JTarrou
21hr ago
Just some random thoughts on aspects of this:
At a grunt's-eye view, it's pretty undeniable that it's a big advantage for your actual front-line troops to be habituated to physical hardship, and this is difficult to teach people as adults.
But, of course, exactly how hard they have to be depends on how hard their actual combat environment is. If the country can afford to provide them with Pizza Hut in the field, the necessity of non-picky eaters may have been overcome with brute finance and logistics, to take a wacky modern example. A country willing and able to keep their troops mostly in armored, air conditioned vehicles and willing to accept the resulting loss of presence and intel at a tactical level can adjust many of the physical requirements.
As a second-order effect, this pushes more and more of the remaining light tactical work to more and more specialized units, which means massive cost in training and equipment, but a really lopsided frontline capability. What it lacks is the ability to scale beyond special-forces sized engagements. And those guys in the high-speed units now have to be even tougher.
So you still need a feeder population of "hard men", a farm team winnowed by competition and training into a warrior elite. And you might not want to let those guys be drawn from populations that vastly differ in culture and political loyalty to the civilian leadership. Which in turn means any long-term social organization needs an internal military culture that habituates some portion of its young men to the physical necessities of their brand of combat. What that is depends greatly on technology, organization and finance.
Broadly speaking, I think Devereaux has a good point. Civilizations do generally trump barbarians, and we remember the exceptions much more than the many failures of various tribal groups to dent their better organized empires. Rome defeated, co-opted, romanized and absorbed probably thousands of patriarchal, feudally organized semi-nomadic tribes over their run as a society. Similarly, Persia, India and China absorbed successive groups of tribal peoples, with the exceptions becoming the ruling dynasties of those societies. To peer myopically at the warriors who were able to exploit times of political, social or public health upheavals to seize power after the failures of a settled society is to miss the other 90% of the time.
Of course, history may be a limited guide here. For pre-modern history civilization was a very limited thing in cities and their immediate hinterlands. The days of nomadic pastoralists are gone. The seas, deserts and grasslands are no longer untracked wilderness. The modern barbarians live in a society, on a social fringe rather than a geographical one. And like the barbarians of old, they have to adapt to the higher technology of civilized peoples in order to be effective. Which means paralleling their social and political organization as well, adapting to the culture they predate and parasitize.
The implications for modern politics are straightforward: Civilization falls to barbarians when the existing power structure cannot enforce the laws, finance the military, make political decisions and foster a functioning economy. The danger is not in the hinterland, geographical or social. It is in our own government, our social divisions and our political animosities. We've mostly solved the plagues and famines that used to destabilize organized societies. We're never going to solve the political problem.
JTarrou
23hr ago
They're running organized squad-sized ambush operations, though not very well so far. They have commo, legal, media and political coordination. They've been running violent street operations for a decade against Republicans. They've tried to secede parts of the country a number of times, and succeeded briefly in a couple places. Their security forces have murdered multiple people and successfully kept those members from facing US justice. They've assassinated a number of prominent right-wingers, tried the president twice.
Yes, they are a low-level insurgency with more strength in the media and the DNC/NGO establishment than in a directly military sense, but they are developing that capability quickly. Right now they're relying on "independent" cells and individuals with just enough deniability, like John Brown back in the day. But this is all funded, semi-coordinated and defended by the gov/NGO complex of public sector unions, the security services and old-money "charitable" funds. You know, "the people".
To be blunt: you know because no one has yet car-bombed an ICE or CBP squad or opened fire from an elevated window on an DHS patrol.
That's pretty specific.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-facility-shooting-dallas-immigration-d49f76ffc95572970ede58ef15769fe4
"Nuh uh, they hid in treelines and on a roof, not an elevated window, checkmate chuds!"
All that writing and it's just based on observably false premises.
JTarrou
2d ago
Your thought experiment is "what if it weren't rape"? Yes, I expect those numbers would differ, if consent was explicit and the woman were attractive.
But this is just misandrist equivocation. "Some significant fraction of men would engage in behavior that would be rape if not for all the explicit consent and instruction from the woman" isn't great evidence for "some significant fraction of men are hardened rapists who are victimizing anything unconscious in their general vicinity".
JTarrou
2d ago
I think it's simpler to just say that some large fraction of men would jump at the opportunity to have sex with an unconscious woman if there were no consequences.
50/2,000,000/20 years = large fraction?
Yeah, you really have your finger on something big here. Huge effects. With such a strong signal that certainly holds true for every man, and women being unconscious like a third of their lives, the true rape rate must approach 100%.
JTarrou
3d ago
Apparently the lesson they took from civil disobedience was that intentionally breaking the law to force consequences shouldn't have the consequences. The whole point of this sort of protesting is to get arrested in such a manner that people think it's unjust, not fight the cops and try to flee.
JTarrou
6d ago
And yet, evolution.
You have only one purpose here on this earth, and it isn't to avoid diapers. It isn't vidya games. It isn't your job. It isn't your hobbies or your religion or your political ideology. It isn't any fake achievements you might get while here. You have only one purpose. You will only ever make two choices that will matter beyond your lifetime, but luckily, you seem to be making the right one. Stay at it, no matter what those pro-natalists say.
JTarrou
6d ago
And yet every time a Democratic official appears in front of congress, they are reliably stumped by the "what's a woman" question. The "trans thing" is still strong enough to demand the slavish allegiance of every single elected and appointed dem in the country, apart from Fetterman. It still runs every university, major corporation and media organization. They're being a bit quieter about it, they aren't pushing the maximalist stuff as hard, but that's a temporary thing. This is a religious invocation of faith, and it won't be dropped for some time, if ever.
JTarrou
10d ago
Don't know the relevance, but "smoke check" is US military slang for shooting someone. Dust flies off clothing/skin when a bullet impacts, can leave a little cloud behind briefly.
JTarrou
10d ago
The age of consent in reality is whatever age a person has to be for their "yes" to mean consent legally.
So there is no age of consent for women, and probably never will be.
JTarrou
12d ago
I think it would be hard to argue they intend to lose money.
In fact, that is exactly what I argue. Conscious intent follows emotional decision making, not the other way around. Compulsive gamblers want to lose, and can't stop until they lose. Whatever they consciously intend, their behavior's intent is to lose.
Just like someone who emotionally chose to smash a cop with a sledgehammer intended harm, whatever their post-hoc claims.
JTarrou
13d ago
There won't be any deprogramming, they'll just stop talking about it when they win their next election. Remember how fast Code Pink cratered once Obama was the one droning weddings in the middle east? They just disappeared off the news where their spokespeople had been parked for six years on every single broadcast from the weather to sports. Went from a quarter million members to low double digits in a month.
Nothing will be walked back. No one will apologize (unless they're a grifter switching sides). And it will all be re-used on the next Republican of any note. None of us saw the last Republican not to be called Hitler (Hoover), now we've seen the last Republican not to get a tranche of rape allegations, we've seen the last Republican to not have felony charges. This is how politics is done, and if you don't like it, politics is not for you.
JTarrou
14d ago
One is a political organization finally doing politics for the first time in fifty years, the other is yet another Reformation cult.
JTarrou
19d ago
Yeah, but in reality it just means "we don't care because even if he was a victim of injustice, he was so costly to society it doesn't matter".
The idea that you can assault police officers because they're not allowed to "execute" people for assault is ridiculous. Stupidity always carries the death penalty.
JTarrou
20d ago
That guy sounds like he has his finger on it. Also sounds angry and arrogant, which is par for the course.
JTarrou
21d ago
It is the sign of a healthy, engaged citizenry that ten thousand people decided to go out in extremely cold temperatures and make their voices heard, peacefully.
Except for the violence, peaceful.
JTarrou
24d ago
Been a minute since I looked at the floor schematics, but I'm pretty sure the room had multiple doors. Get teams with a shield up front and a ram, charge, breaching shotgun or Halligan on each entrance and go to work. If one team is pushed back by fire, the others can work on the other doors. Yes, some guys are probably gonna catch rounds, but with body armor and a shield, plus the perp is shooting through walls and metal doors, risk of death minimal.
I also want to say there were ground level windows in the room, which could have been covered by teams outside the building. As a tactical problem, this one was pretty fucking easy.
Keys. The fuck outta here.
JTarrou
25d ago
I believe rights come with responsibilities. If cops are going to get the benefit of the doubt in use of force because it's their job (as I believe they should to some degree), then they owe a moral debt to those they defend. Laws are thin and high, but I honestly don't know how this guy lives with himself. I'd have slapped that police chief in his bitch face and gone through the door, because I don't want to spend every night for the rest of my life wishing I had. Dying is easy compared to that. A reprimand is nothing.
The law cannot solve every problem. We have to enforce the norms we want to see. My words mean nothing in society, and relatively little in the more rarified air of professional violence. But I've seen my days. I've made those calls, and there's 0-5s no doubt alive today who can tell you exactly how well their orders worked when they ran counter to the mores and interests of my team.
Every man on his worst day should be judged by his peers. For those cops, I am their peer. If there be any honor in violence, surely it is from the defense of the weak. Sixty armed men listening to children die? Utterly contemptible. Every single one should do the honorable thing, it should never have come to a court case. They should lacquer their badges into the floor under the urinals of the school. Their children should take their mother's surname. Their parents should cut them out of every family photo.
In the hierarchy of violence known colloquially as "honor", these men are the lowest of the low. Cowards who shirked their duty when it mattered most. I'd rather have a hitman for the cartels at my dinner table than one of the Uvalde cops. All who train for that terrible day that probably won't come gaze in horror, pity and contempt at those whose day came and who failed the moment. Complete moral collapse. Dishonor.
Today, we do not hold our men of violence to such standards. Which is why we are policed by dishonorable cowards.
JTarrou
27d ago
It may not matter legally, in court, but it absolutely matters to society at large. Any criminal justice system will be ragged around the edges, all states are organized violence. It matters what group the mistakes and violations run against in general.
If the cops unjustifiably kill someone with forty felonies, run the legal process, but don't ask me to give a fuck. Society is better off no matter how cruel or unjustified the actual police behavior is. That has to be balanced against the costs imposed by the dead criminal.
If the cops unjustifiably kill some random law-abiding productive citizen with a family and community, that's much worse. It not only means that the police are poorly trained, but that they are being aimed at a part of society they shouldn't be. Mistakes will happen, but it isn't difficult to make the judgement between these sorts of cases.
Of course, in the media we are constantly told that the second scenario is happening, which on inspection turns out to be the first.
JTarrou
1mo ago
FWIW, I think IQ testing should be used to track all public schoolkids into an appropriate educational stream. I think it explains a whole lot about the world nobody but places like this want to talk about. But it is not something to be optimized at the cost of all other endeavors.
For academics, it is the primary requirement. For everyone else, the diminishing returns kick in fast.
JTarrou
1mo ago
ven when range-restricted to the top 1% of 13-year-old test-takers on the SAT math, the four quartiles among The One Percent follow a rank-order with respect to any doctorate, STEM publications, STEM doctorates, patents, whether-95th-percentile-income eventually attained.
Yes, IQ and its proxies predict academic success. That's what I said. Our economy is set up to award higher incomes to those with higher education, thus the income. But this is just circular logic. High paying jobs are mostly gated behind advanced degrees, which require at least an average IQ to fudge and a high one to excel at. Give out jobs based on who is the best basketball player, and height would predict income just fine.
JTarrou
1mo ago
I've spent most of my life associating with the lower half of the IQ distribution. I'm well aware of the failure modes and ridiculous behavior of the dummies. Stupidity, however, is its own limiting factor.
The failure modes of intellect have basically no upper bound.
The godforsaken parts of Africa and the Middle East, mostly. Some control our southern border regions, though we have an understanding that keeps a lid on things. With open borders and refugee flows and international air travel, those distant barbarians can be in your town in hours. They don't ride horses into your hinterland, they move into major cities. They're not all raiders, some are sub-legal workforce. Some are scam artists, petty criminals etc. Some smaller number are violent, form gangs to raid, rape and pillage. This is probably what low-level raiding usually looked like, just with more horsy-running-off inbetween.
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