Years ago — so many years ago I think it was the FIRST Bush administration, right after he’d said something about the axis of evil — I had a phone conversation with my brother which shocked me so much that I still remember it vividly.
He was very disapproving of Bush of course. Look, no. He’s not stupid. In fact I’m the dumb bunny of my (I was going to say birth, but it’s both, really, birth and married) family. But you have to understand the “news” they get in Europe make ours sound raving right wing. Yes, even CNN. CNN international is… well, I won’t insult piles of steaming garbage. At least they’re not communist propaganda.
Anyway, he was ranting about Rush and war monging (I THINK. It’s been a while) and then he said “He’s even picking on poor, mad little North Korea.” My jaw dropped. I don’t think I ever managed to pick it up off the floor. It’s still there, metaphorically speaking.
I was a large, ungainly child. Not fat, just built like a tank. And for those who’ve met me and are staring at the page in confusion, yeah, I gained a lot of weight since the six months in bed with pre-eclampsia and repeated dances with hypothyroidism some of which took a while for the doctors to figure out. But I was not a fat child. What I was was huge. And if you’re staring at the page and going “But you are–” Yeah, well, you see, it was Portugal in the sixties. When I stopped growing, at 5’7″ I was taller than probably half the men. (I am now shorter yes. Pre-eclampsia did weird things to my joints, okay?) In all my pictures with my class or friends, from first grade on, not only do I stand a head taller than them, but I’m built on a different scale. Brick sh*thouse comes to mind. (It’s very different in Portugal now. Keep that in mind when we talk about the effects of nutrition. A lot of younger people over six feet.)
Anyway, perhaps because of my size and my being … uh… combative, dad sent me to school with a set of instructions that included “never physically fight someone smaller than you.” Dad truly didn’t understand what evil lives in the heart of little girls. Oh, not mine. Neither subtlety nor conniving were ever part of my character. I’m too ADD to plan underhanded attacks, and as for subtlety, I plain can’t be arsed and besides my face is glass fronted. Most little girls…. uh… Make use of the weapons they have. I’m trying to remember which British author said the most conniving thing in nature is a school boy. He OBVIOUSLY never hung out with school girls.
I was completely unprepared for the character shredding, undermining, “pranks” that destroyed my belongings, etc. And the solution would have made dad very worried, if he’d ever known about them which he didn’t. I couldn’t nor did I want to change my entire personality to retaliate in kind. Frankly, besides the fact that it was against my inclinations, that kind of underhanded attack struck me as something that, for lack of a better term, stains the soul. So once the mess obtruded on my consciousness (you’d really need to know me very well to know how much it takes for me to realize I’m being harassed much less who is doing it) I arranged for a moment where no one saw it, smacked the idiot once or twice and told her next time I’d wipe the floor with her. It’s REMARKABLE how that stopped the shenanigans cold. In fact it stopped them so much I aggregated a circle of friends who were also socially awkward and likely to be the target of such bullying. (Later, in the bigger schools, I also acquired a bunch of LITTLE (or handicapped) friends who were the target of PHYSICAL bullying from larger people. But they weren’t conniving. They were all Odds, bless them. I wish I had pictures. We were the most ridiculously assorted bunch.) I acquired them because being my friend, even if I never did anything (and sometimes I did) to protect them meant they could say “if you mess with me, she’ll be upset.)
However, to dad’s advice, I never picked on those smaller than myself. Actually I never picked on anyone. My basic attitude is that I very much would like to be left alone, preferably with a book and (these days) a cup of coffee. Frankly I think this attitude attracted a lot of the nonsense, but I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY. Still don’t.
Anyway, countries of course aren’t people. The dynamic in “girl’s schools’ works though, in a weird way, only more so.
The reason my jaw dropped is that my brother seemed utterly unaware that not only was North Korea hell on Earth for its citizens (do they consent? Who knows? No, seriously. When you’re brought up in that kind of regime, you don’t even know there’s alternatives) but also a danger in the larger sphere. Turns out nuclear bombs are not that difficult to build though thank the Lord apparently near impossible to build functionally for most of the schrecklich regimes of this world. Even “little mad North Korea” can build nukes. And while reaching us with one is unlikely, reaching South Korea or much of the Asian sphere is within their means. And this is not just bad because of alliances, but because it disrupts global trade and America lives and dies by global trade. (Among our many virtues. You don’t kill people you hope to sell to. that would be stupid.)
Beyond nuclear danger though, which our own missiles might or might not deter (say, if a regime is nuts and wants to bring about the apocalypse, “we’ll nuke you back” might mean very little. Just off the top of my head.) The world is not the size it was even in World War II. Not only is travel faster, but money and propaganda flow freely.
Which are the way the weak battle the strong. See my brother’s indignation on behalf of poor little mad North Korea. Note I don’t ask him his opinion of Hamass. I’d like us to remain friends.
In that way the world and the relations between countries are a lot closer to an all girl school and anything between men. Though in our feminized age, a lot of men fall into the worst female behavior, so my guess is this is about to become a universal problem even at the interpersonal level, if it hasn’t already.
Which brings me “To what does size have to do with it?” or even relative health or capacity for war.
Sure, the US can and is wiping the floor with Iran. This is justified because Iran has killed a lot of Americans in terrorism, and I don’t put it beyond them and the current axis of evil, including Venezuela and China to have financed most of the invasion of our borders (helped, of course by the enemy within) which was a genuine and disturbing innovative way of war. “Attack by human wave, with the human wave weaponized to disrupt and hate and the host country.” (A lot of the recruiting for ‘immigration’ was via communist group membership and worse, criminal organizations.) And that stroke of genius tactic almost did for us, will probably do Europe in, and our only chance of surviving it is to keep the left out of power long enough. That is evil, diabolic, and weaponizes our compassion and generosity against us, helped by a giant dose of insidious propaganda.
So should we hit “little mad” countries. Yes. At least when they’re attacking us by various insidious means. Because as the actress said to the Bishop “what does size have to do with it?”
Sure, if the US took it upon itself to attack countries because they’re small, that would be wrong and evil. But Lichtenstein is safe from us, and I don’t see Portugal on the hit list.
Look, the more important thing is you can’t really apply the size or “many against one” thing to nations that you’d apply to people. If we did, then the allies ganging up on “poor little Germany” which was certainly mad and by LAND MASS much much smaller than the rest, would be wrong and evil and a terrible injustice.
But you see, it’s not land mass that makes a country dangerous. Or even population. It’s what they try or succeed to do to countries that just want to be left alone, and often, in fact, to their own people. (No, we’re not the world’s social worker, but there are limits. And their actions against their own people and the world are often linked. See Germany.)
Take the current hotness for terrorist mass shooters. I don’t care if the tactical armored guy with the gun intent on shooting kids in synagogue is a shrimp, and if he’s taken down by ten big footballs players who beat him to death with his own gun. He was a clear and present danger.
Anyone who pushes the “look at big country attacking little country” is selling you something. Russia invading Ukraine isn’t wrong because the Ukraine is smaller. It’s wrong because Russia’s aggression came out of nowhere (trust me on this. False flag doesn’t justify it) and is fueled by Russia’s deranged fantasies of reviving past glory. You can disagree on the causes (and you’d be wrong, but never mind) but from my perspective, size ain’t got nothing to do with it.
In the same way, the US has a lot of land mass, resources and wealth, but it’s not stomping around the world trying to destroy small lands. Anyone who tells you that is also selling you snake shoes. We are mostly, at heart, businessmen. And businessmen can’t sell to the dead.
It’s time people realized the international sphere is NOT in fact a scaled up kindergarten. And even if it were, sometimes the little kid is a stone cold psychopath, and a slap and the promise of more stop a lot of suffering before it happens. Yes, sometimes the big guy ALSO uses that as an excuse.
Which is why sane people judge individually and not generally and blinded by their prejudices.
Unfortunately sane people are rare in this world, and propaganda makes them rarer.
Keep that in mind when propaganda buffets you.
According To Hoyt 
Of course, sometimes we’re the Big Guy that the little guys want to slap down some guy that’s bullying them. [Twisted Grin]
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having also had a trans Atlantic childhood, my a— still burns about the citizens of what were once genuine colonial powers, complaining about what the US was doing. Lots of scars there, mostly because I didn’t do the young American abroad thing and act like a commie, or be apologetic at all. Still don’t. My sister does. They like her, they call me for advice, you decide.
as for the press, according to the press were in a quagmire, the foreign language press is actually not as bad, though the foreign language editorial pages are … interesting. ONe often wonders if we live on the same planet. the key thing though, is that the money professionals are still trading this as a temporary interruption in oil supply and the gap between the press hysteria and the real world —market prices are the real world, everything else is bunk — is among the highest I have ever seen.
that’s not to say everything is tickity boo, just that it’s quite normal volatility around events and certainly significantly less than it would have been had Iran popped a nuke, which is the alternative they’re all missing, whether through ignorance or not.
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Had Iran popped nuke….they would be screaming for everyone to surrender immediately
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And by Iran’s own admissions, they were days/weeks away from having functioning canned sunlight. Which they bragged about (and the analysts agreed about.) That was bad, but they had the temerity to add on “and we’ll use one on Israel and 5 on the Great Satan.”
Dumbasses.
At least we have Trump/Vance and not The Kackler/Walz.
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Had Iran popped a nuke, I don’t think this internet thingy would still be working. Banks and ATMs would be nonfunctional. Anyone still alive who turned on the radio (if it would still power up) and would only hear — static. Every since the Cuban Missile crisis, one of the first things I do after a power failure is to turn on a battery operated radio to make sure it still powers up and to hear something still coming in over the air waves.
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No. Just no. And please stop with the fantasy doomcasting.
Even a multi-megaton thermonuke would only have local EMP effect if used on/over a city. And if you are close enough to -that- for EMP to be bothersome, the broken windows, heat flash, and firestorm are bigger problems.
To use the nuke as an EMP weapon, they have to loft it way the hell up. And the USA is so big that it would take absolute minimum of four -big- weapon to significantly zorch the majority of the 48 contiguous states.
The MadMullahs were days away from assembling a “Little Boy” “gun type” weapon, crude and no more than about 15-20kT. -Maybe- they can do a “fat man” implosion device, -maybe- with some basic boosting with tritium or lithium. So -maybe-20-50kT.
Loft -that- and you might annoy half of Pennsylvania, You don’t wreck the USA with such relative popgun rounds.
Once you can reliably implode a detonation, and there are tricks to -reliable-, you can develop the multistage monsters called thermonuclear weapons. You -must- test to figure some things out. That takes time, and material.
-Israel- can be wiped out with three to five “Little boy” gun-type weapons., Israel is -tiny-.
We are decidedly not.
So folks, stop with the doomcasting. Yes, nuclear MadMullahs can mass murder hundreds of thousands, potentially millions. No, they cannot end the world, the USA, or even Pennsylvania. Delaware and DC? Sure.
But that over-hyped EMP crap is just that. Worst case crap based on a Tsar Bomba at full power in exactly the right altitude and location and everyone on the ground doing exactly he wrong thing at the wrong time, and doing exactly nothing right, ever.
Moose Marbles. Grade D horror fiction for doom gooners. Y’all are -way- to smart to be buying that beyond-global-warmdooming “EMP” stuff.
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Acts of waging war, and methods by which war is waged are potentially independent factors in estimating if this or that nation state actor is a problem for other nation state actors.
The norms of warfare, and of other lesser elements of intercultural communication, are ultimately slightly dependent on shared values and very much a contract enforced by reprisal. (Norms of warfare is a contract negotiated by warfare, and enforced by reprisal. Reprisal is a special kind of warfare.)
Nukes and germs, basically, are a little relevant to methods.
Fundamentally, international travel, and border enforcement without flamethrowers, are a little incompatible with widespread germ warfare.
What you do not punish you get more of, when it comes to cultural mixtures. In particular, to cultural mixtures like the so called international community.
When US feds and the PRC collaborated to do research they should not have done? For the US, that became a yet to be addressed internal security problem. For the ChiComs, it was a Tuesday.
I don’t have anything new to say in conclusion, or tying back to the broader context, or to the specific context. The circle trigon members of the aggressor nation (EU), can take their minitru whingings and get stuffed.
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And this our Constitution enables the issuance of “Letters of Marque and (Letters of) Reprisal” Generally, commerce raiding at sea and various raiding nastiness on land.
If they were ineffective, our opponents and detractors would not go to such length to convince us to abandon them.
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Listening to the bearded monkeys talk about Epstein island-and their lefty enablers gleefully repeating what they say is equally draw dropping. The founding bearded monkey left detailed explicit rules for how to rape little girls, which I post on their pages at every opportunity. America has a splinter in its eye it publicly acknowledges and tries to fix, while the bearded monkeys have a beam that they brag about.
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I really have to throw the flag on this play. You should not be slurring an entire population like that, due to the misbehavior of a few bad Monkeys.
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I like to stipulate that the insult term “bearded monkeys” I’m fond of comes from author Khaled Hosseini (a true wordsmith of the highest order), specifically his novel the Kite Runner, and it doesn’t apply to all Iranians, or even all Middle Easterners, merely the fanatical assholes, who quite rightly hated by their non fanatical neighbors more than anyone else, largely because they have to live with them. My personal experience with Iranians has been largely positive. They are intelligent and civilized people rightly proud of their culture and history. A lot of them-even the ones officially Muslim-have an even worse slur for the fanatics: “Lizard Eaters” which come from the lament of a Persian King in the Epic National poem of Iran the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) “Damn this fate, that uncivilized lizard eating Arabs have come to make me Muslim.”
I hope and pray fervently they can free themselves from the pedophilia barbarism that was forced upon them at sword point in the tenth century, and if we can help, all the better.
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Sir, I was objecting to your slur of the monkeys, contrasting them so with the madmullahs. That really is un called for.
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Right? What did monkeys ever do that was as bad as Moolahs?
I do like that every time they proclaim a new Supreme Leader that guy catches a warhead to the forehead. Long overdue.
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And there are rumors the current candidate is gay, which is why he wasn’t in the public eye much. Also severely injured and about as compos mentis as Biden. Hmm.
Then the anti-semites are desperately trying to claim Bibi is also hors de combat and no doubt they’d try for Trump being senile.
*Sigh.*
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Size of the Evil must be considered. Sometimes the real whirling b(#####)ds are short. The Law may call it “disparity of force”, and no Judge is likely to accept “He really needed whoopin”.
If you are quick, you can get away with tempting the first punch, which never quite lands. Just be prepared for the other guy to be faster than you thought. As Mr. Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.”
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I spent a year watching the Korean DMZ and points North in the 80s . There were still lots of scars, physically on the countryside and mentally in the ROKs I served with who had family alive the first time the poor widdle Kims came South.
Even today, the NORKs maintain an army of 1 Million troops, more than the ROK and the US Army (worldwide) combined. (Less than 30,000 US troops actually stationed there, down quite a bit from when I was stationed there)
And use I Remember the Pueblo, and the 31 men on the EC-121 BEGGAR SHADOW aircraft.
My sympathy for the regime of the DPRK is distinctly limited.
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Fat Grenade with a Bad haircut.
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When I was there it was his grandfather, Lumpy
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Lol. What a family tree.
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Darlin’s daughter unfortunately inherited her body type from me.
When she move from private school to the public high school, she too collected a group of friends that had previously been bullied. Previously. She would sometimes go actively looking for bullies to explain to them the error of their ways.
As for the mean girls. None ever showed up to proposed “meetings” after school once she explained she had her (at that time) green belt and had training from her dad, so she used kicks and punches, not scratching and hair pulling.
(Yes I’m bragging. Deal)
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My dear departed sister fought a straight-up duel with some chick who badly misjudged her own Karate skillset. (Decent, probably brown belt, from what I observed.)
Sis was a -brawler-, with a high threshold of pain, and no fear. Plus could give “focus your rage” lesson to Sith or Hulk. Also 5’6 and about 160 or so. -big- solid girl even at 16.
The Karate Kiddo and sis traded minor blows for a few seconds, then KK threw a beautifully done lunge punch and broke Sis’ nose. CRAK! Sis stepped one step back reached up, tugged her squashed nose back in place, stepped forward and started throwing roundhouse punches. Each one produced an audible “thud” and moved the chick about 2 feet. (Sis was swim team for a few years.)
It was a slaughter. Chick couldn’t hit hard enough to make sis flinch, not even several other well thrown punches. But I noticed sis wasn’t putting the chick down. No head shots beyond some open hand palm slap/strikes that were more humiliation than hits.
Yup. Sis wanted to keep beating her, so was pulling punches and going for the body. Worked her over bad. Then, Second Chick jumped sis from behind, like a monkey on mama. Sis ignored her flailing and kept pounding Karate Kiddo. I stepped in just long enough to peel off chick2 and set her down on the ground in a slow “throw” with no damage and a “no no no” finger wave. (think the T2 scene )
Finally someone called cops and the approaching siren caused the fight to stop. We disengaged and began to withdraw.
I then had to deal with four “gents” who objected to me putting C2 on her ass. (gently! Zero damage.) For some reason, the “gents” were not -quite- willing to get fisty with me, so we discussed “fair fight” rules briefly, and I managed to shame them (!) as they realized A) I was right, and B) they were unwilling to attack me. (heh)
Doc fixed her nose with minimal work. “Better than original” sis claimed. -No one- ever hit sis again at that school. I was told Karate Kiddo was out for a week.
Later, sis became rather adept at SCA stick and board fighting. (heh)
Good times, good times.
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“Chick couldn’t hit hard enough to make sis flinch, not even several other well thrown punches”
Last time I was in a karate class (Shorin-Ryu) I was a beginner – in that style. At 5’10” and over 200# (not all-fat but not at all in shape) short of a kick to the head almost no other student could do anything significant, so I told them to go full power, not be-nice-to-your-training-partner. Mostly teenagers. Sensei Ron of course, being my size, in good shape, and waaaay better than me, was another story. Rokku-dan? something like that.
(Start that early if you can – Ron’s son, about 6, couldn’t hurt anyone, but darn his forms were slick! )
Was it Fritz Lieber who opined ‘A good big man will beat a good little man almost every time’?
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“The race not always to the swift, the battle not always to the strong. But that’s the way to bet.”
Which is why “never frighten a little man. He’ll kill you.” Because he knows he only has a second or two to Solve The Problem.
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All you need is one watch of the video of Schwarzenegger getting kicked in the back (and not really even noticing) to realize how true that statement is about the big man and the little man.
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Now, kick a big man in the back -of the head- and its a whole ‘nother game.
Of course, it is -dang- hard to do -that- unless you (or someoen else) have already taken him down somewhat. (grin)
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I don’t know if Leiber said it, but Robert B. Parker used it a couple of times in his Spenser detective novels.
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Or as Scadians put it, “sword and board.”
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for those not familiar ‐ many SCA fighters are all about “killing” your friends all day — and doing massive bruises-received comparisons while drinking with same friends around the fire that night!
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Younger DIL is/was an SCA fighter and is encouraging son to be one, so…
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They just need to avoid the rhino hides. Mind you, that problem is probably self-correcting to a degree. I don’t know if the knight who used to refuse to take blows unless he threw up in his helmet survived to retirement age with any brain cells to rub together.
I’m sorry to say the knight responsible for bringing my beloved and I together has cancer and is a shadow of his former self. Good guy.
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Yeah. Sis also like slamdancing/moshpit affray.
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sounds like rugby football.
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I’m 5’8″, but due to a few proportional mismatches I read as taller. The funny part is that I have never, not once, been in a physical fight. I suspect a lot of it is physical stance and a good case of RBF—people are more scared of me than is warranted by my actual nature.
I also suspect there’s a little bit of “I will not mess around” that comes through, which is true. No, I don’t want to hurt you. But if I have to, I will do everything I can to make sure you don’t hurt me… and I think maybe people notice that.
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I’m only 5’5. and average build – not the least athletic, but amazingly, the only real bullying I got in middle school was the social kind – the mean girls playing social-exclusion games. Which after the 8th grade had no effect on me, because I walked away from their stupid games and ignored them. In high school, I did get physically threatened a couple of times, by the tough girl element, but I suppose I had the RBF element going for me too. Threats to beat me up after school outside of the campus were never delivered on. I guess it was because I had been in some of the same classes as the tough girl element, and had some friends among them. I helped them out, academically, when I got assigned to regular classes by mistake (not the honors and AE classes that I was usually assigned to) and I guess they figured that anyone who effortlessly pulled down As and Bs was in league with dark powers, and was not to be messed with.
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I’ve mentioned two of our son’s run-ins with bullies.
First one, racist white kid was badmouthing one of the few black kids in the school behind his back. Son told him, “Shut up or I’ll give you a fat lip.” Kid didn’t shut up. Son provided fat lip. Teacher in the next class asked how kid got the fat lip, which wound up with our son and my beloved in the princpal’s office. Principal and assistant explained about the school’s “zero tolerance,” policy and asked son how he felt. Son replied, “He was talking racist trash, so I hit him. He talks it again, I’ll hit him again.”
That won him a five-day suspension, for “showing no remorse.”
Flash forward a year, with a new (female) principal. Bully in son’s class is tormenting a “special needs,” kid. Son’s friends noted that as he was below 18, if he got in trouble it would be expunged and suggested he handle the bully on behalf of the group.
The principal “accidentally,” bumped into him and asked what was going on. Son told her about the bullying. Her response was, “(Redacted), you kinow we have a zero-tolderance policy on school violence. If something were to happen to the bully on campus, we would have to take notice. However, if something happened to the bully in the gas station parking lot across the street…”
The bully heard about it and suddenly lost all interest n tormenting his victim. Win-win all around…
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These days being off campus doesn’t matter. Wrong on all kinds of ways. But still happens.
Never had to follow through on it, but we (hubby) told our son that “Don’t start anything. You are allowed to finish it.” Only one instance came close. He walked “between” a bully and his victim, “accidentally”. When called to the front office his response was “What? I was just walking to my locker.”
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“…if a regime is nuts and wants to bring about the apocalypse, “we’ll nuke you back” might mean very little. Just off the top of my head.”
And we all know, or should, that’s exactly the goal of the ruling Iranian sect hoping to bring about the return of the Mahdi.
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They might think twice if we were to suggest that we would nuke Mecca & Medina…..but then again, this is a cult built on martyrdom, so……scratch that idea…..for now.
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Or.
“OK. So you say. We will refrain from any apocalyptic canned sunshine events. We will just use thousands of smart bombs, drones, and even “ginsu missiles” to kill the mullah-ocracy and adjacent family and friends. Eventually, someone sane will be in charge, sign the peace deal, and we Americans will go back to arguing American politics, versus annihilating all your expensive impotent useless war-toys and more useless impotent mullahs. You mullah-morons will all die ignobly and uselessly, to no purpose. Explain that to your new landlord while screaming about the heat.”
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Not so much the types of destruction (conventional HE vs nukes), but the idea of destroying The Ultra Sacred Shrines of Mecca & Medina. SOOOOO sacred that no western unbelievers are allowed within city limits of either one (ask me how I know).
I’d almost try to compare it to destroying the Vatican for Catholics, or the Latter Day Saints Temple in SLC…..but comparing the reactions of these two Christian based religions to the reactions of muzzies………well, there is no comparison.
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Why go out of our way to piss off three quarters of a billion people, when all we need to do is take down a few thousand mullahs of an annoying side-sect? Much of the 3/4B would quietly thank us for ridding them of the annoyance.
Don’t give -those- p-word madmullahs the satisfaction.
And we can save your method for a more general conflict.
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They might not care; remember that Mecca & Medina are in Saudi Arabia, and are controlled by the wrong kind of Muslims.
It occurs to me it would be interesting to compare the Sunni – Shia conflict with the Catholic – Reformed conflict of the 1500s, when the Inquisition ran rampant across parts of Europe and Holland fought an 80 year war to be rid of them.
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It still sort of matters. All faithful followers of Islam are required to visit Mecca at least once in their lifetime. If Mecca (and the rock that’s essentially the faith’s super-relic) are wiped from existence, that could be an issue.
Though rebuilding on the rubble isn’t out of the question, I suppose. Pilgrims could still visit. But there’s still the issue of the stone that would no longer be there. I’m not sure what effect that might have.
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You didn’t mention how radioactive the rubble of Mecca would be and how long that would persist. Visiting once in a lifetime might even continue, with proviso that any hajj would be the very last thing any hajji would do in his lifetime.
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They never set the specific distance to the stone, right? They could circle it at a safe distance.
Convincing most of them to walk their gonads through a fallout zone, repeatedly, would likely make some folks giggle.
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That’s a hard one. Depending on the sub-group of Sunni, Shia, or “only they know and no one else claims them,” Mecca might be needed intact for the Last Battle. (In at least two Muslim “end Times” stories, the faithful and the Mahdi fall back to Mecca for the last glorious stand just before Issa Bin Maryam returns and all the unbelievers go straight to the fires of Jehanna and so on and so forth. )
And someone would probably flatten Tel Aviv and possibly Jerusalem in paybacks, try for NYC and LA, too. So yeah, M and M are not the greatest of targets.
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I basically feel that enthusiastic talk of targeting may not be warranted today, as we may have won, and there may be spot of realignment with our allies and enemies in the mid east.
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Yes. Never say or do anything that physically OR psychologically punishes an opponent for cooperating.
I hope Our Man with the famously incontinent foresphincter refrains from crowing about “backing down” or “caving in” when (and if) that happens. I sure wouldn’t bet on it, though.
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Good point. Try to leave an “honorable foe” an honorable way out to not embarrass them too much. Key word here is “honorable”. Don’t rub their face in their defeat.
Now, if the enemy is a bunch of “rats” (I’ll refrain from stronger language so as to not have Our Gracious Hostess get too red), then take them to the ground and bury them deep. If they’ve proven themselves to be “rats”, then they’ll most likely regroup, rearm, and stab yo as soon as your back is turned.
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“Try to leave an “honorable foe” an honorable way out”
Classic Art of War advice:
(Yes, I had to look it up – I remembered it existed but not precisely where.)
There might occasionally be honor among thieves; I’ve not heard of much honor among rats.
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TY for the reminder. I knew I’d heard/read the basic concept somewhere, I’d forgotten that it was in The Art of War.
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Note the Orange One’s frequent praise of Iranian ordinary folks, versus their mullahs.
I have no doubt the man is familiar with and acts upon Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. Heck, note his book title “the Art of the Deal”.
Did everyone not see that?
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May be….But following the “carrot and stick” school of motivation, You can suggest that as long as they behave we won’t make their “Holy of Holies” into rubble.
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“make their “Holy of Holies” into rubble” Is there anything in the Quran that states the Holy of Holies still has to be in a single piece? I can easily imagine future true believers going to Mecca visiting a deep black hole in a field of black rubble and then dying within a few hours from radiation exposure.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki are nice these days. Then again, Japan.
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It’s true that we live by global trade. But one of Peter Zeihan’s points is that if global trade collapses overnight, the US will likely be the only country that doesn’t flirt with death. Yeah, it’d be hard as we got a bunch of industries stood back up, and told the enviro paper shufflers where they can stick their court summons. But we’d pull out of it okay in the end.
Everyone else?
Well, if we weren’t directly supporting them, they’d be in deep, deep trouble.
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yes, of course. We’d still rather it didn’t happen.
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Oh, absolutely (no matter how tempting watching the enviros get smacked down in favor of saving the country). Plus, we would be forced to watch the collapse of the rest of the world from afar. Americans would hate that.
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It occurred to me after I posted the above, but I should probably also note that the ones who are the most hell-bent on trying to wreck the global trade system are also, in many cases, the ones who would crash the hardest if it were to collapse. For example, China is happily attempting to kick out the pillars that make it work even though China is also one of the countries most heavily reliant on it, as it ships in food and raw materials, and ships out (or more accurately these days *tries to*) finished products to other parts of the world. Kick out the pillars that support global trade, and that all collapses.
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Told someone the other day that I will smile at $5 gas, even $10, as I think of shredded mullah payback.
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$5/gal is well in the rear view mirror out here, last seen by me on the day before the latest gas tax increase deferral failed to be renewed (yeah), so we got +$0.18 taxes on 1 March, which was right before the Persian festivities related increases hit as well. My local Chevron sign read $5.89 for regular this morning.
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Actually on second thought it was before that – I think the fillup I am thinking of included a $0.10 Safeway club discount at the pump that dropped my purchase to $4.99/gal.
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List price for regular in Very southern Oregon was $4.19.9/gallon. Was glad I could take the 40 cents/gallon gas discount from the Fred Meyer. They did 4X fuel points for February & March at the local store, because a whacking great WinCo opened up next door. Haven’t been in the new store yet, but I gather it got a lot of people from Albertsons/Safeway and the Fred Meyer (Kroger). It’s still settling down for customer preference.
Not sure where our gasoline actually comes from, but we get to pay some measure of Left Coast insanity.
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4x February & March entire month must be just specific FM’s. Our area isn’t having anything other than 4x Friday, or specialty categories (prepaid cards, clothing, electronics). Which is normal. They did have long weekend 4x (Thurs–Sunday) this last weekend. It is nice to get up to $1 off, once or twice a month.
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Last time I tanked up, it was $5.19 at Costco, but it was also the People’s Republic of California (“Gas companies are gouging people!” NO, California is pretty much an island, we either make our own gas or import it at huge cost due to the Jones Act, we have a special blend for every month of the year it seems like, and Gavin Newscum seems intent on killing any industry that might actually do something in the state).
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And having suddenly noticed that the EVs they’ve been so heavily encouraging don’t pay any gas taxes yet still run on California roads, there’s a proposal to add an annual mileage tax for every vehicle registered in the state (not just EVs) so they can collect more than the existing gas tax 2025 revenue of SEVEN POINT NINE BILLION DOLLARS (Dr. Evil laugh).
Betcha Sacramento forgets to eliminate the existing gas taxes if they do implement the mileage tax…
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“Forgot”? They would view it as an incentive to encourage drivers to switch away from internal combustion engines.
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How $50 / gallon gas for the entire Left Coast?
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Post-Christian is probably more accurate.
The “you’re not allowed to respond to my abuse” is a classic favorite of most human cultures, even though the “everyone has a right to their innate dignity as a human being” is objectively more successful.
It can be observed that it’s not about actual power by looking at the knots they’ll tie themselves into so they can justify a, say, rich black celeb who went to expensive schools his whole life is “disadvantaged,” but a pregnant nurse that just got off her shift and was assaulted by thugs over a rental bike is “privileged.”
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“Sophistry sucks.” PUNCH
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Throat punch
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With grab and rip.
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Objectively more successful, but it takes longer, and more individual investment and committment to morals.
If you’re only out for yourself and/or your tribe, it makes shorter-term sense to head for the top position and then say no one can challenge your behavior. See, for example, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rose from a lowly soldier to shogun and then decreed no one else was going to get that chance, taking all the weapons away from non-samurai.
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Classic ‘pull the ladder up behind you’– come to think of it, matches how communist revolutions tend to purge their useful local tools, too. Betray once, might betray again, are a threat.
It also tends to result in enough surplus that folks can indulge– for some time at least– raider behavior.
So the looters can fancy themselves super-duper smart, because they don’t follow the rules.
Then when it stops working, it’s “bad luck”.
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Yep. This.
Was doing a bit more research on Genghis Khan since I stumbled on a book I hadn’t seen before. Reconfirmed, the guy was objectively evil. I did not know about the time he apparently gave orders to his men they were each to kill 300 of the enemy and if they came up short he would execute them.
Yeah. You want inspiration for an Evil Overlord, he’s right there….
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The second set of South Vietnamese sent to the reeducation camps after the captured ARVN were the surviving Viet Cong.
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“Holocaust survivors are white-privileged.”
And that was when my sense of humor went out for a smoke break…..
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THIS.
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Ahhh, the “it’s always okay to punch up” argument.
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And they get to decide what ‘up’ is, yeah.
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Neil Smith’s “non-aggression principle” is a great phrase to summarize the things you talked about. Or “don’t start nothing”. Or “FAFO”. In all these, the crucial question is “who started it?”
Those girl punks you straighted out in school started it, and they Found Out. Likewise, Iran started it (47 years ago and ongoing ever since) and, finally at long last, Found Out.
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“finally at long last, Found Out.” The FO process has just barely begun for Iran.
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Part of me is simply howling at the potential for bloody mayhem payback.
Irrational, un-Biblical. The Klingons would understand.
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Then later–gratitude having the half life of one of the more ephemeral items on the Table of Elements–we are the Bad Guys who pick on everybody and should be thrown out of the alliances we created and funded for decades.
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Word.
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I just wanted to be left the heck alone to be my slothful, nerdy self. I was not given that option, because I refused to stop being my slothful, nerdy self. Twice I had people stand up for me, and once I got clobbered harder later. It wasn’t until the ROTC commander put out the word during my senior year that I was no longer fair game, and the school admins realized I was bringing glory to the administration, that I was left alone.
No wonder 1) I’m more than a little strange and 2) I fight hard and dirty, now that I can. So size has nothing to do with being the “victim” or “aggressor.” Attitude, and deeds, those are the determining factors.
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Narcissists and other borderline types hate being deprived of an audience. So if you are reading or minding your own business, they get upset.
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Can confirm. Ow.
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Me too.
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Me three.
Though, being short of height and reach, I’d arrange for the beating to take place near where the sisters (yay, catholic schools!) were eating lunch. Only happened twice.
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True, there are those who Just Can’t Tolerate someone who doesn’t give them whatever reward they’re trying to get, be it Obedience, Attention, Fear… whatever they’re after, anyone withholding it is A Problem.
But I think it’s deeper than that. Even the non-sociopaths have the monkey instinct to enforce Group Solidarity–aka Conformity. A Solitary Someone is not only failing to Conform, but also not Contributing to whatever group project the rest of them are engaged in.
Men get a little bit more leeway on that–not a lot–because the go-along-to-get-along trait isn’t as useful to them in a Conquered Culture situation. The conquerors are probably gonna slaughter them, regardless.
But cooperative women and children–especially girls–are much more likely to survive. The only ones likely to get culled are the troublemakers who Stand Out.
And, because drawing hostile attention from the New Bosses may entail Collateral Casualties, the wimmen tend to get pro-active about bullying the Conspicuous back into line.
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We Odds get hit by the women no matter what’s going on. Just gets more vicious when they think they’re going to conquer you.
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The only times I got any peace through the end of high school were the times I fought back. 3 times, total. The individuals in question never bothered me again, but their friends continued unabated. Since high school, no one has bothered me.
I’ve been told I move like I’m hunting. Some time in my mid twenties I figured out how to move in a way that makes the predators veer off and go elsewhere. It’s not conscious. I’m still not sure exactly what the difference is. I just know it works.
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In other news, Paul Ehrlich has shuffled off this mortal coil. Aside from reposted obituaries, not one word on my Twitter feed is positive. looking at what’s being said, the man just plain hated people (including, presumably, himself).
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Did he indeed.
Maybe now someone will write “The Population Unbombed” picking his stuff apart. Piece. By. Piece.
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…Yes, I’m still bitter. That book was used as justification to ruin a great deal of my and my siblings’ lives. Granted, knowing my parents, they would have found other reasons, but “You should never get married or even think about it, no one should have children,” was incredibly toxic to… well, just about everything when it came to trying to figure out how to live with people.
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Comprehensive take down may be hard, as I think uncertainty in estimating today’s population and today’s calorie averages may only arrive at the level of weak evidence, that is not truly conclusive.
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Still, I can dream. : )
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Hatred of self seems to be where it always starts.
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Now, there’s an afterlife greeting I’d want popcorn for.
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How much did he do to help mainstream abortion? Millions and millions of unborn children, waiting…
(Story a few years ago of a former abortionist who repented and became a pro-life activist after a vision of a field of many, many children and being told they were the kids who never had a chance to live because of him).
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It’s quite easy to call the bigger man the bully. Size is obvious. As is physical strength. Metaphorically speaking, we have both in spades. Any fool can calculate strength, as they say.
What was done to Maduro was a capability that existed, more or less, in some form or fashion, for longer than just the last month or two. You may have heard things like glass this place or nook ’em till they glow. Those things are still possible. And we haven’t done them yet because we’re not bloody fools. Not out of fear. Because it’d be wasteful and we like making money, as some wise person might’ve said recently.
For a long, long time we’ve put up with overinflated egos out in the world talking down America and taking what they please from us. All without but a token resistance, when it wasn’t active abetting from traitors within. And we allowed it because those in power were weak, corrupt, and, to put it frankly, not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree.
As a nation and militarily, we are strong. But that strength is not clumsy and imprecise unless directed so by utter fools at the top (to include the five sided edifice of fvckery). Very few truly understand just how precise that strength can be when applied with skill. Other nations often judge us on what they would do in our place- but only with the capabilities their limited understanding allows.
When they speak of us it is always filtered through this same clouded lens. Skilled manipulators and propagandists they may well be- I can grant them that. But that is a hollow strength not backed by the same level of sophistication and capacity that we alone of all the world wield.
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The reason there’s not “a glassy place where Afghanistan used to be” post-9/11 was self restraint. There’s nothing anywhere in the imaginary corpus of “international law” where it says either “attacked nations have to stand there and take it” or “attacked nations have to use proportional response as determined by foreigners.”
There were brief flashes of awareness of this potential right after 9/11 in public statements and diplomatic-breath-holding around the world, but that faded fast. There are some corners of the globe, however, where this was never leared.
Doing a “make rubble bounce harder” every few decades is useful in spreading this concept.
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The next step after making the rubble bounce is to make the rubble evaporate.
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(singing) “here comes the sun….”
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Miss Sarah, I like to think you and Orson Scott Card are my muses.
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”Go pick on someone your own size” also definitionally prevents any and all “collective action” interventions which the early UN was supposed to use to be the world peace police, as by definition the UN would be bigger than any one country.
This, however, is likely not what the one world government folks objecting to military actions in the national interests of the US had in mind.
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I’m reminded of the classic Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin asks Moe why the bully doesn’t pick on someone his own size. The bully responds “They’d hit back”.
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(through bloodied lips) “HEY! You hit me back!”
I will treasure that moment.
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“See my brother’s indignation on behalf of poor little mad North Korea.”
I was thinking about this, and about advertising this morning. “Poor mad little North Korea” isn’t the most insane thing I’ve heard lately. It’s a fairly common thought process in this deluded country of mine. America is “big”, and Canada is “smaller” but plucky, so they better watch it!
#CarkMarney won a whole election on the strength of that. Elbows up, right? And he won it after TEN YEARS of disastrous madness from the #Lieberals that among other things made Canada a net-importer of electricity. (I’m assuming for the sake of argument the election was proper. In truth I have questions about that.)
This “big guy vs. small guy” formulation falls apart -instantly- when you pull your head out of your nether regions and THINK for two seconds about it. Really, it is among the most feeble of rhetorical devices. BUT NO ONE EVER DOES THAT. No one seems to ever say to themselves “wait a second, this is f-ing stupidity.”
Because everything we see, hear, read, reinforces the rhetorical device. Big bad America is pushing around the smaller countries. As if the world is public school, and we are out on the playground for recess. Because everything we see, hear and read is put there to make us comply to somebody’s plan.
We are the most propagandized people in history. It’s not even close. Almost everything we see during a day is marketing of some description or other. There’s marketing all over my computer screen right now, little icons of pixel art begging me to click them. (Are they really begging though? No, but my mind immediately personifies them because that’s what I’ve been trained to do since I was born. See? It’s insidious.)
So when people who are smart enough to know better come up with things like “poor little mad North Korea” it’s the result of them being constantly pummeled with this crap. But knowing that doesn’t really help, because you are not going to change their opinion. It’s being kept in place by propaganda programs with the power of nations behind them. You are going to have to be magical to blast through that in a conversation.
I am not that magical. The most I’ve got available is “yeah right, as if,” and wave them off. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man spends all his energy avoiding being pushed off the stairs by the Normies who can’t see where they’re going but still think they’re right.
Elbows up!
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As startled as Canadians to read Alabama now has a GDP bigger than Canada. That sort of ruins the, “plucky little guy,” thing.
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The size of a psychopath only affects how much force is required to put them down.
The Leftroids demand sympathy for psychopaths, but none for their victims. 😡
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