@ThomBrady5 What they mean is to live in the immediate; forget the past, don’t worry about the future (that’s the role of your betters)
Just consume the products and shut up.
This is why Americans are the deadliest fighters on earth.
I met a priest yesterday who just got accepted to chaplain school in Newport. I asked him the obvious question: Marines or Navy?
Navy, he said. His face fell a little. He told me he could never be a Marine because every Marine is a rifleman, and as a priest he can’t carry a weapon.
He’s hoping to get assigned to a Marine unit anyway. All chaplains are Navy officers, so that’s the only door in.
I laughed. I feel a little bad about that.
Then I explained to him what “Devil Doc” means. The Marine Corps doesn’t have medics. They use Navy Corpsmen.
I told him: when you get out to the fleet, find a Marine sergeant with a couple of Purple Hearts and tell him Devil Docs “aren’t real Marines.”
Be prepared to duck.
Marines are violently particular about who gets to wear their uniform. Navy Corpsmen and Navy chaplains who have eaten dirt alongside them in combat qualify. Full stop.
My dad was Air Force. Not even Navy. I remember going to VFW halls with him as a kid. Someone would ask him what service, he’d say Air Force, and the room would chuckle a little. Then they’d find out he was a medic, and the air in the room changed. Something close to reverence.
Dad hated being honored. He had one line he used to deflect it:
“I didn’t do much. Save your praise for my cousin the PJ.”
That always broke the ice.
PJs are the Air Force special operators who go into hell to pull downed pilots out.
They will take casualties and are prepared to die to rescue a single pilot or crewman.
The math doesn’t math out. Why would any combat force take multiple casualties to rescue one air force jet jockey?
What the padre is about to learn is that the military has a hierarchy that has nothing to do with rank, and nothing to do with the service stitched on your chest.
Have you deployed?
Have you seen combat?
In every firefight there are men who move toward the guns and men who hang back. And when the guy at the tip of the spear is pinned down, bleeding, with rounds cracking past his head, there is exactly one word he screams into the radio.
“Medic.”
Here is the catch, and it is the whole reason America fights the way America fights.
That Marine is willing to push forward into fire BECAUSE he knows the Corpsman is coming. He knows the medevac birds will land in the hot LZ.
He knows the Devil Doc will drag him out by his plate carrier if it comes to that.
And, if the medic can’t help, if he has what Dad called “injuries incompatible with life,” he knows that chaplain will crawl on his belly to administer last rights and deliver him to heaven.
The F-15 pilot punching out over enemy territory knows the same thing. He knows the PJs will move heaven and earth to reach him, and turn whatever is shooting at him into a smoking crater of hell on earth on the way in.
This is the quiet math underneath American violence.
Our warriors are the fiercest on earth not because they are more aggressive, not just because they are better trained, or better equipped, though they are all of those things. They are the fiercest because they know, in their bones, that when they key the mic and call for help, help is coming in hot.
Take that away, and you don’t have the U.S. military anymore. You have a security force.
These are baseless conspiracy theories meant to undermine the war effort.
The U.S. military averages ~400 deaths from training accidents and medical episodes each year.
We lost *90* aircraft in training accidents between 2020 and 2024.
It’s deranged lunacy to speculate that losing people and aircraft to accidents is some kind of conspiracy to cover up combat losses.
@AdHawkWorld@realdburnham@TheBrancaShow The above post where a the person was clearly trying to abuse a system in place to aid domestic businesses fill capability gaps, yes. Seeking long term status should automatically disqualify individuals from the H1B program.
@AdHawkWorld@realdburnham@TheBrancaShow Is it so crazy to think that a legitimately skilled professional could be offered a position and commensurate salary so enticing they would be willing to temporarily leave their home?
Let's go over some of the arguments and issues about this whole kerfuffle.
1. Nobody can tell me what an "alliance" actually is. I've literally seen supposedly in touch and educated Europeans say things like if NATO collapses Europe will re-arm and manage its own defense within 10 years. If you need 10 years to re-arm you aren't in a defense alliance you are a free rider outsourcing your defense requirements. I've seen criticism for Europeans that if only the US was determined we could have kicked Russia out of Ukraine as Europe only recently started providing any military support and still expects the US to handle everything. That's not an alliance, that is a free riding problem. Until anyone can seriously answer 1) what are the shared threats we agree upon and 2) how we will burden share responsibilities equitably there is no alliance it is free rider and service provider
2. If you are European stop telling me things like you take security seriously but doing nothing about it. You cannot have it both ways. Russia's economy is the size of Netherlands. You could easily help solve this situation but you choose not to invest the required resources. If you are not going to prioritize European why should the United States? For everyone who will post a graph of how much military aid Europe now provides to Ukraine, go back and check: how did you even get to that point? Hint it wasn't because Brussels bureaucrats enjoyed a peaceful coffee in the office cafe.
3. These issues have been 40 years in the making so this is really just the end point of something you have chosen not to do. Trump is pulling the rip cord but this is 40 years in the making. Every administration the entire time has been telling you the same thing. I'm not going to shed tears that someone is finally addressing the issue rather than letting it linger another 40 years.
4. Sovereign countries can have sovereign interests and sometimes those overlap and other times they don't. If you want to open yourself up to China that is your sovereign right but then do not expect to receive the benefits of US cooperation and alliance. Across all types of dimensions Europe is wildly more compromised than the United States on both Russia and China. The United States is not perfect and I am regularly critical of US activities where there are problems. However, Europe is wildly more compromised across a range of domains with regards to Russian and Chinese activities. If you want to benefit from US strategic cooperation you have to recognize the threats, agree on the threats with the United States, and do something about it. Right now most of Europe doesn't mean any of those criteria. Why should the United States cooperate with countries where we don't agree on the threats or see you wanting to address those threats in anyway? There are a couple of countries in Europe that are actively working to undermine progress by working more with China among notable problems.
I hope this gets sorted out but I am not going to shed tears if a Cold War institution collapses because the other members fail to recognize the new Cold War.
The Invoice of Power
For all the crying haters of U.S. power projection. You mistake American peace for a donation.
Peace is not mailed out like aid packages. It’s underwritten. By carriers you don’t build, by logistics you don’t maintain, by men and women you didn’t raise, and by a debt of blood you never agreed to pay.
You mortgaged your future and outsourced your security. Now you project morality instead of power and call it “sovereignty.”
You cry foul when America decides the bill is due. When we choose to remove a parasite like Nicolás Maduro from the bloodstream of a hemisphere we’ve kept stable for generations. You say it’s illegitimate, unfair, and that it violates norms.
Norms are written by those who can enforce them.
You ask if we think peace is benevolent. No. Peace is transactional. The price is alignment, stability, and order. If you don’t pay it, someone else will, eventually with interest.
This is the sickness of the postwar world: a civilization feminized by safety it did not earn, mistaking feelings for force and outrage for deterrence. You boo and hiss about sovereignty while cheering mass migration, institutional decay, and the slow motion rape of the West. Your moral vocabulary is loud; your martial vocabulary is empty.
So understand this clearly: If you disagree, do something about it. Because your boos mean nothing to a nation that has seen what you applaud.
This is a mask off moment. You don’t have to respect America. Fear will suffice.
We are not cruel, merely structural. Gravity does not apologize to the weak for pulling them down. Fire does not explain itself to straw.
America is strong. You are not. That’s not personal. That is simply the way of things.
Power is the rent you pay to exist unmolested in a violent world. If you refuse to pay it, don’t be shocked when the landlord shows up.
I sometimes blackpill too hard. But lately, I’m starting to see America might not be in total decline, just hitting puberty. So yea, it’s about to get weird. But we aren’t going anywhere.
For the soft among you out there, I guess you’re just gonna have to deal.
@mcnorrr@JackBMontgomery Uh oh the toad called me the mean German word.
No one thinks you people are capable of anything beyond getting cucked by Africans in this century.
A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being “Politically Correct,” and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration. The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc. Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!