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Several times a month, I will be in a store aisle reaching for something and feel a hand going up the inside of my thigh. When I turn around to find myself alone with a woman, and ask her if she would prefer me to hold still so she can get a better feel for the situation, oftentimes she will act "shocked" claiming nothing had happened, it must be somebody else...

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Future? What future? It's 1912, For Fuck's Sake.

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, June 11, 2012, 07:37:00 PM

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The Good Reverend Roger

This future is a feeble thing, with no foundation to speak of.  All the important shit that's happened in the past is forgotten or twisted so far out of true that it fades from history into legend, and then into myth.  We are all taught that the constitution was written by plaster saints (or, more recently, by inhuman monsters).  More recently, we've forgotten the things that got us THEN in the same sort of trouble we're in NOW.

And I'm not just talking about bank failures, etc.  I'm also talking about badass motherfuckers like Frank Luke and Albert Ball, Alvin York and Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (Richter's great-grand-daddy, who shot some people down or something).  It is not quite a hundred years since The Great War began, and nobody knows a fucking thing about it. 

This is kind of unfortunate, because the fallout from this round of nasty little wars may very well have the same effects as the fallout from WWI had, in terms of society and economy.

It's also unfortunate simply because it's a damn shame to forget about people like that.  Sure, the war was senseless and really only happened because everyone thought they were due for a war, that there was some sort of obligation to King & country to have a war once a generation.  This may be stupid, but it doesn't reflect on the acts of the men who had to fight in horribly muddy trenches, or duel each other in "stringbags" and "crates" with shitty engines and no parachutes.

They learned then, as we have to relearn today - and I think Cain will agree with me on this - that when you put a rifle in a man's hand, you create a policy-maker.  And that man will do whatever it takes to stay alive, when you put him out on the sharp end.  This will cause him to act in ways that normal people would consider barbaric and insane.  And if the implications of those three facts taken together bother you, the proper time to address those concerns is before you call that man out of the barracks.

To be continued, in this thread.

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

LMNO


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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on June 11, 2012, 07:55:41 PM
I think I'm going to enjoy this thread.

I'm going to do about a page a day until I've spoken my piece.  However long that is.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

EK WAFFLR

This is brilliant so far, and it has the added effect of me having to brush up on my history.
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It's excellent. Maybe we've got 1912 and 1930's Germany running simultaneously this time, only with cheap shit from China and crappier food. Oh, and TV.
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Don Coyote

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on June 11, 2012, 07:37:00 PM


They learned then, as we have to relearn today - and I think Cain will agree with me on this - that when you put a rifle in a man's hand, you create a policy-maker.  And that man will do whatever it takes to stay alive, when you put him out on the sharp end.  This will cause him to act in ways that normal people would consider barbaric and insane.  And if the implications of those three facts taken together bother you, the proper time to address those concerns is before you call that man out of the barracks.


Oi Reverend, great stuff, but what is to say that it is not intentional to put people in the kind of situations that would provoke them into barbarism?

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Guru Quixote on June 11, 2012, 08:22:25 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on June 11, 2012, 07:37:00 PM


They learned then, as we have to relearn today - and I think Cain will agree with me on this - that when you put a rifle in a man's hand, you create a policy-maker.  And that man will do whatever it takes to stay alive, when you put him out on the sharp end.  This will cause him to act in ways that normal people would consider barbaric and insane.  And if the implications of those three facts taken together bother you, the proper time to address those concerns is before you call that man out of the barracks.


Oi Reverend, great stuff, but what is to say that it is not intentional to put people in the kind of situations that would provoke them into barbarism?

Of course it is.  But the American public has been trained to see it otherwise.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Juana

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Murmur

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ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

I'm googling the shit out of 1912 in the meantime....
P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Net on June 12, 2012, 01:12:45 AM
I'm googling the shit out of 1912 in the meantime....

"What", asked their father, "could possibly be wrong in the world?  It is 1910, Britain rules an empire upon which the sun never sets, and the whole world is at peace!"
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Placid Dingo

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on June 12, 2012, 02:30:41 AM
Quote from: Net on June 12, 2012, 01:12:45 AM
I'm googling the shit out of 1912 in the meantime....

"What", asked their father, "could possibly be wrong in the world?  It is 1910, Britain rules an empire upon which the sun never sets, and the whole world is at peace!"

Mary Poppins?

I didn't pick up on that line until I saw it again recently.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Placid Dingo on June 12, 2012, 06:21:50 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on June 12, 2012, 02:30:41 AM
Quote from: Net on June 12, 2012, 01:12:45 AM
I'm googling the shit out of 1912 in the meantime....

"What", asked their father, "could possibly be wrong in the world?  It is 1910, Britain rules an empire upon which the sun never sets, and the whole world is at peace!"

Mary Poppins?

I didn't pick up on that line until I saw it again recently.

From the novelization.  The song in the movie is worded a little differently, but says the same thing.

Well done.  10 points and a gold SHUT UP.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

In World War I, great pains were taken to avoid combat in or directly around cities.  Once a city was under the guns of the enemy, it typically surrendered.  This was largely done for propaganda reasons...Neither side wanted to be the monsters that actually shelled a city full of non-combatants (though it did occasionally happen).  Also, they didn't want reciprocation later on.  Some bombing took place, by zeppelin and by primitive bombers, but was largely ineffective and was more to signify that the defending nation couldn't even protect its capitol.

Contrast that with the conditions of the average soldier on the ground, who faced insufficient clothing, sporadic food supplies, and the ever-present lice, corpse-eating rats, and mud.  The mud was in fact so bad that there are verified reports of people sinking into it and drowning.  To stick your head over the top of your trench was suicide, as enemy snipers would pretty much instantly take it off.  Add gas warfare into that, and you have a near-perfect vision of hell.

The primary means of inflicting casualties was machine guns.  When an attack kicked off, "went over the top", the attacking soldiers would have to run 200-300 meters through mud, literally hundreds or thousands of decomposing bodies, and then try to get through the opponent's wire before being machine gunned.  More often than not, they would not carry the trench, and their bodies would just add to the morass of rotting corpses. 

If they happened to make it to the trenches, then they would have to fight hand-to-hand to take them.  This usually left the attacking force with so few survivors that the enemy in trenches further back could force them back to their original lines.  Most huge battles involved moving the front about 300 meters over a period of 2-3 months.

The great myth of the day was "breakthrough"...That if you just threw enough bodies at the enemy, you'd eventually poke a large enough hole in his lines that your cavalry could get behind his lines and raise hell.  What nobody took into account was that there simply weren't enough bodies to throw, and that with modern weaponry, even if you did manage a breakthrough, the cavalry would be killed off instantly by just a few troops.  This seems obvious to us now, and was apparently obvious to the troops in the trenches, but both sides were blind, led by generals who refused to stop fighting the Napoleonic wars.

It's easy to laugh at them, until you look at what we ourselves do.  Take the then-impossible concept of breakthrough (which never happened, even at the end of the war), and instead say "containment" or "pacification".  Or, for that matter, nation-building...Nonsense words that translate out to "car load lots of dead soldiers & civilians".  Alphonse Carr was right.

To be continued in this thread.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.