Great movie!
Screening next week in NYC!
Re: Politics
6952One of my high school besties just clocked 25 years in the Air Force. Made full bird Colonel last year, leads a bioenvironmental engineering unit. Was in Sudan when Assad was gassing his own people. I'd never get a word against the administration from him in uniform. At home in his civvies away from phones and bugs and cameras and such? You can guess. Once he retires, he's taking his family to Canada.zorg wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 10:35 am US Military rank and file pretty much treats that as a job/way to better their station in life, so they're not really going to rebel. Add to that that if nothing else the US military has a technological superiority that is unmatched, and most of our boots on the ground military actions are usually just support/mopping up/tactical, and not fighting in trenches. They've been careful to avoid the quagmire optics of Vietnam when it comes to US soldiers. The US Military leadership and higher ranks (including specially trained squads kidnapping heads of state / executing civilians in Korea) are the typical sociopaths you would expect and don't really consider morality. They're are ready to kill on demand, and happily move to PMC roles to satisfy their professional curiosity and bottom line.
Re: Politics
6953Lovely for himkicker_of_elves wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 1:32 pmOne of my high school besties just clocked 25 years in the Air Force. Made full bird Colonel last year, leads a bioenvironmental engineering unit. Was in Sudan when Assad was gassing his own people. I'd never get a word against the administration from him in uniform. At home in his civvies away from phones and bugs and cameras and such? You can guess. Once he retires, he's taking his family to Canada.zorg wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 10:35 am US Military rank and file pretty much treats that as a job/way to better their station in life, so they're not really going to rebel. Add to that that if nothing else the US military has a technological superiority that is unmatched, and most of our boots on the ground military actions are usually just support/mopping up/tactical, and not fighting in trenches. They've been careful to avoid the quagmire optics of Vietnam when it comes to US soldiers. The US Military leadership and higher ranks (including specially trained squads kidnapping heads of state / executing civilians in Korea) are the typical sociopaths you would expect and don't really consider morality. They're are ready to kill on demand, and happily move to PMC roles to satisfy their professional curiosity and bottom line.
Re: Politics
6954Meanwhile in the UK some the lowest stakes things imaginable are front page.
Bet you wish you had our problems.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... suspension
Bet you wish you had our problems.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... suspension
Last edited by Gramsci on Thu Jan 15, 2026 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
clocker bob may 30, 2006 wrote:I think the possibility of interbreeding between an earthly species and an extraterrestrial species is as believable as any other explanation for the existence of George W. Bush.
Re: Politics
6955Lately my posts in this thread have been fairly coy, sarcastic, and mostly not-serious because, quite frankly, as part of the ethnic group that will ultimately end up in ovens if this administration isn't stopped, this is really too much to deal with on a daily basis. However...
Most of the country is completely blissfully unaware that we have been in a soft civil war for decades, with the "new south" using asymmetric warfare (party-sanctioned terrorism without consequences in the form of "lone gunmen," police brutality, and so on) and piece-by-piece takeovers of the union's institutions as a way around the fact that "conservative" (a stupid term since none of these people are actually conservatives, but rather anti-liberals) America's resources are so thin and inadequate that they would lose a "hot" war in months after every red state capitol would be rightfully turned into glass by megatons of discipline.
These political factions are really just a revived Confederacy using myths about the lost cause as a call to action to take the country back to an imagined past created in the minds of people dumb enough to listen to the revisionist history spoonfed through the education system (with books printed exclusively in Texas, of course) over the century following the final silence of the cannons at Appomattox. The new Confederacy knows it can't win a hot war, so it set on about taking over the union's war machine instead and turning it against us.
This is what happens when you let Confederates and Nazis off the hook with a slap on the wrist. As much as the union did not go far enough in rebuilding the south, it also did not go far enough in punishing the perpetrators. Not a single Confederate general ought to have lived. Anyone who served in the Confederate army should have been constitutionally banned from public office with capital enforcement for infractions. Glorification of Confederate institutions ought to have been rewarded with prison time. Then, there would have been no Jim Crow and no new Confederacy. Instead, we let the same people right back into the legislative houses and we sat idly while neo-Nazis roamed the streets claiming "freedom of expression." Funny how "freedom of expression" can be freely suppressed when people want to form unions or invest in public infrastructure or otherwise join left-leaning causes, but when the seeds of genuine existential threats to the American experiment start sprouting, we say "oH SoRry FrreDum Of SPeEch We CANt Do NuttTHin'." Do you really think the government would have stood idly by and let a state erect a statue of Stalin? Didn't think so.
Stalin, for all his tyranny and posturing, never actually fired a shot at the United States, but Robert E. Lee sure as shit did! Why did our government even allow these people to be glorified in the first place?! It does not compute. This is where we went wrong.
Make no mistake: these people are not conservatives in the sense of what an American conservative, who still believes in our institutions, is. They are the sort who would have been loyalists in the 18th century. They idolize a return to kings and control. More than anything, they hate The United States and everything that it's stood for since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence.
Wanna know what an American conservative looks like? Go read the Wikipedia pages on Jimmy Carter or Arne Carlson. Why are we using the term "conservative" to describe people who are anything but?! Literally doing the propaganda work for them.
I hope we all learn a collective lesson from the Civil War and World War II when it comes time to hold the perpetrators of this attempted destruction of the United States accountable. Unfortunately, I doubt they will, so the cycle will inevitably repeat in another century or so.
Months? Years. Decades. Closer to a century. It started when the "lost cause" myth started gaining acceptance and those stupid Confederate statues were being built.
Most of the country is completely blissfully unaware that we have been in a soft civil war for decades, with the "new south" using asymmetric warfare (party-sanctioned terrorism without consequences in the form of "lone gunmen," police brutality, and so on) and piece-by-piece takeovers of the union's institutions as a way around the fact that "conservative" (a stupid term since none of these people are actually conservatives, but rather anti-liberals) America's resources are so thin and inadequate that they would lose a "hot" war in months after every red state capitol would be rightfully turned into glass by megatons of discipline.
These political factions are really just a revived Confederacy using myths about the lost cause as a call to action to take the country back to an imagined past created in the minds of people dumb enough to listen to the revisionist history spoonfed through the education system (with books printed exclusively in Texas, of course) over the century following the final silence of the cannons at Appomattox. The new Confederacy knows it can't win a hot war, so it set on about taking over the union's war machine instead and turning it against us.
This is what happens when you let Confederates and Nazis off the hook with a slap on the wrist. As much as the union did not go far enough in rebuilding the south, it also did not go far enough in punishing the perpetrators. Not a single Confederate general ought to have lived. Anyone who served in the Confederate army should have been constitutionally banned from public office with capital enforcement for infractions. Glorification of Confederate institutions ought to have been rewarded with prison time. Then, there would have been no Jim Crow and no new Confederacy. Instead, we let the same people right back into the legislative houses and we sat idly while neo-Nazis roamed the streets claiming "freedom of expression." Funny how "freedom of expression" can be freely suppressed when people want to form unions or invest in public infrastructure or otherwise join left-leaning causes, but when the seeds of genuine existential threats to the American experiment start sprouting, we say "oH SoRry FrreDum Of SPeEch We CANt Do NuttTHin'." Do you really think the government would have stood idly by and let a state erect a statue of Stalin? Didn't think so.
Stalin, for all his tyranny and posturing, never actually fired a shot at the United States, but Robert E. Lee sure as shit did! Why did our government even allow these people to be glorified in the first place?! It does not compute. This is where we went wrong.
Make no mistake: these people are not conservatives in the sense of what an American conservative, who still believes in our institutions, is. They are the sort who would have been loyalists in the 18th century. They idolize a return to kings and control. More than anything, they hate The United States and everything that it's stood for since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence.
Wanna know what an American conservative looks like? Go read the Wikipedia pages on Jimmy Carter or Arne Carlson. Why are we using the term "conservative" to describe people who are anything but?! Literally doing the propaganda work for them.
I hope we all learn a collective lesson from the Civil War and World War II when it comes time to hold the perpetrators of this attempted destruction of the United States accountable. Unfortunately, I doubt they will, so the cycle will inevitably repeat in another century or so.
Total_douche, MSW, LICSW (lulz)
Re: Politics
6956Depending upon how the next couple of years play out, a US Air Force veteran might not find Canada (or any other currently-allied country) very hospitable. But, an Airman can dream.ChudFusk wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 1:58 pmLovely for himkicker_of_elves wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 1:32 pmOne of my high school besties just clocked 25 years in the Air Force. Made full bird Colonel last year, leads a bioenvironmental engineering unit. Was in Sudan when Assad was gassing his own people. I'd never get a word against the administration from him in uniform. At home in his civvies away from phones and bugs and cameras and such? You can guess. Once he retires, he's taking his family to Canada.zorg wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 10:35 am US Military rank and file pretty much treats that as a job/way to better their station in life, so they're not really going to rebel. Add to that that if nothing else the US military has a technological superiority that is unmatched, and most of our boots on the ground military actions are usually just support/mopping up/tactical, and not fighting in trenches. They've been careful to avoid the quagmire optics of Vietnam when it comes to US soldiers. The US Military leadership and higher ranks (including specially trained squads kidnapping heads of state / executing civilians in Korea) are the typical sociopaths you would expect and don't really consider morality. They're are ready to kill on demand, and happily move to PMC roles to satisfy their professional curiosity and bottom line.
"And the light, it burns your skin...in a language you don't understand."
Re: Politics
6957*STANDING OVATION*ErickC wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 2:34 pm Months? Years. Decades. Closer to a century. It started when the "lost cause" myth started gaining acceptance and those stupid Confederate statues were being built.
Most of the country is completely blissfully unaware that we have been in a soft civil war for decades, with the "new south" using asymmetric warfare (party-sanctioned terrorism without consequences in the form of "lone gunmen," police brutality, and so on) and piece-by-piece takeovers of the union's institutions as a way around the fact that "conservative" (a stupid term since none of these people are actually conservatives, but rather anti-liberals) America's resources are so thin and inadequate that they would lose a "hot" war in months after every red state capitol would be rightfully turned into glass by megatons of discipline.
These political factions are really just a revived Confederacy using myths about the lost cause as a call to action to take the country back to an imagined past created in the minds of people dumb enough to listen to the revisionist history spoonfed through the education system (with books printed exclusively in Texas, of course) over the century following the final silence of the cannons at Appomattox. The new Confederacy knows it can't win a hot war, so it set on about taking over the union's war machine instead and turning it against us.
This is what happens when you let Confederates and Nazis off the hook with a slap on the wrist. As much as the union did not go far enough in rebuilding the south, it also did not go far enough in punishing the perpetrators. Not a single Confederate general ought to have lived. Anyone who served in the Confederate army should have been constitutionally banned from public office with capital enforcement for infractions. Glorification of Confederate institutions ought to have been rewarded with prison time. Then, there would have been no Jim Crow and no new Confederacy. Instead, we let the same people right back into the legislative houses and we sat idly while neo-Nazis roamed the streets claiming "freedom of expression." Funny how "freedom of expression" can be freely suppressed when people want to form unions or invest in public infrastructure or otherwise join left-leaning causes, but when the seeds of genuine existential threats to the American experiment start sprouting, we say "oH SoRry FrreDum Of SPeEch We CANt Do NuttTHin'." Do you really think the government would have stood idly by and let a state erect a statue of Stalin? Didn't think so.
Stalin, for all his tyranny and posturing, never actually fired a shot at the United States, but Robert E. Lee sure as shit did! Why did our government even allow these people to be glorified in the first place?! It does not compute. This is where we went wrong.
Make no mistake: these people are not conservatives in the sense of what an American conservative, who still believes in our institutions, is. They are the sort who would have been loyalists in the 18th century. They idolize a return to kings and control. More than anything, they hate The United States and everything that it's stood for since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence.
Wanna know what an American conservative looks like? Go read the Wikipedia pages on Jimmy Carter or Arne Carlson. Why are we using the term "conservative" to describe people who are anything but?! Literally doing the propaganda work for them.
I hope we all learn a collective lesson from the Civil War and World War II when it comes time to hold the perpetrators of this attempted destruction of the United States accountable. Unfortunately, I doubt they will, so the cycle will inevitably repeat in another century or so.
Dave N. wrote:Most of us are here because we’re trying to keep some spark of an idea from going out.
Re: Politics
6958And here it is, ladies and gents - the hint you've all been waiting for:
Trump says the US ‘shouldn’t even have an election’ in 2026 because of all his accomplishments
Trump says the US ‘shouldn’t even have an election’ in 2026 because of all his accomplishments
Dave N. wrote:Most of us are here because we’re trying to keep some spark of an idea from going out.
Re: Politics
6959The Civil War II really kicked off on 1/6/21 at the Battle of Fentysburg.
I'd rather be throwing darts.
Re: Politics
6960ErickC wrote: Thu Jan 15, 2026 2:34 pm Lately my posts in this thread have been fairly coy, sarcastic, and mostly not-serious because, quite frankly, as part of the ethnic group that will ultimately end up in ovens if this administration isn't stopped, this is really too much to deal with on a daily basis. However...
Months? Years. Decades. Closer to a century. It started when the "lost cause" myth started gaining acceptance and those stupid Confederate statues were being built.
Most of the country is completely blissfully unaware that we have been in a soft civil war for decades, with the "new south" using asymmetric warfare (party-sanctioned terrorism without consequences in the form of "lone gunmen," police brutality, and so on) and piece-by-piece takeovers of the union's institutions as a way around the fact that "conservative" (a stupid term since none of these people are actually conservatives, but rather anti-liberals) America's resources are so thin and inadequate that they would lose a "hot" war in months after every red state capitol would be rightfully turned into glass by megatons of discipline.
These political factions are really just a revived Confederacy using myths about the lost cause as a call to action to take the country back to an imagined past created in the minds of people dumb enough to listen to the revisionist history spoonfed through the education system (with books printed exclusively in Texas, of course) over the century following the final silence of the cannons at Appomattox. The new Confederacy knows it can't win a hot war, so it set on about taking over the union's war machine instead and turning it against us.
This is what happens when you let Confederates and Nazis off the hook with a slap on the wrist. As much as the union did not go far enough in rebuilding the south, it also did not go far enough in punishing the perpetrators. Not a single Confederate general ought to have lived. Anyone who served in the Confederate army should have been constitutionally banned from public office with capital enforcement for infractions. Glorification of Confederate institutions ought to have been rewarded with prison time. Then, there would have been no Jim Crow and no new Confederacy. Instead, we let the same people right back into the legislative houses and we sat idly while neo-Nazis roamed the streets claiming "freedom of expression." Funny how "freedom of expression" can be freely suppressed when people want to form unions or invest in public infrastructure or otherwise join left-leaning causes, but when the seeds of genuine existential threats to the American experiment start sprouting, we say "oH SoRry FrreDum Of SPeEch We CANt Do NuttTHin'." Do you really think the government would have stood idly by and let a state erect a statue of Stalin? Didn't think so.
Stalin, for all his tyranny and posturing, never actually fired a shot at the United States, but Robert E. Lee sure as shit did! Why did our government even allow these people to be glorified in the first place?! It does not compute. This is where we went wrong.
Make no mistake: these people are not conservatives in the sense of what an American conservative, who still believes in our institutions, is. They are the sort who would have been loyalists in the 18th century. They idolize a return to kings and control. More than anything, they hate The United States and everything that it's stood for since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence.
Wanna know what an American conservative looks like? Go read the Wikipedia pages on Jimmy Carter or Arne Carlson. Why are we using the term "conservative" to describe people who are anything but?! Literally doing the propaganda work for them.
I hope we all learn a collective lesson from the Civil War and World War II when it comes time to hold the perpetrators of this attempted destruction of the United States accountable. Unfortunately, I doubt they will, so the cycle will inevitably repeat in another century or so.
Fantastic post!
It's tragically funny in a 'holy shit we live in a farce' way.