The reply chain has some classic 4chan brainworm specimens
If Vietnam had to be responsible for their own war production they would have had no chance, not lasting 2 years. But they had the soviets and Chinese supplying them with free everything. That's how they hung on. They didn't care about their human losses compared to not getting the gravy train of free weapons and supplies.
The phrasing that the Vietnamese didn't care about their human losses because they had some kind of supernatural death drive and not because the US was willing to massacre millions of them and they needed to protect themselves or their country would be a burned out husk entirely blanketed with deadly chemicals is awesome. I think you see this a lot when people talk about nations they're programmed to hate, like the USSR in WW2, where it wasn't that the Nazis were literally burning and slaughtering their way all the way to Moscow and starving out entire cities and that the Soviet citizenry and military had to resist and fight back or have their entire country Manifest Destiny'd and their people turned to slaves - it was that Stalin and the Soviet generals were completely heartless and inhuman monsters doing human wave attacks with no weaponry. Well, and they also killed like 80% of the Nazis, but that was just like, because, like, it uhh... it got really cold or something...? Yeah, that's it. Anyway, uhh... it doesn't matter anyway bECAUSE AMERICA CAME IN AND SAVED THE WORLD, BABY!
losers cope
The Northern Alliance wiped out the Taliban in a month, the issue is that the Taliban was always going to have the backing of a nuclear power (Pakistan) and the US wasn't willing to go to war with them, which is the only way that the US would have won the war in Afghanistan and OEF.
Pretty sure you should add the US to the nuclear power list, given the amount of weapons the US intelligence agencies were spreading around in the region lmfao. I hate it when you "wipe out" a group of people and then they magically come back and take over the country you occupied for the better part of two decades in a single week. Like, come on, at least Vietnam held for a little while before it was retaken. If the Taliban were wiped out of Afghanistan and were just hiding in Pakistan biding their time then it would have taken a little longer than a week to retake more-or-less the entire fucking country. Can't blame the Soviets for that one.
The phrasing that the Vietnamese didn’t care about their human losses because they had some kind of supernatural death drive
I've heard an anecdote about a US Air Force general during the Vietnam War basically saying that it wasn't really a problem that the bombings were causing so much collateral damage, since the Vietnamese had different cultural views on death and didn't mind... just absolutely insane fascist :brainworms:. I think it was in the RevLeftRadio episode on the war, don't really remember now where I heard it.
I think these people literally just take news at face value. Whenever some guerilla force is reportedly "wiped out" usually just means they successfully escaped and hid in the jungle or whatever
It's a very curious thing. My theory is that 4channers and other internet chuds are stuck in a bubble where they simultaneously want to be perceived as free thinkers and sometimes try to reach different conclusions than the mainstream conclusions for the sake of wanting to appear smarter, but they're also only willing to use facts given to them by the media and surrounding corporations, as well as the alphabet boys, and conspiracy theories built by absolute morons. So it's a weird place where they can only try to reach an edgier worldview with the same facts as the general public (or those gathered from outright conspiracies with no basis in reality) and are never able to realize that the US is actually the supervillain of the world.
There's definitely an element of that. I guess it's a combination of intellectual laziness and delusional self-confidence, causing them to refuse to actually read anything while having absolutely no doubt that all their conclusions are smart and logical - it's like when :jordan-eboy-peterson: went to the debate with Zizek without even bothering to read up on literally anything on socialism. After all, if you're such a super-genius who understands life and chaos dragons, why would you need to study, a wikipedia summary should be more than enough for anything.
The other day we had this thread, where someone brought up how so much of the bullshit rationalists come up with is them rediscovering incredibly basic philosophy/theology, except since they don't actually read anything it seems new and revolutionary to them. Look at this this monumentally stupid twitter thread about game theory, or Yudkowsky's various moments. These people just refuse to actually read anything, but pretend like they're intellectual gods.
The entire wrongheaded premise is that the US was trying to win these wars. It wasn't. Continuing the war was the point. Eternal spending was the point. Vietnam was an early, clumsy attempt but today they're much better. They got to milk Afghanistan for 20 years and got volcanically angry when their cash cow got cut off. There were generals and think tank Ph.Ds who wanted to occupy Afghanistan for another 50 years.
Eh I think it's both. The Nazis in charge of the United States were genuinely insane and hubristic enough to think they could "contain" Communism. These are the people who very nearly ended the world with nuclear hellfire.
You're totally correct, and that's really one of the most important disconnects between the politicians and your regular conservative - whether that's your standard MAGA chud who atrophies and hoots in front of their TV, or your online libertarians/ancaps, or even just a guy who doesn't really consume political media but generally just votes Republican for whatever brainwormed reason even though they probably wouldn't argue with getting universal healthcare. There's just not really much patriotism near the top of the pyramid, at least, not in the same way as the chuds feel.
It's all a grift that benefits the capitalists and by extension themselves, but which necessarily requires that developing nations (and in some ways, developed nations) are exploited for their gain, which in the case of waging wars for primitive accumulation and occupation, masquerades as patriotism. I don't doubt that some of them, perhaps many of them, genuinely feel that the America is a force for freedom and democracy, but your class position is connected with your cynicism in this regard.
And I think if you went and asked a conservative of any stripe "Do you think most politicians really care or are they just grifters?" then a majority of them would say "Oh no, I'm not stupid, of course they're grifters by and large!" And yet that doesn't connect to a greater systematic understanding of the world, where they internally say "Okay, well if I believe they're all grifters, and if they're in control of the country, then that must logically mean that this country is not doing what it's doing for patriotic reasons, but for cynical reasons. And those cynical reasons must be... getting resources and money from those countries, or from stopping ideological projects like revolutions against neoliberalism. And therefore there's a chance that we might be the villains here." Which is where dehumanization and racism come in to temporarily rescue their brains from the cognitive dissonance, like "Oh, but they're not really humans so it's still fine that we're exploiting them" or "Well, that sucks for them, but I get treats out of it and something something utils".
The Trump crowd wanted an end to US wars, which is bizarre considering who they are. But it was there, for sure. It's one of the reasons Trump was so hated by the blob in DC - what, end the profits? Bring an end to the gravy train? How dare you upset the apple cart!
Eh, some of the stuff written by the people running the war in the US suggest they largely did think there was something for the US to actually, decisively win in Vietnam, and there's a decent amount of doomer shit written by them as they slowly realize there's no real hope of that.
The reply chain has some classic 4chan brainworm specimens
The phrasing that the Vietnamese didn't care about their human losses because they had some kind of supernatural death drive and not because the US was willing to massacre millions of them and they needed to protect themselves or their country would be a burned out husk entirely blanketed with deadly chemicals is awesome. I think you see this a lot when people talk about nations they're programmed to hate, like the USSR in WW2, where it wasn't that the Nazis were literally burning and slaughtering their way all the way to Moscow and starving out entire cities and that the Soviet citizenry and military had to resist and fight back or have their entire country Manifest Destiny'd and their people turned to slaves - it was that Stalin and the Soviet generals were completely heartless and inhuman monsters doing human wave attacks with no weaponry. Well, and they also killed like 80% of the Nazis, but that was just like, because, like, it uhh... it got really cold or something...? Yeah, that's it. Anyway, uhh... it doesn't matter anyway bECAUSE AMERICA CAME IN AND SAVED THE WORLD, BABY!
losers cope
Pretty sure you should add the US to the nuclear power list, given the amount of weapons the US intelligence agencies were spreading around in the region lmfao. I hate it when you "wipe out" a group of people and then they magically come back and take over the country you occupied for the better part of two decades in a single week. Like, come on, at least Vietnam held for a little while before it was retaken. If the Taliban were wiped out of Afghanistan and were just hiding in Pakistan biding their time then it would have taken a little longer than a week to retake more-or-less the entire fucking country. Can't blame the Soviets for that one.
losers cope
I've heard an anecdote about a US Air Force general during the Vietnam War basically saying that it wasn't really a problem that the bombings were causing so much collateral damage, since the Vietnamese had different cultural views on death and didn't mind... just absolutely insane fascist :brainworms:. I think it was in the RevLeftRadio episode on the war, don't really remember now where I heard it.
Just gonna make a wild guess and say this was certified demon Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMaydeleted by creator
Yeah the quote I was thinking of was the "If they don't stop their aggression we'll throw them back into the stone age" quote
LeMay was the one who said he would be tried and hanged for war crimes for what he did if he were fighting on the Axis side.
I think these people literally just take news at face value. Whenever some guerilla force is reportedly "wiped out" usually just means they successfully escaped and hid in the jungle or whatever
It's a very curious thing. My theory is that 4channers and other internet chuds are stuck in a bubble where they simultaneously want to be perceived as free thinkers and sometimes try to reach different conclusions than the mainstream conclusions for the sake of wanting to appear smarter, but they're also only willing to use facts given to them by the media and surrounding corporations, as well as the alphabet boys, and conspiracy theories built by absolute morons. So it's a weird place where they can only try to reach an edgier worldview with the same facts as the general public (or those gathered from outright conspiracies with no basis in reality) and are never able to realize that the US is actually the supervillain of the world.
There's definitely an element of that. I guess it's a combination of intellectual laziness and delusional self-confidence, causing them to refuse to actually read anything while having absolutely no doubt that all their conclusions are smart and logical - it's like when :jordan-eboy-peterson: went to the debate with Zizek without even bothering to read up on literally anything on socialism. After all, if you're such a super-genius who understands life and chaos dragons, why would you need to study, a wikipedia summary should be more than enough for anything.
The other day we had this thread, where someone brought up how so much of the bullshit rationalists come up with is them rediscovering incredibly basic philosophy/theology, except since they don't actually read anything it seems new and revolutionary to them. Look at this this monumentally stupid twitter thread about game theory, or Yudkowsky's various moments. These people just refuse to actually read anything, but pretend like they're intellectual gods.
The entire wrongheaded premise is that the US was trying to win these wars. It wasn't. Continuing the war was the point. Eternal spending was the point. Vietnam was an early, clumsy attempt but today they're much better. They got to milk Afghanistan for 20 years and got volcanically angry when their cash cow got cut off. There were generals and think tank Ph.Ds who wanted to occupy Afghanistan for another 50 years.
Eh I think it's both. The Nazis in charge of the United States were genuinely insane and hubristic enough to think they could "contain" Communism. These are the people who very nearly ended the world with nuclear hellfire.
You're totally correct, and that's really one of the most important disconnects between the politicians and your regular conservative - whether that's your standard MAGA chud who atrophies and hoots in front of their TV, or your online libertarians/ancaps, or even just a guy who doesn't really consume political media but generally just votes Republican for whatever brainwormed reason even though they probably wouldn't argue with getting universal healthcare. There's just not really much patriotism near the top of the pyramid, at least, not in the same way as the chuds feel.
It's all a grift that benefits the capitalists and by extension themselves, but which necessarily requires that developing nations (and in some ways, developed nations) are exploited for their gain, which in the case of waging wars for primitive accumulation and occupation, masquerades as patriotism. I don't doubt that some of them, perhaps many of them, genuinely feel that the America is a force for freedom and democracy, but your class position is connected with your cynicism in this regard.
And I think if you went and asked a conservative of any stripe "Do you think most politicians really care or are they just grifters?" then a majority of them would say "Oh no, I'm not stupid, of course they're grifters by and large!" And yet that doesn't connect to a greater systematic understanding of the world, where they internally say "Okay, well if I believe they're all grifters, and if they're in control of the country, then that must logically mean that this country is not doing what it's doing for patriotic reasons, but for cynical reasons. And those cynical reasons must be... getting resources and money from those countries, or from stopping ideological projects like revolutions against neoliberalism. And therefore there's a chance that we might be the villains here." Which is where dehumanization and racism come in to temporarily rescue their brains from the cognitive dissonance, like "Oh, but they're not really humans so it's still fine that we're exploiting them" or "Well, that sucks for them, but I get treats out of it and something something utils".
:gold-communist:
The Trump crowd wanted an end to US wars, which is bizarre considering who they are. But it was there, for sure. It's one of the reasons Trump was so hated by the blob in DC - what, end the profits? Bring an end to the gravy train? How dare you upset the apple cart!
Eh, some of the stuff written by the people running the war in the US suggest they largely did think there was something for the US to actually, decisively win in Vietnam, and there's a decent amount of doomer shit written by them as they slowly realize there's no real hope of that.
deleted by creator