FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Goddamn elitists…
Checking in.
If you can't read Austen you aren't really literate in English. Annotations are fine, adaptations are fine, but you should be able to read it without some Reader's Digest bowdlerization of it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
I just finished the bound copy of selected Canterbury Tales. I was doing a tale a day, and today was the Prioress, and, weird. It was just a blood libel story. A Christian kid really loves the virgin Mary, and some Jews take exception to it and murder him and throw him in a latrine. Miracles occur and the body is found and the Jews are punished.
It's such an odd inclusion in a set of tales I mostly associate with humorous tales of disloyal wives and dishonest preachers. I guess it's just the times? But it's so vicious! Is it satirical? It doesn't seem so. I guess "also Jews are evil and Satan lives in their hearts" is just a message Chaucer also wanted to include?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
I'm not sure if I'm kidding around. It seems more likely than any of what appear to be the plans for the end of the war by the participants involved, which are some mix of "and then the people rise up" and "and then the Zionist conspiracy collapses" with a dash of ”Jesus Christ returns (and is on my side)."
I'm starting to think this ends with oil royalties being spread around to make it look like everybody got something.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
So our argument in favor of sane war planning is that it incorporates an idea our 80 year old president first fixated on 40 years ago, when he had no military experience or advice. Gotcha.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
I doubt 1 in 10 of our soldiers would tolerate fighting like the Taliban did, without medivac, without armour, without sophisticated training, without airpower, without all our advanced technology.
Certainly not for Aghanistan.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
Sure but at some point, whether it's a week from now or a year from now, ships will try it again en masse, and either Iran will hit one or they won't, and then either the Strait is open or everyone goes back to their corners.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
For a while during the Ukraine conflict, Ukraine was still getting royalties on Russian pipelines running through Ukrainian territory.
Imagine a goof-ass future where the United States occupies Iran's export terminals and charges Iran royalties to export oil, while the Gulf states pay bribes to Iran to keep Hormuz open. Everyone hates each other but can't afford a war anymore. Trump gets a nobel peace prize, but whines that it should be called the Donald Strait.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
I appreciate your response but I won't be engaging with you on this.
Then don't reply.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
There was a plan back in the Kennedy admin to drop leaflets on Cuba warning the men that the presence of nuclear weapons on the island would cause so much radiation that it would make them impotent.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
The new Supreme Leader is rumored to have been impotent.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
Why do you think that press releases are a reflection of the true plan?
Because that's been the expectation of every American president in wartime basically forever. That the president and his administration would clearly communicate the causes of the war, the motivations behind the actions of the war, the aims of the war. To do otherwise is morally unacceptable to me.
To accept that Trump has a plan but is lying to us about it repeatedly is to accept the status of subject rather than citizen, to be a slave rather than a man. "L'etat? C'est lui!" You seem to draw some line that Trump is lying to the press, he isn't lying to the press, he's lying to us.
I'm not anti-Trump or against regime change in Iran in principle, but I'm not going to "trust the plan." That's un-American.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
Because we have 4% unemployment, so every soldier payed to go overseas vacates a job in America, which will then need to increase wages to attract workers, which will then lead to increased bribes to attract soldiers. I suppose in the short term one can outrun the wheel of inflation, but not in the long term.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'd imagine most oil tanker crewmen are braver men than me, but if they told me I was sailing through there... I'd hop out and swim to shore.
I highly suspect the few ships that have transited are paying bribes in crypto to IRGC grand poobahs. Which might be the ultimate result of the whole thing.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Bribes won't work in a prosperous capitalist economy, you can't just pump money into the demand for young workers without driving the price up prohibitively.
If pure manpower is a concern for the USA, the best route would obviously be the Roman one: we've got millions of able bodied men dying to become American citizens at the border.
The problem for the American military is that the all volunteer army is what makes the army so damn effective. Once you start impressing low human capital into the army, you lose effectiveness in a hurry.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
There's some wiggle room when hegseth says that it's not closed, and there's also no oil going through it. At some point ships are going to try it in volume and that's the test, isn't it?
Insurers still won't cover it, but supposedly the federal government is working on backstopping losses to get it moving again.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's probably the case that in a military conflict shipping could pass through it. What won't go through is ordinary commercial shipping, because it isn't worth it. It's the difference between "Iran can get almost every single ship passing through" and "I'm not risking my oil tanker for no real reason."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The government has been very explicit with stated public war aims and reasons, and has a number of private elements that are easily guessable.
Which time were they extremely clear?
Was it when Rubio said we didn't really want to do this but we had to because the Israelis were doing it either way? Was it when Trump said their nuclear program was completely eliminated a few months ago? Was it when Hegseth said there would be no ground troops involved? Was it when Trump said that the whole thing was pretty much wrapped up last week?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
imagine what an Iranian operation would look like if it was planned to take five weeks and we were only halfway into it.
I like this game we're playing where there's definitely a plan that's been clearly communicated, if you ignore half of what POTUS says, a third of what the SecState says, and two thirds of what the SecWar says.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Alternatively, the conflict never really ends and it's gitmo east.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
A shattered Iran in civil war would have to be terrible for sea traffic right? I mean there's always going to be one faction shooting at tankers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Maximally cynically: brave dead Marines coming to grips with the enemy will produce a greater rally round the flag effect than high oil prices and the occasional air accident. The scenario where we bomb Iran and kill 14 copies of Muhammad Al Unpronounceable while Iran blows up oil tankers will produce few of the political benefits of a war; the scenario where Iranians are killing American soldiers will have some purchase with the public.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
What's the difference?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Yet detentions are down nationwide. We're not seeing the same tactics used nationwide.
I don't claim to be literate in Russian. You got me there.
Because with a little effort, one can read Austen in the original, and by struggling through one or two such books in the original, one can learn to read them. And by doing so one unlocks the entire history of the English language. And such efforts are what keeps the entire concept of the English language stable and keeps it from drifting permanently into low slang and ebonics.
Languages are defined and anchored by the great works of literature that the literate members of the linguistic group are expected to read and understand. Dante in Italian, Homer for the Greeks, Virgil in Latin, Goethe in German. The English that God has blessed us with has remained remarkably stable from Shakespeare to today. I can attend a Shakespeare play and with a little inference from context clues get what is being said.
But this process requires collective effort to maintain. And when we create shortcuts, like "updating" Austen's language, we destroy that effort, we would permanently cut off that part of our heritage. We would be left with people unable to read the Declaration, the Federalist Papers, John Stuart Mill, the Gettysburg Address.
We've already mostly lost this to wokeness and ignorance, with the literary canon in tatters. For decades every American public high school student was forced to read Shakespeare at least a little to pass, now it's been replaced with modern identitarian garbage. Was there ever a time where the majority of Americans could read the Great Books? Maybe not, but there existed a literate culture that could. We're in danger enough of losing that as it is, and maybe it's all irrelevant in the age of AI. But it was a beautiful thing while it lasted.
So please, leave me Austen.
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