I’ve got class war, which is a real doozy.
Yooo same. Why the fuck don’t these people just fuck off and relax? I can’t imagine having that much money and still feeling like I have to go to work.
Because at some point after the first few million you turn into a dragon that must hoard wealth and the people that generate that wealth become a cost to minimize.
Barf, after my first few million they better be looking all over for me cause ima be peaced out to a 100 year vacation.
Old and busted: class war
New hotness: culture war
The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.
I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.
Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.
That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.
Of course we can’t acknowledge it, because then we can’t make the same “mistake” again and people will start questioning real causus belli like saddams WMDs which we’ll find any day now.
Vietnam got a rough fucking deal in the 1900s. Shortly after the US left, the Cambodians under Pol Pot invaded, and they were brutal
And Vietnam ended up kicking Pol Pot off which is impossible to argue as anything but a win for humanity.
Yeah they deserve some sort of award for that.
China also invaded.
Twice, the buggers
I’m the War on Christmas guy, and I’m getting my ass handed to me every single year.
I’m the war on drugs guy and I… what was I talking about? Man, those brownies were strong! *strolls off*
i’m the war on advent guy. you don’t know how nice you have it
My sheet says “rome”
Uh oh
“So, what’s Rome’s history like?”
“It’s all war.”
Republic or Empire?
Western.
Not gonna lie my eyes glaze over a bit at the byzantium complexity
i got the soviet-afghan war and wow did that recontextualize a lot of things about the modern world
Such as?
bear in mind i was 10 during 9/11 so a lot of it was just upending things i had taken for granted. but like, how the US was pretty much allied with the taliban throughout the 80s, giving them training and weapons to fight against the soviet-friendly progressive, secular government of afghanistan.
The Soviet-friendly Afghan government wasn’t a) progressive and b) wasn’t secular. The government is explicitly Marxist-Leninist who oppressed and forced people to drop their religion as part of state atheism.
The progressivism and secularism you refer to was during the kingdom era before being overthrown by the communist Afghan military. The more liberal attitude is only contained in a bubble in the capital city of Kabul. The rest of 80% of Afghans are still religious conservatives living rural and in poverty. An Afghan female former politician lamented not seeing this because she grew up in liberal Kabul.
Also more importantly, it’s a misconception that the US helped the Taliban. The mujahideen was composed of various factions, some are secular, some are conservative, while some are more Islamists. But, the ultraconservative elements only came later in more definite form under the Taliban, which defeated both the secular and conservative forces.
forced people to drop their religion as part of state atheism.
Sounds like
progressivism and secularism
To me
Forcing someone to change their beliefs is considered progressivism and secularism? I did not get the memo that progressives are authoritarians. What were the Afghans resisting the Soviets for then?
Getting rid of religion would be a major leap forward for humanity.
As much as I want religion to be gone, you can’t force people to change their beliefs overnight. We frown upon forced conversion by one religion on another; why can’t atheist apply the same standard to theists? That was the mistake of communist Afghans and it only led to a severe backlash of inducing the mostly conservative Afghans to become ultra-consenservative Islamists. Every reaction has an opposite but equal reaction. Social changes has to be organic.
Same as always
People that make those decisions want to continue to make those decisions
Charlie Wilson’s War is a pretty great movie about that, starring Tom Hanks, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Aaron Sorkin, although it’s more of a political satire and plays it fast and loose with the historical details.
Due to a typo, I ended up with “The Cod War”
https://www.icelandreview.com/travel/the-cod-wars-in-iceland/
Pretty sure they made a video game series about that.
Hell yeah, I got the Dominion War. Time for another DS9 rewatch.
I participated in the war on drugs…
On the winning side, I imagine.
By winning, you meantaking copious amounts of drugs?
Buying, selling, using, abusing, growing, extracting, synthesizing, losing, hiding, educating, discarding, withdrawing, etc.
I think so, it’s all a haze.
All I got was Star Wars
I got the second Punic war, but I think that’s just a freebie. I also spent a lot learning about the Falkland’s war just to annoy Argentinians online.
I’m glad I missed this.
btw, did you know that the Australian government killed almost 1000 Emus in the Great Emu War and still lost?
The military used over 10,000 rounds of ammunition. that would mean they used around 10 rounds per Emu.
They also used actual military tactics to fight the Emus, like mapping their routes and setting up ambushes. In one of these, they managed to get close to a flock of about a thousand emus and attacked them with machine guns only allowing the escape of… lemme check… about a thousand emus.
I typically have a 60% accuracy in Helldivers 2 and I’m fighting swarms of giant bugs. I think I’ll forgive the Australians for 10 rounds per bird, especially since winging an emu probably doesn’t stop it.
Compared to the amount of bullets expended per casualty in any modern war that is actually very good. The US probably fired thousands of bullets for each insurgent killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
WWIII nut here.
Get yourself a Red Cross emergency kit, a lot of water jugs, and ramen. You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.
You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.
yes, you too can live out the remainder of your miserable days scrambling for rat meat in the irradiated future.
of course, the desire to live, to survive, overcomes a lot, but ‘want to live’ I think is stretching it a bit.
I’ve worked briefly with civil defense stuff and got to visit and learn a whole bunch about bunkers. That cemented my “take out the long chair, open my best bottle, put on some shades, and enjoy the brief light show” approach to a hypothetical nuclear alert.
How long should the long chair be?
I suspect what they’re getting at is: there are a lot of scenarios other than “all out exchange between major powers”, and when the fallout starts floating, you can either just hang out at home (and die of cancer in a year or two), or shelter in a basement for a week (and emerge to a troubled but liveable world.)
shelter in a basement for a week (and emerge to a troubled but liveable world.)
give this a read sometime. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748264/nuclear-war-by-annie-jacobsen/
I don’t think anyone’s going to hold up for a week then find the world very livable. even the areas not eradicated by direct strikes will suffer terribly from the food shortages and collapsing societies.
I’m familiar with the extinction event scenarios, and agree that in some cases one may not find the world worth living in. I recommend Krepinevich’s “7 Deadly Scenarios”, a couple of those involve nuclear attacks. The sitations are comparable to the recent Covid pandemic: millions of people die, the world is subsequently scarred, but life goes on for most people. A bit of planning can make things less horrible and a lot of it overlaps with natural disaster.
I think you may misunderstand. <edit or I’m misreading your replies>
Jacob’s book covers an all in exchange. everyone goes max. very little in the northern hemisphere would survive. a bit of planning, all the planning in the world - neither will save you when each side is maximizing the amount of fallout with ground strikes with megaton weapons.
the ‘lucky’ folk in the southern hemisphere will just have to wait until the after effects catch up to them.
Jacob’s scenario is megadeaths to gigadeaths - literally a billion dead directly (flash/blast/etc) and multiple billions dead shortly after. Krepinevich’s scenario is a few terrorists with tactical weapons.
these are wildly different things.
<edit I don’t think you’re meaning to downplay the seriousness of any kind of major nuclear exchange, but just underestimating how seriously civilization ending it is>
Yeah, I suspect we basically agree on things. I grew up with Threads and The Day After, and later I read up on nuclear winter and EMPs so I realize that human extinction is a very real possibility.
But apart from that, the question is: how to prepare for the “less than extinction” scenarios, the sort of thing that Krepinevich and ready.gov discuss.
Mine just says WW15 and has a picture of a green tiger in space
Is there also a buff blonde dude with a sword in a fur loincloth?
I bet we’re all space tigers by then
The War of the Tiger Kings.
Goddammit. I guess I’ll go get my mullet wig.
The seven years war is fantastic and is utterly critical to understanding the US Revolution as well as understanding how the Iroquois pulled a power move on the other first nations that worked, but later led to the current situation with first nations in North America.
On the revolution: Namely that corruption was so endemic in the colonies that when the UK actually started to do something about it the revolution happened albeit with a lot of pushing from the upper crust of the colonies.
Fun couterfactual to consider: how many MPs would “the colonies” have needed to blunt popular support for the revolution?
Probably can’t go very high, but maybe one per charter? If not that high (Scotland only had 45, I think), then what would have been enough “representation” to preclude the American elites from making a compelling case, or what paths to personal status would have tempted enough of them that there wouldn’t have been a critical mass of will and resources?
The British colonized the Americas, particularly North America, very differently than Spain and France did, but didn’t seem to think of the purpose or integration of colonies as any different.
The answer would probably be “none”.
For example, the factors that led the average member of “sons of liberty” in New York after the initial elite only membership was worried about the elites owning massive tracks of land and driving up the cost of land for them.
The UK trying to section off an Indian reserve as a buffer state after the French and Indian War was 100% a cause of the Revolution. Also the UK trying to step in and say “no, you are not allowed to purchase all of Kentucky from one random person.”
Funny how that’s never talked about in K-12 history. Or even undergrad. It’s all about those nasty taxes (after spending how much on troops to kill Indians who kinda had every reason to be pissed off?)
Yes, it is more complex than that.
- It was that the UK was saying the Ohio valley, which the entire NA part of the war was over was off limits to the colonists.
However, the UK could not have won the war when they did had those native groups not changed sides to ally with them. Given the dire state of the UK finances, its questionable how much longer they could have fought.
That land would also not have been needed had the elite of the colonies not taken ridiculous amounts of land for themselves.
- At least particularly to Pennsylvania, in the middle of the war; the Iroquois interfered with a treaty that would have seen the colony recognize the land held by the Delaware tribe in the Ohio river valley as Delaware tribe land. They(the Iroquois) did so because they wanted to be the only tribe to make deals with the English and would force the other native groups to work through them. This strategy is also why the Delaware tribe had been relocated by the Iroquois to the Ohio valley in the first place.
TIL:
It is now believed that the Ottoman military was able to maintain rough parity with its rivals until the 1760s, falling behind as a consequence of a long period of peace on its western front between 1740 and 1768, when the Ottomans missed out on the advances associated with the Seven Years’ War.[66]
I got the Emu War
Don’t let that obsession drag you down under.
For reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
WWI was objectively the most world changing and sets the stage for the entire modern era, if you squint WWII was just the Extended Edition of WWI all that being said WWIII was still my favorite.
« Ce n’est pas une paix, c’est un armistice de vingt ans » — Ferdinand Foch about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
Often translated as “This isn’t a peace treaty, it’s an armistice for twenty years.” but some might prefer “This is no peace, it’s a twenty-year ceasefire.”
