Make Pyongyang Glass Again: On Reddit, Trump superfans cheer for a nuclear strike on N. Korea

@numerobis

I teach mostly college-age officer candidates, and more occasionally senior officers doing graduate work. I used to do more of the latter but now it’s mostly the undergraduates.

Yeah, I think unfortunately your analysis North Korea not needing actually to win holds a lot of water. I mean “unfortunately” in that a lot of people could die.

The military people I know aren’t really hard-line conservatives. There’s some “know-nothing” Trump supporters who honestly feel that veterans were screwed over by mainstream politicians and Trump will somehow solve that (there are hard-line explicit racists also). Others seem more apathetic about politics. Officers probably lean more to the left.

Trump University was particularly bad. No projects, exams, or homework assignments, and in the end you get a worthless diploma. They targeted vulnerable people with access to credit lines, and it seems like at least a few of the students thought they were legitimately going to college.

@Arctic

ordinary conscripts are just taught karate

Not taekwondo or hapkido? You’d think, given how nationalist they are, they wouldn’t want Japanese martial arts in their military…

Swiss may be “neutral”, but good luck winning any battle to take them over.

It’s going to be an uphill battle for any invader.

Well. Somebody has floated a Trump chicken near the White House.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGzz8CmXoAAnHvZ.jpg

@ axe & arctic

Not taekwondo or hapkido?

There are two main strands to NK military martial arts. There’s like a ‘display team’ style that’s copied from the Chinese PLA routines for public shows. That’s lots of Wushu spectacular visual stuff. Does look amazing.

But, according to defectors, the standard military training is TKD.

(The SK forces are now moving to Krav. But that may be due to some weird funding arrangement with the US and Israel)

(Checks Wikipedia)

OK, I had this impression that karate was super popular in Korea. I seem to have been misinformed.

I’ve read several books about North Korea. These books were mainly concerned with two subjects: 1.) Defectors; and 2.) Daily life for the average North Korean. However, the books also provided an outline of Korean history and culture. According to what I read, Koreans consider both north and south to be, ethnically and culturally, one and the same…since it had been foreign powers who divvied up the two nations, post Korean War.

So, if NK attacks SK, this would almost be like turning its weapons on itself. At least, that’s how I understand it. It would, in a way, be tantamount to civil war. This doesn’t mean it can’t happen – look at all the infighting throughout history – but I hope there would be a strong hesitancy towards attacking, say, Seoul.

@ dormousing_it

but I hope there would be a strong hesitancy towards attacking, say, Seoul.

Allied bombing killed more French civilians during the Normandy landings than the Luftwaffe killed British civilians during the Blitz.

It’s amazing what you can rationalise if you believe it’s a ‘liberation’.

I wish I could dump that Reddit trash in Pyongyang and see how long the scum lasts…

@Pavlovs House
That fits with the parts of the nuclear US Navy I know. Among other areas, Kitsap County in Washington went heavily for Clinton – sure, contractors and Naval Yard workers made that not quite a landslide, but members of a nuke wardroom I’m well-acquainted with were all talks about how dangerous and wrong Trump was about their profession before the election. Many were liberal to begin with and didn’t need the nuke issue to sway them, at that.

I feel like I have to bring up it is very important in the military to not allow itself to be aligned with political parties or figures, so members who follow the required standard of professionalism won’t say a peep about their political views while in uniform or while using their rank/military status with their name. Their silence hand is a bit forced, in other words. That’s also why I won’t identify the ship or what my relationship to it is.

…finally, I do want to add that I heard the transgender sensitivity training the right hates so much went over incredibly well with the sailors on that base.

suggesting that John McCain’s failure to vote to blow up Obamacare may be a result of his brain tumor

Of course it was due to his brain tumor. The brain tumor means he isn’t running again, and not running again means he’s perfectly situated to take the fall for what numerous Republican senators wanted to do but were too chickenshit to actually do (namely, vote no).

What the hell is wrong with these people? We are now living under the threat of nuclear war (again) and they think it’s great?!?!?!

@Lurker

“I feel like I have to bring up it is very important in the military to not allow itself to be aligned with political parties or figures, so members who follow the required standard of professionalism won’t say a peep about their political views while in uniform or while using their rank/military status with their name. Their silence hand is a bit forced, in other words.”

This.

It’s a good point and deserves to be recognized. In the military-academic world there is, in a sense, an outlet in terms of studying issues in which the weight of scholarly consensus on some issue is precisely against what Trump and his supporters claim. Officers and officer-candidates just present their conclusions as scholars –therefore staying within the bounds of law and regulation — but letting the audience draw what conclusions they will.

“That’s also why I won’t identify the ship or what my relationship to it is.”

I get exactly what you mean about anonymity (or, to be literal, pseudonymity?) when we talk about this kind of stuff here on WHTM.
I am deliberately vague about the different military educational institutions where I teach and have taught for similar reasons. (Most of the attendees are Army, but they’re all actually technically multi-service). I’m not active duty and therefore the legal limitations differ, but it’s still good to be circumspect.

@Diego Duarte

Being a foreigner it baffles me how poorly received any comment about the US military usually is. Even liberals glorify military service and jingoism as if the institution had done anything positive after WWII.

It’s a huge problem with U.S. culture, and until we excise it, root and branch, we’re gonna have an ongoing fascist problem. Reason being, military jingoism is one of the basic building blocks of fascism, and when even the allegedly left side of the aisle considers it sacrosanct, the U.S. is gonna remain a protofascist or fascist state.

@numerobis

“So roughly 20% officers.”

Yeah, I think the proportion is probably roughly not that much different even with the changes over the past five years.

“They can vote for whoever they want and not make a huge difference in the overall force’s voting preference.”

Even in just reading journalistic type stuff on this casually while thinking about this over the afternoon, I get the impression that in contemporary media discussion of “military voting” there is a kind of assumption that military means “active duty military” — without specifying that. That’s why I really wonder if there would be any difference between active and reserve component voting patterns.

And, yeah, to me, really interesting numbers about military voting patterns Trump v. Clinton 2016 — as well as by party in House and Senate races — would be, as I said, broken down by service, active or reserve component, ethnicity, region, gender, age and length of service.

I don’t dare guess how the numbers would look. I have my impression, and I might want to guess, but I know from research in this kind of thing my impression might be very ill-founded.

“Good catch on enlisted *men*. Gah.”

Just to clarify, I wasn’t pointing to that as a “call out” against you or anything like that.

Generally, it was just that the terminology got me thinking, because what prompted me initially on that is how the performance of masculinity by cis-gender men in the U.S. Army doesn’t work out the way that Trump supporters like, for example, WHTM favorites like RooshV and Heartiste wish and think. In their twisted mental world, physically strong, virile, assertive masculinity coincides exclusively with their brand of misogyny. In other words, any feminist male is a weak and wimpy beta cuck mangina. Any strong, brave, powerful male must believe what they do. Yet THEY themselves often don’t live the very life that they claim their version of masculinity should mandate.

So I love to throw in their faces: why am I a feminist and jump out of C-130’s WHEN THEY DON’T? I thought they were the big tough guys.

(Disclosure: Not saying that I’m on jump status right now in my current USAR assignment but, hey, Airborne All the Way — I still got my DA Form 1307 (Individual Jump Record) and, well, let’s just say I ain’t no “five-jump-chump”, as the saying goes.

But I DO have a 12-mile ruck march with a 40-lb ruck this Monday morning.

What did Matt Forney do? What did Roosh do?

Oh yeah, and I DO “even lift”, Rooshie

(probably more than him.)

The problem with political pro-military pandering is that not only does it heavily enable jingo-ism — it also fundamentally undermines having critical and informed discussions in public life about the role of armed force.

For example, one used to be able to say “I’m against the war.”

Now both left and right react with vitriol if you say “I’m against the war” UNLESS you add the obligatory “I’m against the war BUT I support the TROOOOOOPS.”

What did the military do positive after World War II?

I like the story William Doyle tells in American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 ( New York: Doubleday, 2001) about the regular Army units that were called in to restore order and put down the riot. Doyle interviewed some of the veterans.

I still don’t understand how Ross Barnett and Edwin Walker avoided treason charges…but that’s on the Kennedy administration justice department and not the Army.

@JS

“There are museum pieces from the Civil War (and probably before) that still fire.”

Yeah, I bet there *are* at least some early nineteenth-century cast bronze guns that could still be safely fired.

I would NOT want to live fire an eighteenth-century cast iron gun though! Even when brand new they could still burst — the metallurgy was just not good enough to make a completely foolproof cast iron guns. Way cheaper than bronze so armies and navies still used iron guns, but I wouldn’t want to try anything with any surviving one….at least not without a complete metallurgical analysis. Heck, I don’t think anyone would let you try to fire even a 19th-century bronze gun without that. (I don’t have the scientific knowledge to know whether and how you would do that analysis.)

But, sure, cast muzzle-loading artillery, especially smoothbore, if kept clean is pretty easy to maintain. I mean, it’s just like one solid piece with a touch-hole. No moving parts. I guess, though, nineteenth-century rifled smoothbores might require a look at the rifling to make sure there’s nothing amiss. Corrosion could probably foul a rifled bore beyond use I would guess.

The only ones I can speak for certain about are the eighteenth-century pieces I know from the stuff I study. I ain’t live firing any of those, heh, any time soon.

Fortunately there are awesome reproductions that can be safely fired, are historically accurate….and that therefore greatly please museum visitors. 🙂

O.K., good night everyone and thanks for some interesting comment-exchanging!

I have to go get ready to teach my beta-cuck-mangina version of the War of the Austrian Succession. I have been corrupted by the leftoid media and its globalist deep state overlords so I ignore the real issues in that conflict, which were clearly white genocide, sluts, and Muslim immigration.

My abs are sore from the core-stablization we had to have for all the strict presses yesterday at Crossfit — but I’m just imagining that because how could someone so cucked as I possibly “even lift”. I’m sure Ms. Pavlov’s House will soon dump me as a result of her natural hypergamous instincts.

@Victorious Parasol

Well, at least we’ve got chicken.

Well, in Swiss, anything is ready to fight you, especially cows. I mean, even the Swiss Army radars detect them as hostile aerofighters. But their stronger point is, of course, their Marine.

Usually a lurker, but I actually have three things to contribute today.

On Korean martial arts – there is a very interesting history. During the Japanese occupation, they were banned and brutally repressed. At the end of the occupation five Kwans were established. Some of these later joined to become tae kwan do. Because they were basically recreated, they all borrow heavily from both Chinese and Japanese karate, you can see the relationships.

There is also a tendency in English speaking countries to label all the kicking arts as ‘karate’ because people understand that, rather than trying to explain all the differences.

On the filth inhabiting the White House – We live in a north Australian military town very close to South East Asia. We’ve just had to have the ‘Not to be completely paranoid, but at what point do we send the girls down south to the relatives?’ conversation. USians, please fix your political system.

On ableism generally – I was at a seminar today and one of the trainees spoke about people with mental illness, when they really meant dominant or abusive personalities. I pointed out that being an arsehole is not a mental illness and that they are more likely to be abused than abusers. Not good that it had to be done, but at least that group heard that paradigm challenged.

@ dash

On Korean martial arts – there is a very interesting history.

I love stuff like this, so cheers. That’s given me something to look into further.

During the Japanese occupation, they were banned and brutally repressed.

Varalys and Malitia have been giving me a real education into how that also feeds into Korean comics, and media generally. Fascinating stuff.

Most likely, ordinary conscripts are just taught karate and obedience when they aren’t being used for whatever slave labor.

I think I’ve heard something about North Korean soldiers being used regularly for labor, although obviously not worked to the same degree as someone in a prison camp.

There is also a tendency in English speaking countries to label all the kicking arts as ‘karate’

That explains a lot of my confusion.

I think I’ve heard something about North Korean soldiers being used regularly for labor

On my part, it was more of a guess based on other authoritarian regimes.

@Dash, welcome! I like your nickname.

http://img11.deviantart.net/6907/i/2011/353/8/c/fluttershy_and_rainbow_dash_by_vectorvector-d4hp6zl.png

No idea why.

All I can really say is I hope we don’t have to be as worried as this sounds like we should be. I agree about the need to change US military culture (and culture in general it seems), otherwise I think if it doesn’t happen now, it will still be inevitable. If it did happen now, and if there was an after, I can imagine people -even some who think they’re leftwing- justifying it, especially if the US came out of it reasonably Ok (never mind about all those poor Asian people, the US would be what counted to them). Nothing being learned, and worse still being inevitable.

@Diego Duarte
Hmm, my feeling is that it’s not internalised disableism, as the people reacting that way to it being pointed out that they’re wrong are usually abled, or at least don’t have a specific learning disability. It might poss. be disableism in general? I think it’s mostly plain old stubborn defensiveness, though. What my internalised disableism does is make me hyper-anxious about being right, and take unnecessary care to be so, as I’ve spent so long being treated like I’m wrong by default. I can’t always even dismiss blatant wilful ignorance in full confidence (if anyone has any tips on unlearning this, that’d be appreciated?). I got really anxious over this nuclear debate online last time when I was querying the idea NK should mean the UK absolutely definitely NEEDS Trident, lest NK apparently nuke us.

I respect that people have varying feelings on this, but as someone with an actual diagnosed learning disability, dyscalculia, I’m not really comfortable with the word ‘stupid’ (which often implies wilful ignorance, or is just used to make fun of a silly mistake) being avoided on the grounds of it being potentially disableist. I’d be insulted to be called stupid for having dyscalculia (which I don’t think is the way it’s typically used, not purposefully – in which case the real issue isn’t the usage of the term it’s the fact the disability has gone undiagnosed), not by the usage of the term in and of itself. Avoiding the term kind of equates it, it’s a learning disability, it has nothing to do with stupidity. I kind of need to be able to dismiss people (eg. Trump’s core devotees) as stupid or similar sometimes, as a coping strategy.