Pfft. Everyone knows that Janet Reno is a wookiee. She may have been a male wookiee but it is certainly a stretch to call her a man. Unless of course she identifies that way. Then you must call her a man. On a related note Limbaugh once made a joke referring to Chelsea Clinton as a dog. He made a point to apologize to Hillary Clinton when he had a chance to meet her. I wonder if McCain ever apologized.

Also worth noting that this is largely a 20th century phenomenon. Even into the 20th century, when it came to world affairs, at the top of the list of concerns was Britain's ability to interfere with the American economy. Fear about British provocations from the north wasn't uncommon. (And you can add to that list fears that Britain would support the Confederates during the Civil War.)

You're right that there still existed some cavalry units, but the bulk of the army of each European power was modernized. In 1914 your typical British soldier would be in olive drab, with a cloth cap and a magazine-fed Enfield rifle. They were modern militaries.

It's true that the European powers should have paid more attention to the technological advances of the Civil War. Advances in reconnaissance technology is a good example. Or realizing the importance of digging in, and coordinated pushes supported by heavy artillery fire. The notion of dramatic bayonet charges was dying by the end of the Civil War, but stayed with European generals for too long.

But it's not as if America could have walked in at 1914 and easily slaughtered anyone they faced. Technology had gone far past anything the Americans had seen, and European armies could field the new technology with great effectiveness early in the war. Americans had no experience fighting against machine gun fire, chemical weapons, submarines, or modern inventions in field artillery. They also had no significant Navy presence. The civil war was fought mostly with Napoleons and Coehorns. By WW1 artillery was different. They could field artillery faster. Guns could fire farther. They could reload faster. They hit harder and with explosive shells. The German army had developed tactical and logistic doctrines for deploying artillery that gave them a continuous edge throughout the war, even after the Americans joined. The Germans had a ton of good artillery pieces and mixed guns to enable continuous suppression inbetween harder hitting shells. The United States would have had no idea how to counteract these things because of the Civil War. They maybe wouldn't have tried many of the suicidal bayonet charges that the European generals did, but they wouldn't have any idea how to punch through the German lines.

Plus, it's not as if the European generals didn't learn. It maybe took them too long, but by early 1916 European armies had pretty much fully adapted to trench warfare. Tactics, technology and doctrine still changed, but I'd say any foreknowledge the United States would have had about this style of war was leveled out before they entered the war.

It's also worth noting there were dozens of cavalry units fielded by all armies in WW2. Horses were still the primary way of moving stuff around.

I really wish my Canadian great grandfather shared more stories about the war. He fought from 1914 to 1918. Apparently he refused to speak about the war other than saying it was the worst thing you could imagine.



Yes, the United States could field a very big army if pressured to at the time. In terms of actual ground strength, though, their numbers were never actually there. I guess if we're theorizing which army could potentially be the strongest at each point, the United States is pretty high up.

You could even argue that the European powers understood machine gun tactics better than the Americans, where colonial powers saw combat use of the Maxim gun. The Union fielded some gatling guns but they were more experimental and didn't see widespread use.

The French still wore traditional uniforms even after WWI began...

What about the Franco-Prussian War? Surely that was another conflict where European armies had to modernize their armies in order to gain an edge. Or the Russo-Japanese War... (then again, the Russians were hopelessly backwards when WWI broke out.)

The United States did during the Civil War too..?

Traditional uniforms made sense by the theories of war up to that time. If you can't identify your own troops, your artillery are prone to friendly fire.

It was not really clear before the war that the increased accuracy due to rifling and machine gun fire would make blending in better for survival than avoiding friendly fire.

I don't think that the French having blue uniforms means the United States had the best army in the world.

Also, films like The Patriot do a disservice to history. Because it paints this image that the British were these dumbasses walking around in brightly colored clothing, while the smart Americans participated in guerrilla fighting or whatever and used camouflage.

The Revolutionary war was won like all wars were at that time, using the same warfare methods. The United States had competent military leaders (Benedict Arnold is a great example), but didn't discover some amazing new tactic nobody had ever tried before.

And in key battles, yeah, friendly fire was one of the biggest things to avoid. Because it meant not only were you hitting your own men, it meant your artillery wasn't hitting the enemy. It didn't take long for tacticians to figure out that identifying clothing was a good idea.

Of course, that logic only extends when rifles or muskets aren't accurate past 50 yards. Once that changes, the organizational requirements change.

What I'm really saying is the "hur bright colors" thing is a meme that betrays an understanding of military tactics. Like "hur invade Russia in winter" or "hur French surrender".

EDIT. See here.

Also, Heath Ledger wasn't really Mel Gibson's son, and neither was actually alive in the 18th century. Shenanigans!!

It was primarily won because it was a logistical nightmare for the British fighting a war on the other side of the Atlantic using 18th century means of transportation and communication. They never really had a chance.

The French didn't do it for utilitarian reasons. They did it because conservative/traditionalist politicians in power believed that it was important for national pride, despite the cost in lives to the French people. They did it because they didn't see preventing French citizens from dying in the trenches as a higher priority than honoring traditions of warfare.




I'm not suggesting that it is. I'm only suggesting that, in regards to this passage:



In the case the French, a stubborn attachment to tradition prevented "modernization" according to the same standards that you claim the British army had modernized by the outbreak of the war.

Populism is ruining America.

http://gothamist.com/2018/09/10/nixon_bagel_order_barf.php

world is a ****

I mean, that is a ****ty bagel.

They changed from red pants during 1914, but saw blue uniforms as good camouflage against blue skies. The "traditionalist" thing carried no weight after a bit of combat. The idea that the maintained highly impractical uniforms in spite of heavy deaths isn't substantiated by the evidence.



I'm not entirely convinced that there was a stubborn attachment to tradition that persisted very long into the war. I recognize that pretty much every army was unprepared for the war and many bad choices were made. I think by early 1915 many of the traditionalist ideas had faded. Except for the belief that strength and determination in pushes could gain land. That seemed to persist through much of 1915.

The thing here though is the treatment we give to early WW1 generals is a massive case of "hindsight is 20/20". War had a centuries long tradition holding onto the notion of coordinated pushes and cavalry charges to encircle. I mean centuries. That was 101 doctrine how you pushed and gained ground in war. It was time tested beyond belief.

Why shouldn't generals expect it to work? And even despite it not working, what was the alternative? They had no idea how to gain ground in this new war. It took all countries involved years to decipher how to properly use combined arms tactics to break enemy lines.

In the Civil War, cavalry charges were still the primary shock attack. The Union was still cleaning up battles in 1865 with cavalry charges. The United States learned all of their tactics fighting in WW1 from English and French commanders, who knew much more about the realities of WW1 combat than the Americans did.

People at the time simply had no ****ing clue how to deal with machine gun fire and artillery. We look back and think it's awful, and that they were stubborn. But I think that's our biased perception of history.

Sure, fine, but acknowledge that that's quite different from what we've been discussing up to this point. Up until this point, we had been talking about military modernization that had occurred before the outbreak of WWI, not during (and as a result of) it.

Okay, then sure that's an accurate description of the years prior to the war.

Just to be clear, we're arguing about this stuff for its own sake, right, and not arguing about whether the U.S. was strongest in the major categories?

Ya

I think you’re subverting the will of the people. To try to control the presidency while not the president you have millions who voted for this. The nation and the government in America are one thing. The will of the people is the will of the government and vice versa. The modern structure of the White House is a higher form of democracy in which, by virtue of the people’s mandate, the government is exercised authoritatively while there is no possibility for interference, to obliterate and render ineffective the execution of the nation’s will. Make America great again!

Fascist Jones!

OK, I admit that most of that is something Goebbels said (with a couple nouns changed). But the first two sentences are actually something that Don Trump, Jr. recently said in an interview!

*thinking emoji*

A very normal brain drew this image.

What the **** is this some kind of SJWs did 9/11 ****?

Where was Obama on 9/11?

To put this brain in perspective, here is another brilliant tweet of his.

I never thought that aggressive display of tribal behavior could actually be so bizarre and sad that I'd be cringing out of pity:

Reminds me of this pinnacle of human intellectual achievement:

[quote=Ann Coulter]
AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER
June 25, 2014




I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.


(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.


In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."


Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.


(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.


(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.


Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.


(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.



Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.


(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!


(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.


I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.


(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.


(8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.


Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.


Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?


(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."


The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)


Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.


Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.


If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.
[/quote]

Honestly, the thing all this stuff has in common is that it's just childish trolling. I would hazard a guess that all the people we've been discussing are perfectly healthy. They simply choose to be obnoxious simply because they can.

Is thinking of new ways to piss off liberals any less healthy an activity to spend walking home from the bus station than thinking about whether not an infinite series converges? They're both just diversions from the primary, survival-related demands made on the human brain.

I didn't read the Coulter article so this is coming out of left field, but if what was meant by American exceptionalism was nothing more than that we really really hate soccer I think that'd be okay

pfft, baseball partisan shows his true colors

And we only eat Freedom Fries

Play baseball or gtfo

I think what American exceptionalism means to the rest of the world is that we are "special"

Do tweets that virtually nobody sees really bother you that much?

That's an interesting question. I'm wondering how Reid found that Twitter account, haha. Probably some leftwing subreddit

If a right-winger says obnoxious **** alone in a forest do the libs get owned if there's not a lib to hear it?

I like how the new insult is to call people betas. The irony is that the ones doing the name calling are omegas.

Only if really bored liberals who derive perverse pleasure from being flagellated succeed in reconstructing the signal of the obnoxious **** by means of highly sensitive instruments provided by LICO, (the Laser Interferometer Conservative-Wave Observatory).