I would like to point to the sheer number of times that a ‘bunch of hillbillies with guns’ trounced the fuck out of our military just through sheer endurance, stealth, and decentralization.

Two ideas; One, never fight a land war in Asia. Similarly, never fight a land war in America. Second, the American military is infamously bad at asymmetrical warfare and vulnerable to sabotage.

Couple that with an entire administration that has decided to make loyalty to the Führer the most important job qualification, and a shit ton of pissed off competent vets who still know how to fly a fighter jet or drive a tank, it would probably be more evenly matched than most Americans think.

Granted, a civil war in the US will, in no scenario, end with us successfully deposing the regime unless we can get a pretty big chunk of the current active armed forces on our side.

Cult upbringing aside, I had a good and loving family. They were genuinely doing the best with what they knew. I’ll never fault them for that.

All my real damage came from being an adult, in a world that was radically more dangerous and difficult than my sheltered upbringing prepared me for. And that damage is cumulative. We just gather more of it as we survive more shit through the decades.

Hey, I’m trying! 🥲

Literally this. I was never in the military, and I’m glad they literally can’t draft me unless they lower a lot of requirements really fast. But 24-hour time is just so much more sensible. There’s no “AM or PM?” follow-up question, no guesswork. It just makes sense.

If they made metric time, I’d adopt that shit in a heartbeat.

Depression and an unfortunate amount of knowledge on cults.

Ah, an American classic. Sabotage a good thing, and then use an isolated incident to instill a hundred years worth of fear.

Consider:

You want to play a prank on your friend. She’s about to give a tremendously important piano recital in front of a tremendous crowd. It’s a big deal, but unfortunately, you are an asshole and “It’s just a prank, bro.” You put a woopie-cushion filled with gravy under the seat of maybe a third of the chairs in the auditorium. But these aren’t ordinary woopie-cushions. You replaced the actual seat cushions, disguising them so seamlessly that the only way to find them is to sit down on them. These folding chairs get stacked and put away, and you congratulate yourself, knowing that you did a good job. No one will ever find all the woopie cushions.

Your friend hears about your prank, and in outrage, she cancels the performance and moves it to a venue that doesn’t have landmines. But you have no idea where you planted the landmines anymore. You can take a wild guess, but the point was for them to be an undetectable explosive hazard. And undetectable they remain. A year later, the gravy has rotted and congealed. The few woopie cushions that do go off release a toxic biohazard that gets people seriously sick when they detonate.

You’ve made this music venue completely uninhabitable. They have to close for years to clear the toxic sludge out of every corner of the chair storage area. It’s long and expensive. Ten years later, someone finds a woopie cushion that they missed, and ends up in the hospital with a lung infection.

TL;DR. This would be like planting a woopie cushion under a bunch of folding chairs at a giant music venue. Mines are very hard to find and dangerous to everyone, it’s why they shouldn’t be used.

I don’t get why people are downvoting you when you’re right.

But for being that close to a bomb blast, I’d be worried about things like pain and pain management, particularly migraine disorders and memory loss from the colossal concussion he definitely had.

I’m fairly sure that most Popes (and people who have the Vatican on their passports) generally maintain dual citizenship.

This was brilliantly and very humorously explained.

So is the US. It’s terrifying what propaganda will do to a population.

One day, we’re going to outgrow ourselves. One day, we’re going to set aside our stupid petty squabbles, and we’re going to hope for something more.

I want to see us reach the stars, because I think one day we’ll be able to handle what the galaxy throws at us.

We need more people like this on the planet.

Competent Evil hates Incompetent Evil. Just don’t forget, they’re all still Evil.

Worst crash I ever had on a bike was during a commute to work. It was winter and it was dark in the morning, and the bridge over the river had gotten icy. I hit my brake and slid, went straight into the retaining wall on the embankment, headfirst over my handlebars. I’m fucking lucky I was wearing my helmet.

Ended up putting a decorative bandage over the scuff on the helmet shell where I would have split my head open. It looked gnarly. I got a new helmet first thing as soon as I got my next paycheck. Kept it on a shelf for a while.

I’ve been hit by cars before on my bicycle. Six times.

You know what it was, every single time? The driver was turning right, and looking for oncoming traffic from the left. I tried to cross, and didn’t know they hadn’t seen me. Ran over my front tire, or just knocked me over.

I’m damn lucky those were all extremely slow speed collisions and they stopped as soon as they heard me scream. But honestly? Fuck cars. I shouldn’t have been forced to cross at the sidewalk to begin with. And they should have been looking for pedestrians anyway.

Flag football was meant to replace tackle football. Rather than stopping the ball being based on takedowns, the players wear a belt with flags on their hips. If an opposing player yanks a flag off the belt, that’s where the stop is counted.

Oh, but nooooo, it’s not manly and powerful and warrior-like enough. So it never really got popular outside of high school gym class.

He’s pure evil. And anyone who likes him does so because they’re evil too. Fuck anyone who makes excuses for this psychopath.

Please understand, I’m trying to interact in good faith here.