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[Rowanas]

Reelya, military hardware has a pretty long lifespan. The Challenger 2 is expected to have a 30 year lifespan, and that's potentially the most well armed tank in the world from the grandfathers of tanks, in one of the world's leading economies (for a few more months at least).  40 year old jets are still pretty reasonable.

[Reelya]

The main point was that they don't have the capacity for projection. There's really no evidence that they're gearing up for a land invasion of their nearest neighbors, much less attacking someone like America.

Sure, they'll put up a stiff fight if their land is invaded, but nothing else. That's why it's asymmetric. Those Iranian F14 fighters can fly around Iran. USA fighters can fly over any nation on Earth. That's why it's preposterous to claim that when Iran says that you can have peace or the "mother of all wars" that they're threatening you.

[Trekkin]

Of course it's preposterous. Everyone knows it's preposterous. Trump is just enamored of stupid pandering chest-thumping because Putin-senpai does it.

[hector13]

Nah he does it 'cause he's thinking like a businessman.

He once called Alex Salmond, Scottish First Minister at the time, Mad Alex, the man who would destroy Scotland, 'cause Salmond was alright with the wind farm that would've been off the coast of Trump's Aberdeen golf course, insisting that in demanding the wind farm not be built he was trying to save Scotland and honour his mum.

[Hanslanda]

I got a meme somewhere for this. Can't get it right now but the gist was, "Of course Iran wants a fight, look how close they put their country to nearly 200 of our military bases!"

[Max™]

To go back a bit: isn't that more like "sit on your ass on the ground like a punk bitch before killing someone in retaliation" than "stand your ground" really?

Oh, and aiming thrown objects almost definitely resulted in our taking over the world, it's one of the few things where we are physically at the top of the animal kingdom: pegging shit with sharp rocks and sticks then following them until they die. A large chunk of your visual processing abilities comes from the success of our ancestors at tracing lines between a target and something we're throwing at them.

[Maximum Spin]

If a teenager in a conversation with adults claimed that people should be shot as vigilante punishment for misdemeanors

I'm older than you and I don't care what people think about my opinions.

I also didn't claim that but that's beside the point.

[Trekkin]

I don't care what people think about my opinions.

Fair to ask why you're on a forum, then, instead of just writing your manifesto somewhere.

[Maximum Spin]

Fair to ask why you're on a forum, then, instead of just writing your manifesto somewhere.

Beeeeecause I enjoy social interaction as an end in itself? Like a normal person? I also don't want to write a manifesto because... the only purpose of that would be to communicate my opinions to others... which I don't care to do specifically, except in the context of normal social interactions...

[Rolan7]

Fair to ask why you're on a forum, then, instead of just writing your manifesto somewhere.

There are plenty of reasons to participate on a forum besides attacking unpopular posts with low-effort one-liners in a desperate bid for "popularity".

You can also white-knight said posts!  Or actually contribute, but who has time for that?

[Trekkin]

Fair to ask why you're on a forum, then, instead of just writing your manifesto somewhere.

There are plenty of reasons to participate on a forum besides attacking unpopular posts with low-effort one-liners in a desperate bid for "popularity".

You can also white-knight said posts!  Or actually contribute, but who has time for that?

Actually, that was my attempt to elicit a contribution, at least, as it's a slow news day and there's nothing more urgent to discuss. We don't hear from people like Maximum Spin often, and so as a bloc they tend to get ignored politically and culturally until journalists go on Trump voter safaris (or their pre-Trump equivalent) and are shocked for various silly reasons -- and, given their propensity to live in relatively sparsely populated areas, they're disproportionately effective when and if they decide to vote, so it's useful to understand them.

[Maximum Spin]

I think technically I should be offended. I do live in the forest but I'm not part of that bloc, really. I'm an educated, mid-twenties atheist in the sciences, and I voted for Aleppo, although I do think it was ultimately necessary for the continuation of American democracy (irrespective of whether it was good or bad in and of itself) that Trump beat Hillary. I also think that the second amendment is just as important a part of the Bill of Rights as the first (and the third, fourth, fifth...), and that the right to self-defense is too important to be compromised by opening it up to questioning about "was this really the best response you had", because you shouldn't have to ask yourself that if you're being mugged. The questions and loopholes you add to deal with "people who got shoved" don't just go away in an actually life-threatening scenario.

[Dunamisdeos]

As someone who grew up in an area where you will absolutely die/be hospitalized if you mess with the wrong person's money or pride, I feel compelled to speak up about this edgy suburban armchair vigilantism bullshit thing. Just to clarify, I lived in a place where I could make a report to the cops about say, fatal assault, or rape, or drug-related violence, and they would outright warn me that if they followed through they could not protect me or my family from that kind of retribution from that person afterwards, so do I REALLY want to talk to them or no.

A society where someone can kill another outside the judicial system results in people killing each other for their own reasons and justifying it afterwards, plain and simple. This results is a community where the guy with the most talent at violence rules utterly. The idea that these arguments are always accompanied by a lot of crowing about legality shows that there is a clear understanding that the law would NOT back the shooter up and that's why they shot them outside of the judicial process. If the law was on your side, you wouldn't have needed to shoot them, and if morality was a concern they wouldn't be trying to use it to defend the deliberate killing of an unarmed man. You wanted to kill someone, so you found an excuse, and that makes you a person who kills another solely to satisfy your self no matter what obfuscating bullshit you cower behind in your abject personal failure as a man or woman. You don't have the worth to tell someone why you actually did it, and you don't even have the minute strength it takes to look at yourself and admit it. People like that should not be protected under law from their actions.

That's all.

Spoiler: a quick aside (edit) (click to show/hide)

I'm not against anyone's right to defend themselves or bear arms etc, I'm just saying my piece based on my experience. I'm apologetically not interested in discussing it further. I hope you consider it a contribution.

[Trekkin]

-snip-

Oh, I wasn't calling you a Trump voter; there isn't even really a name for your bloc yet, I suspect partly because most of its members detest each other and because it's not nearly as big as it will be. It tends to coincide geographically with Trump country from a coastal point of view, but by "people like you" I was actually referring to the combination of physical isolation (alone on a hill in a swamp, in your case) and considerable confidence in the correctness of their own opinions to the point where their primary form of social interaction is telling other people how they're wrong on the Internet. Some form of experience in computer science is common but not at all universal.

[Reelya]

In that regard I'd be interested in how that fits with the theory that the new great political divide is between cosmopolitan/internationalists and localist/nationalists, shifting away from the old labor/capital divide. The new fault lines align partly with the old left/right divisions, but have new "fault lines", meaning some groups now find themselves on a side of the line with various groups they're not used to collaborating with. This can explain quite a bit.

Maximum Spin, how do you feel about the term multiculturalism, and do you agree it weakens the social fabric?