gearhog

In every post, you try to use words out of context while apparently not knowing what they mean. Dogs do have an amount of ability to make choices and decisions about the way they behave and interact with their environment, thus: agency. When a dog attacks you, it still may have agency bu not justification. So you can blame the dog for doing something and understand why it did it. There is no contradiction there whatsoever. Don't you ever get tired of attempting a "gotcha!" only to have it fail?

No problem at all. Russia is an aggressor. Russia is wrong. I've said Russia sucks a hundred times in this thread. Search it. Beside the point. You're confusing the word "justified" with "inevitable". American Pitbulls are horrible disgusting animals. One could say they all deserve to die. I don't believe that. They exist and they suck. When you see one, you respect it's existence as you would any other dangerous creature. There's always a chance they run down the street and randomly attack you. Maybe they don't. But if you approach the edge of their yard, you're gonna get their hackles up. Make and hold eye contact with it. Show your teeth. Raise your hand to it. When it leaps over the fence and annihilates you, you'll cry and complain that it was bad doggie and shouldn't have happened. You can bitch all you want that attack wasn't justified, but you'd have to be a moron to not realize it was inevitable. I'm not old. I'm 48. I could outrun you. 😄 And again: I'm a stickler for accuracy. Choose the correct words. I'm not a pacifist, I'm more of a reluctant warrior. War is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to avoid it.

Whoa. Not a reason to despise all cops, but definitely a reason to hate these cops. Holy hell. https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1892666296413651160

LOLOLOLOLOL. OMG https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1893016797118427203

Our nation held democratic elections during some of the most extreme wartime conditions in history, when you said it couldn't/shouldn't be done. And, you're willing to diminish their importance because they don't align with your on position on a conflict halfway around the globe that you're not fighting. An election isn't just about deployed servicemembers voting. There were approx 135,000,000 citizens at home. The US decided it was consistent with our democratic ideals to allow it's citizens to vote for the direction they wanted their nation to take during a conflict we were directly involved in. It's no wonder you're done with the argument because it just doesn't pass the logic test. Abandoning a bad take is a good move and I commend you for it. You should considering abandoning the entire issue. I don't pick battles that I'm not going to win. It's clear where this is headed and you're just going to keep stamping your feet as reality continues to depart from your fantasy? Why? It's like arguing the Cowboys should have won the Superbowl every year. Uh.. ok? Talk about it all you like. It just ain't happening. I can see reality is aligning with my desire for the money I earned to no longer fund a vicious war where both sides are dying at incredibly high rates. As you can tell, I'm immensely satisfied that seems to be what is occurring. You can spend the next 20 pages that I'm wrong about the above. Won't change a thing. You will be dissatisfied with the results. I'll be glad its over.

So you are saying the election was invalid and/or shouldn't have been held? Should those 28K not have been allowed to vote? What's your point here? Are you the world's first WWII election denier? 😀 An election was held during "true, wartime conditions". That's what a real democracy does. And it's not impossible.

"When President Trump posts that Zelensky is a dictator without elections, what are you thinking?" https://x.com/dbsmorocco/status/1892931593947251004

Watch how easy it is for me to completely invalidate your argument: 1864: On election day, Lincoln prevailed handily, winning 212 of 233 total electoral votes. Contributing to his victory were the predominantly Republican votes of Union soldiers, many of whom had been allowed to cast ballots in the field or else had been furloughed to vote in their home districts. https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1864 1944: During World War II, more than 16 million Americans served in uniform. Approximately 11.5 million men and women served overseas, and the remainder often served thousands of miles away from their homes even when stationed within the United States. To ensure that these service members continued to be represented in their government, Congress passed bills in 1942 and 1944 intended to guarantee that American soldiers could vote in wartime elections for federal offices. Although the bills fell short of their ambitious goal, the 1944 bill permitted millions of soldiers to cast absentee ballots in the federal election that year. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/soldier-voting-act-1942-absentee-ballots

Be careful posting “wrong-think” if you happen to be passing through the land of our closest ally in the fight for freedom and democracy.

The problem with your hegemony arguments is you are viewing it through a single biased perspective. The issue is reciprocal hegemony, meaning that even when you frame both sides as opposites, they still reflect one another's motivations and dynamics. Both the US and Russia claim their actions/expansions are defensive. Both justify them with mirrored ideological narratives. Each identifies the other as the aggressor. It's a vicious cycle that will drain prosperity from all parties involved over a very long period of time. In the end, one side or the other maybe be the ultimate victor, but it'll be Phyrric. It's the same playbook repeated over and over and over. I've seen it over my entire adult life and it took me a while realize the pattern. "The whole nation is bad. They're a threat. They're not a democracy. We're going to free the population." Meanwhile, they say "They're the threat, they're meddling in our domestic affairs, they're the invaders." Round and round we go. Money gets spent, lives are lost, etc. But it doesn't always go like that. There are plenty of examples of rivalries being settled through diplomacy. Most conflicts between near-peer nations reach a point of negotiated settlement - where we are now. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. There are plenty of ways to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship through technology, economics, and energy (as I went into earlier) Thank God the Cold War never went full hot between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. We never had to directly engage the Soviet Union, but we intensely competed, and they just got tired. It was ultimately de-escalated when Reagan and Gorbachev signed arms agreements. I don't know how old you are, but we did nuclear drills in elementary school. What a relief when cooler heads prevailed, there was peace, and we ultimately prospered. This whole "kill em all!" caveman mentality ensures the cycle will never be broken. The thought pattern you're having now is the same one that billions of people have been stuck in during every conflict in human history. I'd encourage you to conduct a private thought experiment with yourself and step out of that mental trap. It's enlightening. “War is young men dying and old men talking” ― Somebody.

Allright allright, I'll give in. I can tell this is killing you. 😆 First, me having a different opinion than you isn't dangerous, malicious, or harmful. You being a Nav, or RPA guy, or whatever means little just has me being a pilot/military officer means little. Here's the deal. When I got to my first assignment, one of the first guys I flew with was a guy named Rich Hauben, God rest his soul. We became friends and squadronmates. One of the first things we talked about was that he had worked very hard on building a website so that we when showed up to fly, all the information was there. PDF files of flight plans, mission worksheets, calculators, weather, etc. Super proud of it. It also had a forum he encouraged me to join. He experimented with some early waterfall type message boards that were successful, then he bought a site address at DynamicTruth.com, where he sold calling cards, cigarettes, and other stuff online. Made some decent money from what I remember. He hosted two forums on the server. One was "Military Aviation" and the other was "Socio-Political - The Michael Savage forum", of whom he was a fan. It was off the rails. Rich liked to show up to that forum and argue about controversial subjects. It was full of non-military liberals who hated the Michael Savage radio show. Rich posted under an alternate name and liked to get the liberals all worked up over controversial subjects. He'd talk about it often. That forum was absolutely wild. Anything went. http://web.archive.org/web/20020602142642/http://www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=baseops https://web.archive.org/web/20040325141830/http://dynamictruth.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=9 For the most part, the non-military usernames stayed over in Socio-Political, and most all the flyers stated in Military Aviation except for Rich, me, and a few others. Then the streams started to cross. Some of the rabid liberals started coming over here and injecting their leftist garbage into this forum, getting us military fliers worked up. Rich tried to keep those intense political discussions at the other forum but it didn't work. It's a little fuzzy, but at some point I think he just deleted the entire socio-politcal/Michael Savage forum one day. He had gone over to the other side of the runway doing secret squirrel stuff by that time. Anyway, that's just some fun history of the forum. As for me, I've been here since near the beginning. Over 25 year now, I guess. Thousands of screen names have came and went. Lots of good conversations here, info, help, but there is always sport-bitching, controversies, meltdowns, drama, guys wanting to meetup and fight, etc. It's been fun. Don't take it too seriously. Just words on a screen. Nothing more. I've been moderator. Administrator here for years and quit that. At that time I got a gig that required an SCI and I had thousands and thousands of posts here. I decided to delete "gearpig" from the server, not realizing it would completely remove the hundreds of threads I started here. Caused a bit of a problem. My bad. Sorry bout that. 😄 I am proud that I never banned anyone that I simply had a personal disagreement with or an opinion I didn't like - but it was tempting. A year or so in pilot training. I spent 19 out of 22 years in the Herc. Did white jets for a while. Did all the quals, all the sq jobs, chief of SE, all that. Only wanted to fly but I was made deployed SQ/CC once. First deployment was Oct 2001. Last was 2018. A bunch in between. Started the airlines back 07, been a Captain for several years now. I paid over $160K in FICA, SS, and Medicare alone last year, not including all my property and business taxes, so that motivates me to share my opinions a little. I live on a large rural farm surrounded by family. We raise cattle, show horses, buy and sell tractors, etc. It's fun. I'm not Russian, and I'm not going to hurt you. You don't have to beg others to silence my free speech because you disagree. 😄

LMAO. Get some sleep, dude. You need it.

You making that comment is one the least shocking things you could possibly have said. You did the meme. However, a Nav repeatedly demanding "Go with Quals!" is one of the most shocking and funny things I've read on BO.net lately. So that's it? Just you and nsplayr abandoning your positions in favor of feeble attempts to denigrate my "quals"? That's kinda sad.

LOL

Who typed this post, a nav or a fighter pilot? 😆