I've said this before, but I think it's a plus that National Guard Bush and Bone Spur Trump are hypocrites. The Republicans don't actually like military people. McCain, Dole, GHWBush are their losers. They love Reagan and Trump. Phoneys who avoided going to war, but worship the idea of it. You vote for what you are.

No offense, but I'm genuinely clueless as to what your point is. If it's just "fly is an abrasive prick," then I guess that's fair or whatever.

I think Dvault has said a bunch of times that the left can't win on this issue.

I'd say we talk about universal health care, free college, good jobs in infrastucture and renewables.

Yup, the only way to win the culture wars is not to play.

100% of the time someone chooses nazis to illustrate how they view you, there is subtext. I mean at this point, let me be blunt here. Cut the obtuse bull****. It's embarrassing he does it and embarrassing to watch you try to excuse it. It's not that worth defending or attacking any further but I'll keep bringing it up because it's embarrassing.

Disappointed and disgusted would be a better words.

See I used to think this way about fly, at least to some extent. Wasn't as angry as you.

Then it turned out he was right. I realized that damn near everyone is racist and selfish and disingenuous as he claims. Esp most of the the ppl that fight him the most.

Yeah Fly doesn't dole out the invective on a whim. The targets usually have a long, sordid history of disingenuous posting/argumentation in service of morally reprehensible positions.

IOW, **** em'.

Fly may be right in his conviction but his motives are as selfish and impure as anyone else's. I only tried to have a real exchange with him once, the rest of it was self indulgence. It all boils down to that here, but mine takes forms other than railing sometimes.

The post you quoted was about dvaut. I've said a few times I don't put the two on the same level even if they are similar. Though dvaut is dropping.

I mean fly attacks my manhood as a *****. Screams about others projecting while complaining about them getting allcaps furious. It's comical.

6 never did come back with an example of anything he could find flawed in any argument fly made. Certainly nobody calls dvaut on his **** if they are on his side of the argument. That was my mistake. That's not ****ing valuable. It's a circle jerk if you are afraid to even put a hand on the shoulder and say...well wait a mintute...yes and....

Dvaut admitted he was wrong about something! 13 years ago. It hurts to remember. When he was wrong way back then. (No way in hell he is wrong about anything NOW) It apparently is the same thing that makes him furious at centrist liberals like the ones who defended the trope, or the ones like me who said something "close enough". When asked about what the end result of this discussion is supposed to be there has never been an answer. It is ****ing identical to what I said would happen. But the motivation for fighting the good fight is clearly conflated with attacking projected self-regrets for some, not results.. So, I mean the tough guys itt can try to protect their vulnerability by never ever backtracking, apologizing or being like a little ***** and growing their view, but they are not protecting their obvious personal flaws. Cuz theyre obvious.

LOL at looking for flaws in your arguments. Half your posts ITT are incomprehensible.

Johnny,

You're neither entirely right nor wrong, but this exact conversation/war is perpetual in this forum. You do you, but just know that you don't have to get all this done in one shot.

As far as your last post about admitting fault, you're wrong. Both of them admit being wrong sometimes and probably as often as most posters.

Where do you guys put Vietnam on the veteran ranking anyway? I'm assuming WWII vets are at the top? Spanish-American at the bottom? Do they at least beat the Confederacy?

how are we ranking? like, who were the most badass? I mean, considering the tactics of ww1 were just to send thousands of men running at machine guns, Id say they had the most guts. even the euros were like, "hey yo mericans, this whole running at machine guns things doesnt work, we tried it for the last 3 years." american generals were like "lol pussy euros, leeerrrooooooyyyyy jenkins"

and then the whole living in a trench thing in the interim was proly pretty awful.

so Id say ww1>ww2asia>ww2euroland>korea>vietnam

Well, culture wars writ large is one thing but "prove your super patriot bona fides and adherence to nationalist totems and memes" is a totally pointless endeavor since the right literally writes the rules and gets to play referee. That element of the culture wars is basically inseparable from the right-wing framing of it. The left could only ever win by trying to redefine the terms, but so long as the guideposts are like "prove you don't disgrace right-wing notions of service and honor" then yeah, forget it.

I also made the point above before, but so long as America's foreign policy and wars are highly aggressive and basically totally realpolitik in nature and with no real humanitarian basis, then yet again -- forget it. As I've been belaboring, the whole 'debate' here is really just a proxy debate ABOUT foreign policy and war with the right essentially hiding their unflattering point of view (American should conquer and take resources and bomb indiscriminately) behind patriotic symbols and ad hoc norms. THAT'S why the left can't win because many of our sometimes-allies like centrists and Sensible Liberals and the like are either 1) falling for the charade and taking right-wingers at their word or 2) actually have internalized the right-wing frames and share the same goals about what America should be doing with its military.

Thanks. To be clear I am not talking about incorrect on a point of fact. I haven't witnessed it, but I am sure they concede those.

Let's let this next phase of this Vietnam trope argument play out with the new wave of paper targets. I intend to answer 6ix's question about "what do do" as if it was sincere at some point,--I didn't claim to know the answer to that before and I still don't--just questioned if the 100% dvaut and fly approved method was the best we could do. We'll see. this little experiment itt is kinda playing out just as my pearl clutching, whiteplaining, ulterior-motive ass said it would.

We know Lembcke's book came out after Greene's.

I know about burden of proof.

Sorry my research wasn't done, as I said. So sorry.

Hopefully I'll come back to this.

@DVaut1

They do so for their base on every wedge issue. Advocating for marriage equality means you are trying to destroy American families, relief for the poor encourages indolence, criminals will get guns anyway the Dems just want to disarm you so they can send in government goon squads to enslave you, and on and on ad infinitum.

Probably belongs in the Tragic Death thread, but here goes. Since I have the utmost confidence that ~0 of the manufacturing base is returning to rural America during this administration I would posit that every Dem running in 2018 and 2020 in a state that Trump won should have a campaign based around one simple message, "Where are the jobs you promised?"

Going ham on the cultural issues seems to ignite the Republican base more than the Democratic one.

You have no idea how crushed I am that I won't get your take on flaws in my arguments. The parts you don't understand are for others.

Now who's being snarky and rude? More than one poster ITT has told you that they legit have no idea what you've been talking about because your posts don't make sense. If you struggle with the written word instead of getting angry about it maybe just pick up a copy of The Elements of Style? It's an oldie, but a goodie.

The second sentence of this post is betrayed by the first. To make it exceedingly easy to understand, you don't read my posts to comprehend the points, you read them to find flaws. That is the sole value I have to you so you are not fit to understand them beyond that.

I mean the absurdity of claiming you are concerned with rudeness after intitiating this exchange is standard. I never was concerned with snideness. As for the other posters, there are lots of people who have tipped their hand in terms of what they are doing here. Osoku is super embarrassed by his explanation. You showed your intent above. Fly is transparent.

its also hard to comprehend your points due to the excess self congratulating.

Sounds like you get it just fine. How is that confusing to you?

I'm not embarrassed about anything. I'm here to learn, and have some laughs. Sure there might be some gamesmanship, and we laugh at each other's expense, but it's a community first and foremost, not a "game."

I get a lot more out of this place than I give back, pretty sweet deal actually.

And are you kidding me about embarrassment? You're the one who's been punching himself in the head for the past couple of days, and then proclaiming that he fought the good fight.

absolutely. And gun control and justice reform and ...

Concentrate on the stuff that both matters and does help the progressives rather than the anti-politics personalised shouting match which doesn't.