The politicians finally managed to get Americans to hate one another more than they hate politicians. It’s not enough to simply disagree; you have to hate and despise the person you disagree with. It’s dehumanization and Othering.
How did they manage to field a team to play England the other day?
They wrote “Russia” across the ball and people were lining up to kick the shit out of it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
2 Likes
Welcome back to the thread.
That’s a peculiar way to describe common domestic concerns here in @pat and I’s part of The West, but you’re free to spin that broad narrative if you wish. I don’t think concerns about worsening conditions is peculiarly western or historically unique, not even when you only look at us middle-aged men. When things go from a certain baseline of economic opportunity and buying power to significantly worse for most people in a few short years, well, people will naturally point that out. At least you can in a society like mine, where the concept of Constitutional rights still holds quite a bit of significance.
I’m a mere graduate of American public high school, but I have to point out a pattern in your posting.
As I’m sure you recall, you were a strong advocate for vaccine mandates, in addition to ridiculing anyone who suggested that it was somehow an experimental treatment. Well, the jury is now out. It did not work. It was a sham medical treatment described in plain terms by President Biden and Anthony Fauci as a sure-fire way to prevent yourself from both catching and spreading Covid. It did not do either, not in the least. People I know lost their jobs for refusing it.
It’s okay to be wrong about stuff, it happens to everyone.
The pattern I’m here to point out is that you’re once again taking a very reasonable set of concerns held by many Americans and painting it as though it is some wild-eyed exercise in self-gratification with no concern for the well-being of others. This is similar to how you painted anyone with concerns about taking or mandating the experimental vaccine that our lying government attempted to force on about 100 million of us through highly dubious and legally laughable pretenses. I know people who lost their jobs because of this absurd power grab attempted through OSHA and retroactively changing the contract conditions as executed under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and it’s Defense System (DFARS).
To get this thread back on track, let’s talk about where things are heading with this conflict that’s an ocean away from me and everyone I personally care about. I’m not an expert on the subject of the Ukraine War at all, but I’m old enough and studied enough to know a few things about war. I’m observing a stalemate I don’t see likely to be broken anytime soon, not without somebody making a major move.
A trickle of weapons systems, training and logistics extensions won’t be decisive. ATACMS might be decisive. If not, it will nevertheless be a huge escalation. This is the natural escalation of deploying the HIMARS platform. Up until now we’ve had the short-range six pack of missiles mounted on the HIMARS. ATACMS is a single missile package mounted on the same HMARS platform, but with significantly greater capabilities out to much, much greater distances. Well into Crimea, able to target the Kerch bridge from beyond the current capabilities of Russia to affect counter-battery fire.
The slow trickle of conflict escalation continues, which CNN tells us shall be decided upon by President Biden in the coming days. This is obviously not what will happen. Joe Biden shall no more decide whether ATACMS will be deployed to Ukraine than he will decide where to go and what to do tomorrow. Do you think I’m out-of-line as a normal American to raise a concern about this?
This article was posted a few hours ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/politics/biden-long-range-atacms-missiles-ukraine/index.html
@loppar What is it that you would like to see come out of this conflict?
How do you think it should be brought about?
Extra Credit: What do you think the USA ought to do so that @jshaving and other hard-working, honest Americans just like him can afford a modest home for his family some time in the next several years?
@EmilyQ I’m not trying to draw you into this discussion. I merely suspect that you might enjoy reading this post I made on T-Nation if you do your best to imagine my words being spoken in the cathartic voice and hypnotic cadence of our mutually beloved comedian, un-caged tiger and internet superstar, the modest Joe Pera.
6 Likes
Great fucking post
Liberals are dislocating their jaws like pythons to swallow that huge ol’ govt boot via vaxx as we speak
2 Likes
Are Ukrainian men slaughtered left and right? I have been following the war and Ukrainians are barelly assaulting. In fact US criticised Ukraine that they are not. Ukraine has been trying to focus on shelling reserves and de mining the whole summer. Their assault units are very small and they are using the best available armor for infantry like the Bradley. Their tactics are safety first. And that is not from weatern media. I will take the fog of war and claim that it is 1 to 1 in infantry loses, but Russia is losing significantly more munitions and weapons.
Every government is corrupt and jaw dropping incompetent. After all the brightest minds usually do not apply for a state job, but run business. However Zelenski with all his flaws has been doing a perfectly fine job in finding allies and acting as a president in war. While Putin has been hiding in a bunker. Not to forget the incompetence of Russias ministry ot defence and the fact that Prigozhin tried to make a coup. It should be because Russia has been very competent and non corrupt.
What is the background of the war? Russia annexed Crimea, then created a coup in Donbas. Just to remind you Russia tried to make such a coup in Montenegro and Bulgaria in 2016 as well. Tell me your story it seems you know more.
The meaningful weapon shipments are mainly munitions, drones, artilery and right now the Bradleys. However initially the Russian push from Belarus was stopped by twelve drones, few of which Bayraktars. HIMARS were the second magical weapon pushing Russians back in the second phace of the war. Now at the 3rd it has been stalling, but that is due the good defence line Russians have build during the winter. It was breached last week only in Zaporozhie.
Europe is not ruining itself. Energy prises are at pre war or cheaper. I can comment for Bulgaria as I have been following the market. Gas prices are equal to 2018 rates. Petrol is at pre war rates. Electricity is at pre war. Economically we are doing much better. What the war did was to create an anti Russian government and our GDP jumped from 60 bil to 80 bil. Sure inflation plays a role, but the main reason is kicking out Russian monopols and people serving Russian interests in governing.
Yeah, but that is not what pat was doing in his response to me.
I think I fully and adequately addressed what he was doing with his word vomit of “concerns” in the response posts following.
Btw, did you actually somehow know well in advance all of the things the rest of us found out over the course of a couple years?
Cuz that would be amazing if you did, like at a deep scientific level of understanding.
I have 2 nieces, one with a masters of science in a niche of biology, the other with her PhD that works in biotech, and neither one knew these things in advance. Certainly not like we do now.
While I appreciate your use of a rhetorical device - “framing - blatant falsehood” to try to set the intro to a narrative, I have to call out your off topic bullshit. Admittedly, this isn’t a thread to debunk the “evil Fauci and his experimental medical procedure” BS, but just a short digression. I’m just surprised that you don’t show any empathy to 1.1 million of Americans who’ve died of Covid and many of whom could have been saved has it been not for the Bret Weinsteins of the world. Banality of evil and all that.
Ukrainians are hitting Crimea two to three times a day on average every day for the last six months with domestically produced ballistic systems. ATACMS won’t move the bullshit EsCaLaTiOn dial that the Russians made up, much except provide Ukraine with additional long range munitions.
Supplying weapons to an UN member state that has been attacked? That’s completely legal according to international law and has been done in literally every international conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Hey, since Sleepy Joe was in Hanoi this week - how did the late John McCain get shot down in Vietnam? Whose SAM system shot his plane down? Maybe, and I’m talking a wild guess here, a certain country decided upon EsCaLaTiOn and sent to North Vietnam a mind boggling amount of military hardware for free that dwarfed (and still dwarfs) any US military aid package since WW2 - hundreds and hundreds of planes, thousands and thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and not the least around four to six thousands officers to man the more complex SAMs (Grandpa Tosho sent some Bulgarian AA officers as well @ins and they also shot down American planes)
The “I’m gonna attack a UN member state and claim that any military aid to said country is EsCaLaTiOn because my army sucks and works best against civilians so I have to make up rules to give me an advantage on the battlefield” is a purely Russian invention, a rhetorical device that helps those “concerned” about “EsCaLaTiOn” and “Ukrainian casualties” either out of sympathy for the current Russian regime (the imaginary Great White Savior concept) or as reflexive contrarians in the US culture war.
Not dropping often in these last months and just woke up after a nice triple injection for 3 herniated discs. Want to blame 500# DL workouts in my mid 50s but probably the couple of ackward falls of of ladders…
Putin is not just a psychopath, he is evil by any religious definition. Hopefully he dies sooner than he gets Rocket Man’s armaments and gives more technology away.
@loppar Glad to see you and family are staying safe against a wider escalation. Prayers for that to continue, along with the several other posters in the E Europe.
@twojarslave Happy to see you still feisty, still standing up for America. We have warts, barely (?) less corrupt than Russia or Ukraine - I would move zero other place.
@marine77 You ever get foundation flying? If still LEO - stay safe in that hellhole. Heading to ChiTown in 3 weeks for a convention, which I dread as much as StL.
Only read a few posts, so hello also to others I conversed with other the years…
2 Likes
There is no war…its all a money laundering scheme
So I’d never heard of our mutually beloved comedian, but now that I’ve updated myself, I will certainly read you in his voice!
I read @loppar in an Andrew Huberman voice.
I skimmed back a short way and I am inclined to agree with Loppar, FWIW. I do think there’s a great deal of doom-crying in America today, mostly misplaced. I see our government as an increasingly corrupt oligarchy, with our middle aged men - ideally a voting block in pursuit of safety and stability - completely distracted by straw men erected by equally corrupt politicians, e.g. vaccines, women’s rights, guns.
I would like to see the men whose integrity I trust focused on a demand for competent leadership rather than knee-jerk hatred of either Biden, who is completely irrelevant, or Trump, who is chaos incarnate.
But I’m just a starry-eyed dreamer.
1 Like
@EmilyQ You don’t remember his bit about the barns of Central New York?
@SkyzykS My issue wasn’t with the vaccine at the time, it was with mandates and the people who advocated for my coworkers to be let go, in addition to making them 2nd tier citizens. All under the pretense that taking the experimental vaccine would deliver a specific outcome that never materialized. And yes, I have the receipts for my position.
@loppar I find it ironic but unsurprising that your response to me was another example of your posting pattern.
Back on-topic, if ATACMS is not escalatory in nature, why did we wait so long to send it? Ukraine has been using the HIMARS platform since very early on.
My concern is less about that specific weapons platform than it is with wondering who is making that decision, why domestic propaganda wants us to believe that it is Joe Biden, and what the end goal might be.
That brings us to the questions I would like to hear an answer to, as it seems to me that this conflict has no end in sight.
It wasn’t a mandate. It was a choice. Workplaces change policy and procedure all the time. Any one of those people that lost their job made the choice that best suits them.
I know a guy who got let go too. And honestly, he was a snotty self centered jerk, and has been his whole life. This was just one more example of how. He wants all the benefits of our social contract, and none of the responsibilities.
And like many conservatives these days, he talked a lot of hard shit about freedom, independence (from a trust fund baby, of all people ) and rugged, hard men of yore as he ran his ass to an attorneys office.
Fuck all of them and their choice. They chose to lose their jobs. There are hundreds of thousands dead, possibly more, that didn’t choose to die. And a principled number who drew their line and took their stand- and ended up dead just like everybody else anyways.
Like many conservatives like to point out when the fingers are going in the other direction- "Nobody owes you shit. Not your job, not your country, and certainly not ME! ".
Right?
Call it a “choice” if you want, I was opposed to how that “choice” was presented at the time. Reality has since obviously demonstrated that every ounce of skepticism that people like @loppar openly derided was then and is now 100 percent justified.
The threat presented by Covid didn’t warrant that kind of “choice” being forced on hundreds of millions of Americans.
Not then, not ever, precisely because of the greed and corruption that is endemic to our present institutions. Now trusted by fewer people than ever, btw.
Edit: And to keep this on topic, domestic propaganda about Ukraine is suspiciously similar to our domestic propaganda we are getting about Covid, all from the same group of people.
1 Like
Ah yes, that.
Because all of these skeptics “knew”.
Contempt prior to investigation is not skepticism.
Skepticism:
Which one of those did we see?
You should include that very well written piece from a while back about not counting the victims.
Oh, wait, that was about leftists.
Of course we should remember the dead, and of course we should consider how policy leads to the outcomes we experience. That’s often quite inconvenient for leftists.
And of course we should reflect on how disastrous policies came about. Even when the experts were wrong. Dead wrong.
And of course skepticism is warranted now, as it was then. Both highlighted definitions seem perfectly applicable to vaccine skepticism and skepticism about where this conflict is headed. It is now self-evident that The Science was as wrong as wrong gets.
It is now. After the fact.
And the guy who knew all along (Fauci) was actively acting to decieve and obfuscate.
Not to derail this too much further, but my major issue was that “The Science” was not well executed scientific investigation & analysis. It was panicking fueled by fear based media and an expedient political year (as it is now). Decision makers were trying to shoehorn the solution without really understanding the problem.
I don’t mind vaccine mandates (we have it for public school) or private employers doing what they want. I mind non-scientific useless politicians and bought off principal scientists with huge financial stakes in certain outcomes being the ones making the decisions. From the outset,many scientists and medical professionals disagreed on courses of action. Any decisions made during that time amounted to pissing into the wind. And that was obvious, IMO, to anyone who actually thought through the issues logically for more than 3 minutes.
I feel similarly about military involvement in nations outside the US.
2 Likes
Apparently you didn’t get the news. They knew there was no evidence that it stopped transmission. Right from the start. Here’s a “fact check” article that explains that they didn’t know.
Yet they still forced a “choice” on by people by suggesting that the vaccine stopped transmission and also suggesting that people who were skeptical or defiant were heartless monsters.
Was Fauci aware of this?
But maybe I’ve got it all wrong, and the same people who got Covid policy dead wrong are completely right about the policy in Ukraine.
Time will tell.
1 Like
Maybe we could have compromised. You get a choice when it comes to your health, so wear or don’t wear a mask or get or don’t get the vaccine. It’s your life, your health, your business. But let’s then give women a choice when it comes to abortion because, you know, muh freedom.
But as you pointed out, all of these supposedly principled and metaphysical discussions all come down to how a political party can exploit them for their benefit. It’s why both sides say the same thing when someone points out a possible contradiction: it’s not the same thing.