Random Politics & Religion #00

Being a citizen who has all the rights also incurs all the obligations. This happens to be an obligation that is currently only applied to one gender.

Registration is required for men, it should be required of women. Or no registration for either gender, which I'm also ok with.

Why do you keep relating joining the army/military as torture?

It should be either for both or no one, unless we get near extinction as a species.

To me it should be for no one.

Diaper changing experience has taught me that all babies are explosive.

Or it is a sufficiently unpopular war, and/or a sufficiently long war, and/or with enough parties, and/or the casualty rate is high enough.

Many people simultaneously overestimate US military power at the same time as underestimating other countries capabilities. There are many, many, many different ways of rendering various advantages relatively worthless. The Millennium Challenge from 2002 is a pretty good example.

You talk like the military is some hellish torture club. I did it for 10 years it really was not half as bad as you make it out to be. I never worked with any women as back in the 90's women were not allowed in the infantry so we did not work with them. I would not trade my time in there for anything. It was great bonding, I learned a lot, got free college out of it and made the best of it. It made me grow up and learn a ton about myself.

Yep. It's the woman's fault.

***'s sake do we really have to go around about this again? I thought we had already sorted out who the cavemen were in this regard and could move on?

Or projectiles (bodily fluids, at least).

For some people it would be.


Again, for some. But I won't go into the psychology on this topic. Luckily for you it worked for you.


Should be free anyhow


And again, good for you, but trying to apply it to everyone is foolish.

Women can just as easily get a pistol permit here in my area of NY. They are not hard to get just a little costly as the permit application process with background check, fingerprints, mental health screening and course can run you upwards of $300. I got mine after I got out of Army and it only took like 3 months. Being male actually slowed me down a little because there is another entire form packet for males to fill out due to the bias on why a male needs "personal protection."

Pretty sure you entirely missed the point.

Also, just for the record, I have reiterated several times that I don't think the military is for everyone, in my own circumstance you're right and I actually should have probably joined up out of high school as -- assuming I lived through all the *** in the early 00s -- it would have done me a world of good in a lot of ways. But then, going down the roads of hindsight is never overly helpful.

125 years ago the preferred personal protection item for women was a hatpin.

When I hitchhiked during the beatnick and hippie years I always carried a small, well concealed dagger. Never had to use it.

Only real use for a gun is if you live in a stand your ground state and are REAL tired of men who think they have a right to invade your comfort zone.

Just memorize these words: "I felt threatened."

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Thought this was interesting



More than 4 shot (includes shooter)

355 in 336 days, numbers are how many per day

so....stay at home on monday and sunday, the biggest chance to die in a shooting >.>

Those numbers are bogus. If you categorize mass shootings as 4 or more people die, you'd have to go back to the 90s before you hit 350 instances.

Just like how they came to 1 in 4 college students will be involved in rape, the only reason there are so many "mass shootings" is because someone has changed what is considered a mass shooting.

It is. Besides the physical displeasure one would receive from boot camp, there is also a little known issue with those who ask questions and don't automatically fall in line with the rest of the crowd. That alone would have been a personal hell to me.

Then there's the emotional and mental trauma that comes with actually killing somebody, which is highly likely today (not in the 90s, which you served).

Don't get me started on the PTSD that plagues vets today.

Need I go on?

And it seems like you view women as inferior too. Don't worry, all my family who served in the military feel the same way, so you aren't the only one.

But I guess that's what you get for being a member in "tha club" (as it seems like any ex-military person feels like they are in).

They are bogus for other reasons. For one, I highly doubt all of America only had 355 murders. Hell, I would highly doubt that San Antonio has less than 355 murders for the year so far.

Washington Post is just being sensational again, and it looks like another person fell for it.

Edit: Unless it means the number of incidents, then that's possible.

I don't speak bear.

Mass Shooting Tracker
Feel free to do a recount. Mass shooting is defined as 4 or more people shot, not necessarily killed.

No, a 2012 congressional action defines a "mass shooting" as three or more people killed, including the shooter(s), in one location.

If you bump that up one more victim the whole argument falls apart. It's all part of the gun control effort to make people think the shooting that happened yesterday happens every single day in this country. I mean ***, you guys are on FB, I've seen that info graphic fly by my feed many times today and yesterday. It's all bogus.

Mind sharing?

That is what kept me from ever entertaining the thought of joining the military, or sports or a fraternity. Don't care about being part of a collective group, would much rather just be myself.

We have a lot of "Mass Shootings" in NOLA as well, every Second Line and super sunday, somebody ALWAYS has to shoot up the party over something *** stupid.

There are a few very important side effects of this, one is that most of your adult male civilian population has some military experience and could either be called upon to fight an invader or could participate in guerrilla resistance against that same invader. That is the reason South Korea has a two year mandatory service for all males which usually starts in the early twenties. After a decade or three of doing this you end up with a population that's very resistant to invasion and occupation.

Wouldn't be such a useful idea to those European countries who are having their national defense subsidized by the US. Why bother real a real military when you can just rely on someone else.

Excuse me?

KG normally we agree on many things so I'll give you a benefit of a doubt here. Have you served and if so for how long and what was your highest responsibility level?

What you speak of doesn't exist, or hasn't existed since the 70's. It mostly sounds like your experience is from watching those horribly inaccurate Hollywood productions or listening to grey beards recite tales of woe and wonder.

Never served, but that doesn't mean I don't know what goes on in boot camp. I do have many family members who served and told me what it's like to be in boot camp.

They don't just toughen you up physically, they also train you to take orders without question and without hesitation. Why else would they institute a collective thought in boot camp? Create a culture where you have to fall in line with the rest of your peers or everyone suffers? Where one person's *** up can cost/punish the rest of the troop?

And it still happens today (or at least, in the Marines, which a cousin of mine is a Lt. Sergeant).

To take orders without thought and question is a personal hell for me.

Once you make it out of boot camp, its just another job. You have tasks, you complete them. How you go about completing them is generally left to you. In combat its different of course, but in the everyday atmosphere, its just a regular job, with drills thrown in.

They are lying to you and I can say that right now.

There is no such thing as "Boot Camp", that was a very old term used during Vietnam due to the draf that is sometimes brought up by the media. Each service has it's own training regime tailored specifically for it's mission. The Army's is Basic Combat Training (BCT) which is a nine week period that every enlisted service member must go through prior to advancing into occupational specialty training. For the US Army this is Advanced Individual Training (AIT) and the duration varies based on the soldiers Military Occupational Specialty (MOS).



The purpose of BCT is to transform an individual who is used to a individualistic civilian way of thinking into a team orientated soldier/sailor/airman/marine. This is important because on a team, your success or failure is based on the entire team and not on any one individual. Frequently junior enlisted must be part of a mission where they don't have all the required information. Either for Operational Security (OPSEC) reasons or because there simply isn't sufficient planning time, complete mission information isn't passed down to the lowest members of a unit. Also unit functionality and morale is tied to unit discipline. Service members need to be disciplined and part of being disciplined is doing things that they either don't want to do, or don't completely understand. As long as the order is a Lawful order, then it must be followed as instructed. Now there is an entire discussion on the differences between Lawful and Unlawful orders, but I want to keep this sorta quick.


No, there is no "falling in line" unless you mean following laws, regulations and policies which the Constitution empowers officers to create.


Most *** certainly. The mistake of one individual can and will kill your entire team / squad / platoon. One person's *** up can get people killed. One person not properly performing a safety inspection (PMCS) on a vehicle can result in the deaths of everyone in that vehicle. You live as a team or you die as a team, this is the reality of armed conflict.


The USMC are the strictest out of all the US Armed Forces. This is due to their unique Expeditionary mission focus. They are the first in and require every member to be an infantryman first and their occupational specialty second. They are the US Military's door kickers, to go into extremely hostile territory and establish a beachhead / operational area for the other services to then enter into.

Finally I know someone's been bullshiting you because there is no such rank as "Lt. Sergeant". Those are not only separate ranks, but entirely separate rank structures. LT is short of Lieutenant which is the junior officer ranks. Sergent is the mid ~ senior grade enlisted ranks that is responsible for training, enforcing discipline and executing the mission / command policy of the officers. They are known as Non Commissioned Officers. Sergeants are also the "unofficial" trainers of junior officers. Officers have their own schools and training regimes. You information just screams "junior enlisted who never made it past E3 (Private First Class) and is making up ***to cover their own failures".

Here is a rank chart that should outline how utterly ridiculous that "Lieutenant Sergent" rank was.

http://deploymentpsych.org/system/files/member_resource/MCT_Provider_Resources_Military_Rank_Chart.pdf

For Army / Air Force NCO ranks start at E5 with Army Corporal being a rare exception (most go from E4 SPC to E5 SGT). For Marines / Navy NCO ranks start at E4. Each service use's a different promotion system.

Since the purpose of BCT is to train a civilian to perform the absolute basic of military functions there is no need to teach much leadership skills outside of the bare minimum. Later on in a service members career they will be sent to specialized schools that train leadership skills and they are encouraged to ask questions and try to understand the bigger picture. This gets into something known as "Commanders Intent" which a junior service member simply doesn't need to understand but for a leader it's absolutely critical.

And just so you know where this is coming from, I served eight and a half years in the US Army from 1999 to 2008. I came in a Private (PVT E1) and left as a Staff Sergent (SSG E6) with my highest responsibility being Section Team Chief and Platoon Sergent.

My advice to anyone who hasn't served past E3 is to just Shut The *** Up about military stuff. Your ignorance shines like a huge exclamation point. Hollywood portrays the US Military horrifically and inaccurately and the entire culture is misrepresented and misunderstood by the vast majority of the population. This isn't helped by the sheer number of washouts or crap soldiers who couldn't hack it and just spread bad ***around like Typhoid Mary.