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I have a co-worker who fought in Vietnam. I showed him the thing about the Pentagon straight up admitting that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was bullshit, but he refused to accept it. Still feels that we had to fight that war because if we had allowed the communists to win, it would have meant that communism would have taken over the world ... even though we actually did lose that war.
The "domino theory" of communism never played out the way they said it would. Just a waste of blood and treasure.
My daughter sent me a TikTok about the government using counterintelligence techniques against left wing groups. I sent her the wikipedia page on Cointellpro with the comment “Sadly this is not new”
Nothing about this is new. The authoritarianism, the concentration camps, the dispossessions, the witch-hunt of immigrants and people with a darker skin, the fearmongering, the robber baron oligarchs. We’ve all been here before. And not just once.
The truly astonishing cultural trait is that Americans keep on living in lalaland and pretend it isn’t happening, it never happened, and it COULD never happen cuz yada yada the Constitution and We The People and the second amendment.
Americans are one shortsighted bunch willing to swallow any and all propaganda.
I think what made COINTELPRO stand out was how weird it was (experiments with LSD, etc.)
ETA: Never mind, I think I'm getting that confused with MKUltra.
Well, that's news.
When you’re watching adverts and a snippet of a tv show interrupts you.
My favorite weird thing about American culture is that it is so aggressive. Aggressive food (PopTarts, Big Gulps, etc), aggressive games (football), aggressive national anthem (literally about war), and so on. We are an oddly aggressive people.
Yea but also casual. Like we in our jeans and baseball caps leaning on a wall ready to fuck shut up at a moments notice lol.
Pop tarts are aggressive..?
Regarding the national anthem, you should look up a translation of the French national anthem. And it probably isn't the most metal/aggressive national anthem out there, since it's one of the very few I even know.
Edit: I couldn't help but add this snippet
Grab your weapons, citizens! Form your battalions! Let us march! Let us march! May impure blood Water our fields!
Full lyric translation: https://www.thoughtco.com/la-marseillaise-frances-national-anthem-4080565
I once tasted a real proper tart. Served at the wake of a late boss at a golf club house. English tea times sometimes include simple jam tarts. Both envoke tranquil and enjoyability. All my experiences with the Pop Tart were under rush, duress, haste, a sugar-to-blood delivery system. One can tell easy when we (USA) aggravate the food. Like turning doughnuts into donuts. Or spell cheese with a 'z'.
I believe all anthema are about war. Mexico's about the need to fight agains a foreign enemy invasion...
Careful, that kind of talk may get you beaten up.
Shot, man, shot.
They have guns up the wazoo to ensure no tyrant will ever rule them, and a tyrant rules them.
Yeah Bubba and his gun ain’t doing shit to watchdog the government. In fact I’m quite certain that the government is the only thing keeping Bubba from killing ME with his gun and moving into my house because he feels like it.
"don't tread on me" in the streets, "please step on me daddy trump" in the sheets
And the people yelling “come and take it” while waving “don’t tread on me” flags voted the tyrants in.
I guess it wasn't a threat after all and they were just shouting out their kink
A coward with a gun is still a coward.
There's a DLC for Assassin's Creed III called The Tyranny of King Washington, exploring an alternate reality with a corrupt president. Not so wild a theory now
I encourage you to read up on prior presidents if you think Trump is some kind of anomaly.
Theoretically that's what the 2A guns are meant to be for...
But doesn't really work out that way when the adversary is your own Government, who has access to very arguably the best armed police force and military in the world, and is more than willing to turn those on you.
The reason it doesn't work out that way is because we aren't organized. Yeah, sure, a lot of Americans are armed, but they're armed and alone. The intention behind the second amendment was that groups of citizens would form their own local militias and effectively be a distributed standing army ready to defend their liberty at a moment's notice, but the pervasive culture of individualism has twisted the second amendment into something else.
You're mistaken. There are armed militias. And they all support Trump.
Yeah, but they hunt down and destroy militia groups when we try to do that.
At least any of the ones that aren't Nazis. In the past they hunted those down too, but we let the foxes into the hen house so now they get to stay.
The foxes were already in the henhouse, because they were the ones who built the henhouse in the first place.
Theoretically the 2A is for a big well organised militia to oppose outside powers and to ensure the US doesn't need a big standing army
Yes, but most people ignore that part of the amendment.
I'll just leave these here, in order or relevance:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvxbZGjlv4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wNtxtuQxUz8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QbXTDuwSVkk
I played the storyline for Qube recently (10th Anniversary edition), and there was a hook that was supposed to be sad, but instead hit me as horribly American, plus a dash of victim blaming.
::: spoiler Spoiler "So, I want you to know, I’m only reading this because you wrote it to yourself.
"It was three PM on a Sunday. You were upstairs at home. A teenage boy broke into your house. He thought you were away on vacation. You went downstairs with your gun. You shot him in your living room. Only he wasn’t trying to rob you. He was passing by and saw a fire in your kitchen. He broke in to try and put it out. He was young and stupid and probably should have thought of a better solution. But you assumed the worst. You assumed the very worst and you shot him. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He died seven years later, alone, at night, in Penrose-St. Francis Hospital…"
You mean like that Japanese kid that knocked on the wrong door and got shot? The guy who shot him was acquitted.
That was infuriating the whole way through. I don’t exactly want to recommend reading further, because it’s just a depressing story all around, but this was well written and provided the piece of information I was shamefully burning with curiosity about
Press releases before things are declassified: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo
The declassified documents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCT80HJWQ2A