as long as it is beneficial to offload costs to the commons for their own selfish interests and economic advantage. Those countries that do work together to clean up their act will be outstripped by cheap energy/polluting countries.
When you get right down to it the main problems are globalization and population. That you can "make" goods cheaper on the other side of the world and ship them to the opposite side of the planet "cheaply" completely ignores the environmental cost of all of the vessels used to provide that logistical train, fuel it, support it, etc.. Furthermore, that goods need to be shipped in to support the population of a certain area just means there are too many people in that area.
A globally competitive market destroys the world. Take a look at this map: https://www.marinetraffic.com/...
Zoom out if necessary, and really look at that shit. Its fucking nuts. It can't be sustainable.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if any other species in the history of this planet achieved "intelligence" similar to humans they realized their threat to the existence of life on the planet and quickly re-engineered themselves back into a state of balance with nature, self-consciousness ejected from the corpus like a possessing demon.
I did. It is irrelevant to my comment or the facts. We have a military. It is what it is because it is what it is. You can argue all you want for it being different, or that a smaller force would be perfectly sufficient for defense, or that if we shove celery up our asses we will live forever. It doesn't mean it is relevant to what IS, or what I said.
"Something much smaller," as you say, would certainly still be called "The US military" provided it was sufficient for our defense. If it was not sufficient for our defense it would be called "the former US Military of the now defunct United States of America."
Plainly, what I said stands. I'll reiterate if you like: If we did not have it, we would have need of it...and it would be too late.
That said, here's my response to your specific line of reasoning:
The American people of today, in my opinion, are not sufficient to the task of defending this country. A military force based in the US, dedicated to defending our borders (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!! Oh fuck that's hilarious!!!!) would have to be much larger than what you think. They would need to be able to mount a defense against invasion while simultaneously defending against internal forces that would splinter and opportunistically attack their own country during an invasion. They would have to provide shelter, food, and logistical support for the majority of the population that would be nothing more than cannon fodder on a good day, and which would overrun and destroy domestic emplacements on a bad day. They would have to be capable of keeping order in the face of more than 150 million helpless, spoiled and screaming idiot children in adult bodies, and this doesn't even begin to mount a defense against the enemy.
Housing such a force with such capabilities within the US would be a vast temptation for all sorts of political fuckery and I cannot begin to enumerate the problems inherent in doing it. Haven't you seen the writing on the wall? Three letter agencies cannibalizing the American body politic, whistle-blowers painted as traitors, victimized Americans screaming for the head of someone who put their life on the line to help us...you want to make those problems worse? Let's just go ahead and form a secret police force now, erect some gallows and jump straight to the public hangings why don't we?
In short, I think you underestimate the manpower necessary to run a domestic defense force, in addition to underestimating the propensity for a domestic defense force to be opportunistically used against the populace.
Never was in the military. I just studied history, military history, and the fate of humans who forget the lessons of both.
Besides, advertising is how anything and everything is done in the US these days, don't cha know?
That said, cigarettes and alcohol have killed way more people than war, and yet we let those fuckers advertise.
What I hear you saying most of all is "The ends justify the means." In essence, you agree with the writer's intentions and goals, so his writing style, no matter how disingenuous and manipulative, is acceptable. I get it. You like lies and deception as a way of getting what you want and will look for opportunities to make something so important that you can freely violate social norms and your own integrity to accomplish it. It makes you feel good to be a defender of such a defensible position, so much so that you will do indefensible things to show your dedication.
FYI, that's called being a piece of shit and is what leads to wars, among other things.
Priorities and perspective, please.
I agree that in world war II the character of the citizenry and their access to armament would have been sufficient to repel any invasive force, especially considering the munitions available to the enemy, the cohesiveness of the society, etc.
If we were invaded today I believe a majority of the American populace that would be completely combat ineffective. In addition, there would be a large percentage of the population that would attempt to join the invaders. There would be another group that would surrender immediately, spewing tactical and strategic information to the enemy like a caught cokehead looking at 20 years.
There would be additional groups that would take the opportunity to attack and interdict our own government's buildings and assets, like in Oregon right now, only way worse. There would be race riots, rape gangs, attacks on corporations, banks, churches, food stores, and public facilities, all done by dissatisfied and self justified Americans. Ex military Americans would be attacked in their sleep by their neighbors, their hides, supplies, and armaments traded to the enemy in hopes of favorable treatment.
Toss in "just in time" inventories and people living paycheck to paycheck...well lets just say that you filthy humans would start acting like the animals I know you to be a lot sooner than you think you would.
So yeah, that famous assessment of America is not only apocryphal, its 80 years out of date and long expired. You can't expect Texas to pick up the slack for the rest of the country and I don't expect the forces of the populace straining to repeal the second amendment to understand what war is, especially one on their own soil. They would be the worst kind of citizens in a crisis like that: unregimented, hysterical, self destructive, lawless, easily panicked, lacking any kind of self sufficiency and therefore completely incapable of being anything better than a burden.
For if they do these things in the green tree...
Don't criticize. Those dictators hadn't learned how to successfully radicalize them the way Japanese cult leaders and certain religions have.
Because you're seeing them just like some people saw blacks and women early on in their campaigns to appeal to the humanity of their fellow Americans, to get their particular grievances out in the open so that all of us could advance as a society.
That you see their complaints as "whiny" and that you view them as "losers" speaks infinite volumes about who you are. You lack compassion and encourage others to condemn and attack people who are in pain. You feel not only justified in doing so, you feel it is the right thing to do and are seeking not only the approval of others but also their assistance.
Human rights are not a zero sum game. Taking care of one "group" in society doesn't mean that other "groups" get left behind. Compassionately listening for the truth costs nothing, and usually results in the individual seeing in themselves what has caused them to be so callous toward others. As a result, when human rights are pursued and codified into the common consciousness everyone benefits. The conduit connecting us all is strengthened.
Special treatment, on the other hand, is a zero sum game that results in division, subjugation, control, and genocidal attacks on other groups. This is the realm of "survival" level thinking and is the only choice when the objective of the exercise requires taking from others to be fulfilled.
Exactly my binary friend. This blurb reads like a hit piece on a product that some people feel would be better put out of the market, like cigarettes or Coke. Going to a second meta-level you can see the writer took particular care in choosing words that are intended to incite anger, fear, resentment, and mistrust while alluding to nefarious intentions and predatory motivation on the part of the military.
Sure, the US military has issues, but that's no reason to bash the shit out of them for advertising.
One thing to always remember, especially on Hiroshima day, or as I like to call it "Don't fuck with US day": if we didn't have the US military we would certainly have another country's military.
If it was the people vs a corporation we know what way it would have gone. Fortunately it was two companies with lobbyists vs one company with lobbyists, and the FCC came down firmly on the side of nepotism, greed, and graft, as usual. Only this time it was congruent with increased choice and market diversity, oddly enough.
All the American people need to do to get favorable decisions is to find a way to appeal to the shameless self interest of our government. It is their better nature.
I think it would be OK to have anthropomorphized robots that beg to not be turned off, but only if their off/reset button is placed in what would ostensibly be called their "neck" and it is only activated by powerfully choking and shaking them.
He makes himself feel that way. He doesn't attack himself...
That said, it is emotional immaturity without a doubt.
Emotional maturity is taking responsibility for your emotional responses before they result in actions, not taking responsibility after you let your emotional responses take control of your actions.
People think that there are only two choices. Either pay for legal distribution of licensed media, or fight the man by illegally downloading.
Both of those are the same choice. You choose to live within the boundaries set for you by your corporate masters and government overlords. You aren't fighting anything by illegally downloading the content you want. You're just hoping your masters and overlords are too busy counting everyone else's money to come after you.
When you actually start fighting the man you won't be posting about it on the internet. The people who betrayed all of us in perpetuity for their own monetary and temporal benefits are human, just like the rest of us. They have lives that can be affected, just like the rest of us. They have families and loved ones who would miss them and cry about how they were taken away, just like the families and loved ones of people incarcerated for "copyright infringement." They have soft points that are susceptible to pressure. Just as multi-million dollar fines for downloading a song and long jail sentences for fixing something you own have a chilling effect on the actions of the people, there are ways to place a chilling effect on the propensity of our elected leaders to take bribes, steal from the commons, and make laws designed to crush non-corporate freedom and creativity.
Complaining and snarky comments on the internet aren't it.
Jefferson had the right idea. Trees, liberty, the blood of tyrants, etc. Unfortunately, the idea of fighting for freedom is not in the American cultural DNA anymore. Not unless they can take it from someone else, not get their hands dirty, and as long as they can make it home in time for dinner. Doing it for future generations, their fellow man, or the ideal of freedom? HA! That's as un-American as white people.
Also, abstaining from media is still just the same choice. You're the equivalent of an ascetic monk who remains stoic and unmoved, even in the face of bandits predating his flock.
I don't have a problem with prostitution, provided the people engaging in it are doing it through their own agency and their consent is not unduly manipulated or undermined. I would prefer it were legal. Since it is not it suffers from the same problems as any illegal enterprise.
I do have a problem with people getting beaten, abused, brainwashed, raped, and forcibly addicted to drugs specifically to turn them into sex workers.
I do have a problem with a pimp taking over 90% of the money from a prostitute working for them.
I know AC's are stupid, ignorant, full of shit, and apparently almost always Russian now. I just didn't know they had gone so far as to support human slavery and the intentional infliction of deep emotional scarring and psychological abuse for profit.
I'm wrong about lots of things and for sure don't see the whole picture, ever. That being said, I won't be like a die hard A&M fan screaming "That's a foul!" at the TV, then watching the super-slow-motion replay from 5 angles showing that it was not, in fact, a foul. Nor will I grumble to myself after unmistakable proof that I was wrong is presented: "Well the refs are in the tank for the other team."
From what I have experienced personally, and from what I see constantly, "sidedness" is all the excuse people need to mistreat the truth, to hold on to unfounded accusations against entire groups of people, to bring a preset mental framework into a situation where it doesn't apply, and to falsely attribute a mindset to other people they are on "opposite" "sides" from.
The result of all of that baggage is usually predictable. If someone on one side meets someone on the other side they end up throwing other people's talking points at each other, placing blame on this person or that party as directed by their "leaders," and completely talking past each other. Neither can back down, de-escalate, or talking stick themselves into a position where they really listen to the other person. Learning why something is important to someone else is never discussed, only the wrongdoings and past hurts matter. Getting where they are coming from is the last thing on the list of things to do when they encounter someone they feel is the opposition.
People like Daryl Davis and Dylan Marron are some good examples of what can happen when you put away the talking points and sidedness and just talk to people like human beings. Doesn't mean they are right or wrong. I just prefer their results.
I wonder if anyone else is seeing a general breakdown of civil authority and social framework...
I ask this because I live in Houston, TX and work near an area of the city where prostitution is rampant. I can walk outside my building right now and take pictures of at least 2-5 prostitutes working the streets in broad daylight. They even traverse the access roads next to the freeway!
This has been going on day in and day out for the last couple of years. Every once in a while the police will do a sting, but they are only looking to shame and shake down the Johns. The working women never end up in cuffs. They just disappear while the policetitutes are entraping people, then reappear once the meat wagons roll off with their cargo of sex addicts.
Fortunately, the human feces quotient is small, but there are plenty of used condoms littering the ground (good they are using them!), the occasional bit of discarded stripperware, and a smattering of what I have been told are "drug baggies" (not that I would know what those look like.) It's almost hard to notice those things though, with all the young women milling about wearing inappropriate spandex, mesh tops with electrical tape on their nipples, shorts that only cover their hips, and the more-frequent-than-you-could-possibly-imagine skirt flipped up with no underwear combo, completely revealing their pubic grooming habits.
It's curious to think that major cities in America can't control things like homeless people crapping everywhere or prostitutes taking over a few long blocks next to an elementary school.
Never said he was. I referred only to the Vietnam War as a sham and a farce.
The enemy of my enemy is my...well fuck I don't even care, as long as they take each other out, or one preys on the other.
Not that you asked before putting words in my mouth that I didn't ever say, but the farce and the sham that was the entire buildup to the Vietnam war and the war itself didn't happen over the preceding decades without a ton of help from the news media.
You're such a good example of the kinds of behavior I see in partisan humans. I was just describing this exact scenario to someone yesterday. You see something you don't like, it grates on your world view, so you interject yourself into the situation in an offensive way and then use the reaction you create as proof and justification of the attitude you brought to the situation and the viewpoint of the other person.
You are nothing more than a curiosity at this point. How did your mind get so twisted? I think, just as I stated before, that you present a simulacrum of stupidity, when in truth you have ulterior motives.
Come clean, speak straight and plainly, and work out your kinks. You will be more effective in life. Cheers!
I disagree on one point. The US has been subject to false information and outright lies for decades. See the "Pentagon Papers" for an example. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It was a bumbling attempt by inept and unpracticed individuals. They have gotten better at it.
You are 100% correct though, that the filter bubble is the problem. Being a part of a political party in the US includes never admitting your party is wrong, never holding your own leaders accountable, never publicly calling out wrongdoing by your own party, never conceding anything to someone of another party, and always being on the attack. Any system that generates and requires so much animosity, derision, and division to sustain itself cannot be based in logic or reason. That's not political, it's religious, and fanatically so.
As for being critical, I suggest looking from a meta-viewpoint. For instance, one statement I made to my self taught me more about myself, people, and the world around me than any other: "If I want to have one God, I must first have no gods." There were thoughts I couldn't have until I relinquished my belief. Ditching the filter, losing my "sidedness," my horse in the race so to speak, allowed me to see more than I ever imagined.
Similarly, when I decided that I couldn't be a true American until I had no party, it allowed me to look at things in a new way. Things like the Congressional voting record. I started thinking not in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of actions and effects when evaluating the government. When words and deeds disagree, which seems to be the case 100% of the time in American politics, trust deeds. Or, things like political parties completely changing their stance on certain policies over a span of 10 years (sometimes even less!) without even referencing the previous stance or why they are changing. And things like "wedge issues" and "politically correct speech" and what they mean, where they come from, what they are designed for, and their intended result. And things like focus groups run by political parties which create ideas like the afore mentioned wedge issues and politically correct speech, in addition to their largely successful experimental attempts to brute-force reverse-engineer public sentiment.
My conclusions were pretty simple. The "parties" vote as a bloc whenever they can create an excuse to limit, circumvent, or hamstring rights provided to us in the Constitution. They won't hold anyone accountable for fleecing the America people, other than occasionally victimizing those already victimized. They have no qualms about creating division, strife, anger, and hatred among The People. Quite the opposite, their rule is predicated on it, they plan it, create it specifically with sharpened words, fallacious ideas, and emotional appeals which are twisted into faulty logic and motivation. They will use public support for something wonderful, like universal health care, and purposely turn it into a the largest tax hike in history all the while buttressing and reinforcing the unfair system of predatory profit channels that created the public impetus for the change in the first place. They will turn our freedom into a debt which is only repaid when enough of us are in prison.
Sadly, our American sisters and brothers have a political version of Stockholm syndrome. They attack and fight their allies, and lick the hand of those that conspire against them, abuse them, imprison them. They swallow false narratives left and right and ignore evidence that contradicts their worldview at every turn.
Now my party is the American people. There are, in my mind, two parties, or two sides may be a better way to put it. The elected and their moneyed overlords, and The People who vote and pay for everything. The people who are elected don't want you to know they are their own group. They want you to think they are on your side. They want you to think they are your champion, fighting the good fight against the monsters of the other party. Unfortuna
And for good reason. The whole war was a sham and a farce.
Here is exactly what I wrote. Show me on the doll where I called you stupid...
"Are you too stupid to realize the difference between being a citizen and an illegal immigrant? I don't think so."
So me saying you are not stupid means I called you stupid, which makes me a hateful bigot.
Got it. I was right: " I suspect you are trying your best to sidestep the issue because you have no way to rebut the facts."
I hit too close to home. Understood. You can't take it. Understood. You will lie to yourself and to me to protect yourself from seeing yourself as you truly are. Understood.
If only we had some manufacturing jobs for people to work at.
Wait a second. I'm a bigot because I want people living in America to be full participants in this country? Because I want people to live without fear of their families being taken apart i'm hateful? Because I don't want to hold people for ransom and don't rejoice when the second lives they have worked so hard to start and build are destroyed, I'm a hateful bigot?
You think because I subscribe to a version of America described by "The New Colossus" that I am a hateful person?
You are either the stupidest human I have ever met, or you are a sub-human piece of shit. Either way, I will state one last time unequivocally that exploiting people for political gain is anti-American, even though partisans will tell you completely different. Like you're doing.
I do not support hatred, especially the ingrained kind where people will tell themselves they are helping people while they use them for their own purposes. You seem to espouse this.
You can fuck right off to the depths of hell for all I care. You're aren't part of the problem, you are the problem.