You’re intentionally obfuscating the issue with some ad hominem thrown in. Nice work.
Let’s assume that Biden is senile and that the nuclear football is actually in the hands of AOC or whomever is the current villain the jour for conservatives. The officers in question feel a moral obligation to speak out publicly to warn the people about the grave danger the country is facing. And they - for some reason - add a laundry list of GOP talking points to their letter.
“The POTUS is mentally unfit, the Marxists are running amok and barbed wire around the US Capitol is a waste of government resources”
Doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Thank you Google translate for helping me grasp the nuances of such masterful prose.
And the letter in question overlaps 100% with the talking points of one political party. Pure coincidence I assume? Or is this a Manichean struggle between good and evil?
That’s quite a volte face from a year ago. Aren’t military officers writing letters supposed to be a part of a cabal of unelected bureaucrats trying to overthrow the POTUS? Or are they patriots now when the guy you don’t like is in charge?
I’m sorry, but it isn’t an ad hominem to point out that a person who makes serious posts wondering why American conservatives haven’t begun a shooting war in 2021 doesn’t understand Americans very well. You clearly don’t understand us as well as you imagine you do.
More on this below.
No. These are not issues best examined in a vacuum. These are issues best examined as a totality of actions, rhetoric and policy. The fact that the top of their list of concerns is more-or-less the same as my top list of concerns makes this easy to understand for me.
Hey, I was actually cutting you some slack there. You’re a really good writer in English, period. I’d come across as a complete fool if I attempted to argue in German. Then again, these concerns are easily-understood by me in very simple terms, which is why I give you the benefit of the doubt being from overseas.
It may be the latter, unfortunately. This is what I’m concerned with at this point, which is why I continually point out that it is no longer “same stuff on both sides”. It was for a good chunk of my life, but the Democrats are the ones advancing the objectively terrible policies and overseeing the objectively terrible outcomes across the country. Their ideological team-mates are doing the same the world over.
I’ll have to see how the next four years or so play out and report back. Maybe I’ll be just as wrong as the Trump critics. Who knows, maybe Biden is leading us to dramatically improved outcomes via sensible policy that’s beyond my ability to understand.
Is it? Did I argue the opposite last year in similar circumstances? If so, please feel free to point it out. I was drinking quite a bit last May, I may well have argued something like that and not recall it.
I’ll just throw this out one more time, to keep a healthy perspective on things…
History says no, theybwill always find some conspiracy. Obama shows his birth certificate but then that wasn’t enough.
Aren’t they National Guard? Technically, it’s exactly how they should be used.
How many scientists does it take to convince Republicans that climate change is real? Experts are only experts when they tell people what they want to hear. And where were these experts when it came to the invasion of Iraq and wmds?
I have never made such claim, only that modern American politics is more about virtualism. Every newly elected Democratic president is a tyrant in waiting with a horde of Marxists behind him ready to trample on the sacred concept of liberty, yet these resistance primarily takes place on social media. It wasn’t wonderment, merely an observation.
I won’t claim to be the new Alexis de Tocqueville, but a case to be made that my vastly different experiences in the country are more representative than your typical affluent East Coast liberal.
I’ve repeatedly had to inform well meaning woke liberals who were lecturing me about systemic racism that I attended a very shitty high school in NJ and have met those very people they’re glorifying as “noble savages” in their racism of low expectations.
And one could argue that a mentally incapacitated POTUS is a more pressing concern that a pipeline. If the US is facing imminent ruin thanks to a mentally unfit POTUS and a cabal of bloodthirsty Marxists why water it down with all that other stuff.
Nope. Only the Anglosphere while the rest of the world watches with a mixture of bemusement and slight dread.
At minimum you were making a claim that a lack of a shooting war in 2021 was somehow illustrative of conservative hypocrisy lurking in our reasoning for the 2nd Amendment. Your English was perfectly clear, after all. However you examine it, you don’t understand Americans as well as you may people from your side of the Atlantic.
Credit where credit is due, you still understand us fairly well, just not as well as you think you do.
I could have chosen more polite words, and probably should have. But my point remains. This discussion seems like another piece of evidence for that. These are all clear concerns where a high-school level of civics understanding makes it easy to connect the concern dots to the core of American values.
Social media IS MEDIA. It is 2021. I do not want a bunch of woke know-nothings who can’t see past their own nose deciding what is appropriate for public discourse in the spheres where public discourse takes place.
Fuck yes, section 230 needs to be re-examined. I explained why last year, being argued against the whole way in vague terms with narratives presented as evidence. This was before the sitting President of the United States was banned from all social media, with all platforms acting in unison on behalf of the Democrat party.
They decided that the words of a guy like Donald Trump, a sitting US President, were too “dangerous” for you to hear. That was the pretense, at least. How brave and civic-minded of Facebook, et al. Many of you may be totally cool with that sort of unique arrangement, decided upon in 1997 by the likes of Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd.
I still think section 230 is worth a modern re-examination. I know, I know. I’m just a crazy conservative carrying Trump’s water because I didn’t take the narrative du-jour at face value.
That’s all the arguing I have in me for right now though, but I’ll throw this line out again to see if any juicy fish take the bait…
I’d wager that talent was always there among younger kids (these ages) there’s just an easily accessible platform to broadcast it now that we see it more
Regardless, some of these kids are bananas man … fantastic stuff
Young guitarists are extremely more technically proficient (other than classical) than in the past. Partly due to better equipment, part to internet learning, and some due to more exposure to metal.
I think the talent was always there, but I do believe it’s gotten better. The guitarists of the 70s and 80s looked back on people like Clapton and Hendrix for influence and then took their skills up a level. Now you have people looking at Tosin Abasi and Steve Vai and EVH as their influences and learning all the songs at a young age… It’s crazy.
I don’t think the talent has gotten better since talent is innate. Is any musician in the past 100 years any more talented than Mozart? Is there any contemporary pop musician or group more talented than The Beatles?
Technically speaking with regard to electric guitar, I don’t think technique is better today than anything since the 70s. One just has to watch some videos of Roy Clark to see that incredible technical proficiency is not new and in his case can still have heart. Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin are two others whose technique is as good as anyone today. And let’s not forget Allan Holdsworth (RIP).
That’s why everyone knows and loves David Gilmour’s solos on Comfortably Numb but who can recall a solo by Paul Gilbert? If you were to say the name Paul Gilbert, who would even know who he is?
I don’t think today’s kids have more talent than yesterday’s greats. I think there are tons more and doing it at a far younger age in the technical aspect, compared to before EVH era. Agreed with Gilmour is huge compared to Gilbert.
Didn’t take you for a prog rock / jazz guy, although you have referenced Di Meola before.
Worked weekends at a club in Denver in late 80s where first album bands,like Mr Big, would play ‘concerts’ trying to hit it bigger.
While PG is a shredder maximus (& nerd), you will be surprised by this first video.
I think the talent of today’s kids is amplified by the ready availability of YouTube, slow motion, concert footage, and tab books. I grew up in an era where tab books were just starting to become big, and it was still very much a time when instructional videos were something you had to order.
I don’t know if I would be more technically gifted or not if I had had access to all the things I do today. But I think it makes it a lot easier to study the people you like to play, and to learn their tricks. There’s something to be said for being able to instantly look at any guitarist that you enjoy and be able to slow down their playing on a browser.
Also Paul Gilbert is a favorite of mine and I love his teaching style, as well as his description of the blues. The fact he’s a nerd just makes it better. He just likes playing, period.
If your intent is to carry out ethnic cleansing, genocide is not the best way. It seems like forced IUDs for young women is the way to go. Kind of interesting (in a dark way), how the Chinese seem to have come up with a humane way of ethnic cleansing. Its a forced thing, that most western women seek out voluntarily (birth control), and is non permanent so it doesn’t really seem to rile up the western world…
