Gee Chris – I can usually recognize your characters before I read the script. Not this time!
You did the old hag way too much justice. Did you break the tip on your lining pen? She looks like my late grandma, not the Wicked Witch of the West..
Apropos of that, I recently learned that SF author David Drake, the creator of “Hammer’s Slammers”, has retired from writing at age 78.
Drake based the Slammers, a mercenary armored regiment in the 30th Century, on his experiences with the 11th Armored Cav, the Blackhorse, in Vietnam.
Drake’s decision to retire had nothing to do with his not wanting to write any more. It had everything to do with a neurological condition that makes it almost impossible for him to physically write or use a word processor.
He still answers letters- by using a voice-recognition device on his computer. But any writer will tell you that’s a very awkward way to write even a short story, let alone a novel.
What this has to do with anything is where Drake and the rest of the Blackhorse were in 1969-70. Right in the middle of the area dusted with Agent Orange during Operation Ranch Hand.
His symptoms match those of veterans I know personally who were exposed to the defoliant back then.
There are coincidences- and then there are things that are just too “coincidental” to be believable as such.
clear ether
eon
November 15, 2023 at 5:59 am
Unca Walt
OMIGAWD. How quickly can you kill the very IDEA of a nation of good guys?
I’m of that generation as well and have been experiencing very mild neural symptoms.., not enough to have me worried as I don’t expect to survive the next decade in any case
Hey, Eon. That’s interesting. I was in Blackhorse from the last part of 69-all of 70-first part of 71. Don’t recognize the name but was there were a bunch of people in and out. Definitely gonna have to read him now.
Sad to hear that about David Drake…. He is a excellent sci-fi writer, the whole Hammers Slammers series about intergalactic mercenaries is a great read.
Drake was intel, one of the noncom interrogators. Rode a track, 113, not a 48. Law school type, volunteered for Army, which surprised the Hell out of his parents.
You can find The Complete Hammer’s Slammers (all three volumes) in PDF at ePDF. Most everything else he’s written is at Baen Books, including Balefires, his collected early horror stories written for August Derleth at Arkham House.
DD, if they are it means we’ll have a well-trained bunch of drone operators. One thing the war in Ukraine has taught us is that drones will be a much larger part of warfare going forward.
At least that’s what I am trying to convince myself is the case…
I’ve heard from actual experienced men (Engineers- never try to snipe somebody who can throw a MICLIC back at you) that drones are an actual OMFG game changer. Even toy ones can be used for recon, and bigger ones can carry enough HE to be the “coward’s kamikaze”.
Couple that with the 1LT with a laptop who can bring up the map, right-click on the other guy’s position, scroll down to Type of Target (Infantry, Armor, whatever) and then left-click on “Send Fire Here”, in realtime link with the 155s a few thousand meters back, and now infantry just got a lot more dangerous to everybody else.
Even Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov never saw that one coming.
clear ether
eon
November 15, 2023 at 7:34 am
Tim Moyer
I see Hillary got the Covid Jab. LOL. She has that “Grandma Mob Boss ” Look still, Chris. Like John_M said above; it Took me a moment also. I saw a cartoon of her and Newsome standing next to Obiden, asking ” How you doing, Joe” With snarky, evil grins.
Because the youth of today would be completely useless in combat and the *resident et al know this, plus to them, the ‘ciswhitehaters’ are expendable since they probably wouldn’t vote for them.
Hildabeast! (Shudder) The world will rest easier once she’s joined the horizontal. The power mad are the scariest creatures on the planet, maybe universe!
I think the “angry young white men” may be better informed than the Elites.
They are anticipating the backlash against the Elites and the Woke and are getting in line to make sure there’s no backlash for the backlash.
With the coming dissolution of the traditional education system (in whole or in part) the National Rot will need someone to clean up, and traditionally a great chunk of our law enforcement has been drawn from former military.
With respect to the discussion of drones above, we’ve long since crossed the line of cost effectiveness when it comes to human vs machine casualties.
The next step is using AI interrogators to weed out and deprogram those who seek to harm us in the name of whatever, and I’m afraid that will be not a little bit scary.
I like it. They drove out the military “men” in favor of whatever but now the s is hitting the f and lots more to come so they say “Hey, we need us some real deal fighters!” so better fire up the PR machine, maybe throw some signup and re-up cash their way and get those frikkin’ flyover low tone deplorable white boys back into the “shield”!
And, said deplorable white boys, having been training extensively on the gaming simulators, may be ready to rock and roll. That’s good, the CRA needs a few (million) good men! Remember; the enemy is within and without, and these drone drops seem perfect for targeted hits on certain internal targets.
Be careful what you wish for you evil murderous despicable thieving bitch!
The phrase “enemies foreign and domestic” in that oath of enlistment all of us southeast Asia vets took is beginning to have a totally different meaning these days. The last act of patriotism a terminally ill “Agent Orange” vet performs should be making sure that at least a few of those domestic ones achieve room temperature. Where’s the deterrent of a “life” sentence to someone with weeks, or even months left to live?
This is something I wrote for a forum post back in 2016. It’s long, but, I think, appropriate to today’s discussion. Note, this was back prior to Trump proving himself. Also, there’s profanity.
——————————————————————————–
Does Thinking That Americans Will Stand up Make Me Feel Better?
Feeling better is a long time ago. I’ve been watching this train come down the tracks for a very long time. Longer than you might realize. Nothing I post in these threads makes me feel better, and I have no interest in chest beating for its own sake. I have no illusions.
SCOTUS — if we’re stupid and elect either of the Dems, and likely if we elect Trump — will be fully loaded with leftists, and both the 1st and 2nd will be struck down. Clinton all but did for the 4th back during the impeachment fight. Lincoln took out the 10th with extreme prejudice, and the rest of the original ten won’t last long, if they’re not gone already. Most of those subsequent amendments were bullshit and nonsense (14th notwithstanding) and not, for the most part, in our best interest as a nation.
That happens, there will be blood. It maybe won’t last long, and it maybe won’t end the way some of us would like it. But make no mistake, it will come. It will be dirty and evil and heartless. The guys who beat their chests and say that they’ll never enforce will enforce with vigor because that’s their job. Hell, many are doing it already, and there will never be a shortage of those willing to step on the neck.
There will be those who hope to make it better. Those guys who most of us claim to be. They’ll wave flags and hold rallies, and attempt to act as the loyal opposition. Mostly, they’ll be ignored . Eventually, they’ll be dealt with in the manner of loyal opposition in all socialist utopias.
And then there’ll be those guys with nothing left. I’m not talking necessarily about those from whom all material possessions have been taken, or even those who’ve lost livelihood. I’m talking about those guys who volunteered to do the nasty shit that had to be done. Those guys who gave everything to protecting what they thought this country meant. The guys who may have it easy these days monetarily or socially. Those guys who bought the American Experiment hook, line, and sinker. The guys who will look around at what we’ve become and crash. The guys who’ll lose all hope.
Those guys won’t be looking to fix things. They won’t be looking to right the ship of state. Those guys —like jilted lovers— will have only one interest left to them. They’re gonna want to make it hurt.
They won’t be 3%, or 1%, or 0.5%. They won’t expect to win, they won’t expect to live. They’ll only be interested in making the victory as bloody and painful as possible for the winners.
They won’t go after the guys banging on the doors, they’ll go after the guys who sent them. They’ll go after the reporters who cheered them on. They’ll go after pols who appointed the senders. The judges who authorized the ops.
Smart guys with a grudge and some willpower — probably with some nasty tools.
At that point, once everybody has either buried the guns or turned them in, and when the government is going absolutely apeshit trying to protect themselves from rabid killers, the rank and file of the citizenry will have to take the decision on whether to flee or fight. And once America is gone, where they gonna flee to?
No, the idea that people will eventually —as the last couple thousand Jews in the Warsaw ghetto did— put up a fight with cheap pistols and throwaway rifles does not make me happy. It’s just a notion that history is on about repeating itself.
Wanna make me happy? Wanna make me feel better? Work on figuring out a way to short circuit the whole mess rather than moping about how all is teh lostz.
I’ve said this in other threads, in other forums, and in person to any and all who’ll listen. We’re fighting the wrong war. We’re worrying about the pols and forgetting about winning the hearts and minds of the idiots who keep voting them in.
We’re giving them our children to turn against us and countering their high tech, glittery fun message with boring and tedious ‘facts’ that their leftist mentors immediately refute with out of their ass nonsense.
We watch their ‘entertainment’ —the shit that’s turning our own against us— and we lap that shit up like syrup. We watch it ourselves, and claim condescendingly, “I only watch it for entertainment!” meanwhile taking it in unconsciously and sliding cash into the coffers of those who use it to murder our way of life.
We tear at our own while the left cackles with glee. We ignore the long game because the short game gets in the way.
What we DON’T do is counter that entertainment with our own. Entertainment that’s fun to watch and still portrays the world as it is, rather than as the commissars of the culture want them to see it.
The god haters lash out and decry believers. The libertarians denounce the ‘conservatives’. The different flavors of conservative tear at each other like Suni and Shia.
Well, here’s another thing you probably won’t believe. If it comes to strife, we won’t be working together then, either. We’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of independent bands of murderous motherfuckers out for blood. Won’t THAT be a party? That will guarantee we won’t win. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t lose.
There are a good number of Americans who don’t count material goods as the most important thing in the world. You won’t have to take their stuff away to turn them violent. There are Americans who will kiss their wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends/children goodbye and motor off prepared never to see them again. Because, in their eyes, it has to be done. I know that there are, because there’ve always been. Our military cemeteries are filled with them. There are Americans to whom respiration and mastication aren’t the be all and end all of existence. Those who do not hold the mere continuation of metabolic function to be life.
There are Americans who’d sit placidly by and watch the water boil and their flesh sluice away as long as that rifle is still in the closet, because that rifle doesn’t mean target shooting or duck hunting. Taking it away doesn’t mean those people can’t shoot, or can’t hunt, or can’t collect their toys. It means that they aren’t free anymore.
Regardless of how insane that sentiment seems. No matter how few freedoms they have remaining at that point, or how readily they gave all the rest of them up. The desire to be free isn’t rational. It’s primal and atavistic, and when you cross the line of it, weird shit starts to happen.
I don’t agree with those who say it won’t happen for years or decades. We’re watching the end game. The idiotic toilet crisis is a sign. The gloves are off. They think they’ve already won. They think that because they’ve co-opted our leaders that they’ve neutralized us.
Everybody we’ve ever gone to war with has thought the same thing. Fat, dumb, lazy Americans… They’ll never fight! They aren’t what they used to be. Hell, in WWI, it never occurred to the Europeans that we were any sort of threat at all. We surprised every one of them.
Look at Vietnam and Iraq, and even the ‘stan. We lost, right? Well, we lost the peace.
We’ll probably lose the next one, too. But that won’t matter to the dead. If we let it go that far, this country is going down in dirty orange flames, and win, lose, or draw, those who gleefully ran us down the path to it will probably not survive to wonder what the fuck just happened.
You keep thinking that nobody’s going to stand up if that’s what it takes for you to sleep at night. You can be surprised too.
24 Comments
What’s that hypothetical situation where the trees and lampposts around D.C. bare strange fruit?
Freeway overpasses- – – -hang ’em by the armpits and wait for 18 wheelers with tall trailers.
Gee Chris – I can usually recognize your characters before I read the script. Not this time!
You did the old hag way too much justice. Did you break the tip on your lining pen? She looks like my late grandma, not the Wicked Witch of the West..
Sure, join the Army and…. uh, on second thought.
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2023/11/will-radioactive-japanse-fish-create-super-soldiers
cb, remember the fight we had over Agent Orange? Because stand by.
(I wonder how much of a cut Rahm Emanuel is getting on this.)
Remember when Hillary and Barry left those four to die in Benghazi and then lied about it being about a YouTube video?
And she can’t understand why people are staying out of the U.S. dot mil in droves??
Apropos of that, I recently learned that SF author David Drake, the creator of “Hammer’s Slammers”, has retired from writing at age 78.
Drake based the Slammers, a mercenary armored regiment in the 30th Century, on his experiences with the 11th Armored Cav, the Blackhorse, in Vietnam.
Drake’s decision to retire had nothing to do with his not wanting to write any more. It had everything to do with a neurological condition that makes it almost impossible for him to physically write or use a word processor.
He still answers letters- by using a voice-recognition device on his computer. But any writer will tell you that’s a very awkward way to write even a short story, let alone a novel.
What this has to do with anything is where Drake and the rest of the Blackhorse were in 1969-70. Right in the middle of the area dusted with Agent Orange during Operation Ranch Hand.
His symptoms match those of veterans I know personally who were exposed to the defoliant back then.
There are coincidences- and then there are things that are just too “coincidental” to be believable as such.
clear ether
eon
OMIGAWD. How quickly can you kill the very IDEA of a nation of good guys?
Shock to the system coming off the last couple installments and then confronting us with this cadaver…damn.
I’m of that generation as well and have been experiencing very mild neural symptoms.., not enough to have me worried as I don’t expect to survive the next decade in any case
Hey, Eon. That’s interesting. I was in Blackhorse from the last part of 69-all of 70-first part of 71. Don’t recognize the name but was there were a bunch of people in and out. Definitely gonna have to read him now.
Sad to hear that about David Drake…. He is a excellent sci-fi writer, the whole Hammers Slammers series about intergalactic mercenaries is a great read.
Drake was intel, one of the noncom interrogators. Rode a track, 113, not a 48. Law school type, volunteered for Army, which surprised the Hell out of his parents.
You can find The Complete Hammer’s Slammers (all three volumes) in PDF at ePDF. Most everything else he’s written is at Baen Books, including Balefires, his collected early horror stories written for August Derleth at Arkham House.
Thank you for your service.
cheers
eon
I hope all the young white men are NOT playing video games.
DD, if they are it means we’ll have a well-trained bunch of drone operators. One thing the war in Ukraine has taught us is that drones will be a much larger part of warfare going forward.
At least that’s what I am trying to convince myself is the case…
I’ve heard from actual experienced men (Engineers- never try to snipe somebody who can throw a MICLIC back at you) that drones are an actual OMFG game changer. Even toy ones can be used for recon, and bigger ones can carry enough HE to be the “coward’s kamikaze”.
Couple that with the 1LT with a laptop who can bring up the map, right-click on the other guy’s position, scroll down to Type of Target (Infantry, Armor, whatever) and then left-click on “Send Fire Here”, in realtime link with the 155s a few thousand meters back, and now infantry just got a lot more dangerous to everybody else.
Even Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov never saw that one coming.
clear ether
eon
I see Hillary got the Covid Jab. LOL. She has that “Grandma Mob Boss ” Look still, Chris. Like John_M said above; it Took me a moment also. I saw a cartoon of her and Newsome standing next to Obiden, asking ” How you doing, Joe” With snarky, evil grins.
Because the youth of today would be completely useless in combat and the *resident et al know this, plus to them, the ‘ciswhitehaters’ are expendable since they probably wouldn’t vote for them.
Never can tell when the phrase “a la lanterne” could come back as popular.
Hildabeast! (Shudder) The world will rest easier once she’s joined the horizontal. The power mad are the scariest creatures on the planet, maybe universe!
I think the “angry young white men” may be better informed than the Elites.
They are anticipating the backlash against the Elites and the Woke and are getting in line to make sure there’s no backlash for the backlash.
With the coming dissolution of the traditional education system (in whole or in part) the National Rot will need someone to clean up, and traditionally a great chunk of our law enforcement has been drawn from former military.
With respect to the discussion of drones above, we’ve long since crossed the line of cost effectiveness when it comes to human vs machine casualties.
The next step is using AI interrogators to weed out and deprogram those who seek to harm us in the name of whatever, and I’m afraid that will be not a little bit scary.
I like it. They drove out the military “men” in favor of whatever but now the s is hitting the f and lots more to come so they say “Hey, we need us some real deal fighters!” so better fire up the PR machine, maybe throw some signup and re-up cash their way and get those frikkin’ flyover low tone deplorable white boys back into the “shield”!
And, said deplorable white boys, having been training extensively on the gaming simulators, may be ready to rock and roll. That’s good, the CRA needs a few (million) good men! Remember; the enemy is within and without, and these drone drops seem perfect for targeted hits on certain internal targets.
Be careful what you wish for you evil murderous despicable thieving bitch!
And guess who those “Indispensable Government Employees” are who will be exempt from the Draft.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-leaked-nsa-doc-reveals-massive-woke-glossary-pushing-critical-race-theory-gender-ideology-on-govt-employees
The phrase “enemies foreign and domestic” in that oath of enlistment all of us southeast Asia vets took is beginning to have a totally different meaning these days. The last act of patriotism a terminally ill “Agent Orange” vet performs should be making sure that at least a few of those domestic ones achieve room temperature. Where’s the deterrent of a “life” sentence to someone with weeks, or even months left to live?
This is something I wrote for a forum post back in 2016. It’s long, but, I think, appropriate to today’s discussion. Note, this was back prior to Trump proving himself. Also, there’s profanity.
——————————————————————————–
Does Thinking That Americans Will Stand up Make Me Feel Better?
Feeling better is a long time ago. I’ve been watching this train come down the tracks for a very long time. Longer than you might realize. Nothing I post in these threads makes me feel better, and I have no interest in chest beating for its own sake. I have no illusions.
SCOTUS — if we’re stupid and elect either of the Dems, and likely if we elect Trump — will be fully loaded with leftists, and both the 1st and 2nd will be struck down. Clinton all but did for the 4th back during the impeachment fight. Lincoln took out the 10th with extreme prejudice, and the rest of the original ten won’t last long, if they’re not gone already. Most of those subsequent amendments were bullshit and nonsense (14th notwithstanding) and not, for the most part, in our best interest as a nation.
That happens, there will be blood. It maybe won’t last long, and it maybe won’t end the way some of us would like it. But make no mistake, it will come. It will be dirty and evil and heartless. The guys who beat their chests and say that they’ll never enforce will enforce with vigor because that’s their job. Hell, many are doing it already, and there will never be a shortage of those willing to step on the neck.
There will be those who hope to make it better. Those guys who most of us claim to be. They’ll wave flags and hold rallies, and attempt to act as the loyal opposition. Mostly, they’ll be ignored . Eventually, they’ll be dealt with in the manner of loyal opposition in all socialist utopias.
And then there’ll be those guys with nothing left. I’m not talking necessarily about those from whom all material possessions have been taken, or even those who’ve lost livelihood. I’m talking about those guys who volunteered to do the nasty shit that had to be done. Those guys who gave everything to protecting what they thought this country meant. The guys who may have it easy these days monetarily or socially. Those guys who bought the American Experiment hook, line, and sinker. The guys who will look around at what we’ve become and crash. The guys who’ll lose all hope.
Those guys won’t be looking to fix things. They won’t be looking to right the ship of state. Those guys —like jilted lovers— will have only one interest left to them. They’re gonna want to make it hurt.
They won’t be 3%, or 1%, or 0.5%. They won’t expect to win, they won’t expect to live. They’ll only be interested in making the victory as bloody and painful as possible for the winners.
They won’t go after the guys banging on the doors, they’ll go after the guys who sent them. They’ll go after the reporters who cheered them on. They’ll go after pols who appointed the senders. The judges who authorized the ops.
Smart guys with a grudge and some willpower — probably with some nasty tools.
At that point, once everybody has either buried the guns or turned them in, and when the government is going absolutely apeshit trying to protect themselves from rabid killers, the rank and file of the citizenry will have to take the decision on whether to flee or fight. And once America is gone, where they gonna flee to?
No, the idea that people will eventually —as the last couple thousand Jews in the Warsaw ghetto did— put up a fight with cheap pistols and throwaway rifles does not make me happy. It’s just a notion that history is on about repeating itself.
Wanna make me happy? Wanna make me feel better? Work on figuring out a way to short circuit the whole mess rather than moping about how all is teh lostz.
I’ve said this in other threads, in other forums, and in person to any and all who’ll listen. We’re fighting the wrong war. We’re worrying about the pols and forgetting about winning the hearts and minds of the idiots who keep voting them in.
We’re giving them our children to turn against us and countering their high tech, glittery fun message with boring and tedious ‘facts’ that their leftist mentors immediately refute with out of their ass nonsense.
We watch their ‘entertainment’ —the shit that’s turning our own against us— and we lap that shit up like syrup. We watch it ourselves, and claim condescendingly, “I only watch it for entertainment!” meanwhile taking it in unconsciously and sliding cash into the coffers of those who use it to murder our way of life.
We tear at our own while the left cackles with glee. We ignore the long game because the short game gets in the way.
What we DON’T do is counter that entertainment with our own. Entertainment that’s fun to watch and still portrays the world as it is, rather than as the commissars of the culture want them to see it.
The god haters lash out and decry believers. The libertarians denounce the ‘conservatives’. The different flavors of conservative tear at each other like Suni and Shia.
Well, here’s another thing you probably won’t believe. If it comes to strife, we won’t be working together then, either. We’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of independent bands of murderous motherfuckers out for blood. Won’t THAT be a party? That will guarantee we won’t win. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t lose.
There are a good number of Americans who don’t count material goods as the most important thing in the world. You won’t have to take their stuff away to turn them violent. There are Americans who will kiss their wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends/children goodbye and motor off prepared never to see them again. Because, in their eyes, it has to be done. I know that there are, because there’ve always been. Our military cemeteries are filled with them. There are Americans to whom respiration and mastication aren’t the be all and end all of existence. Those who do not hold the mere continuation of metabolic function to be life.
There are Americans who’d sit placidly by and watch the water boil and their flesh sluice away as long as that rifle is still in the closet, because that rifle doesn’t mean target shooting or duck hunting. Taking it away doesn’t mean those people can’t shoot, or can’t hunt, or can’t collect their toys. It means that they aren’t free anymore.
Regardless of how insane that sentiment seems. No matter how few freedoms they have remaining at that point, or how readily they gave all the rest of them up. The desire to be free isn’t rational. It’s primal and atavistic, and when you cross the line of it, weird shit starts to happen.
I don’t agree with those who say it won’t happen for years or decades. We’re watching the end game. The idiotic toilet crisis is a sign. The gloves are off. They think they’ve already won. They think that because they’ve co-opted our leaders that they’ve neutralized us.
Everybody we’ve ever gone to war with has thought the same thing. Fat, dumb, lazy Americans… They’ll never fight! They aren’t what they used to be. Hell, in WWI, it never occurred to the Europeans that we were any sort of threat at all. We surprised every one of them.
Look at Vietnam and Iraq, and even the ‘stan. We lost, right? Well, we lost the peace.
We’ll probably lose the next one, too. But that won’t matter to the dead. If we let it go that far, this country is going down in dirty orange flames, and win, lose, or draw, those who gleefully ran us down the path to it will probably not survive to wonder what the fuck just happened.
You keep thinking that nobody’s going to stand up if that’s what it takes for you to sleep at night. You can be surprised too.