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can we all just grow the fuck up and be done with this woke virtue signaling nonsense? this is the fucking military take your bull shit to some other government organization. i dont care if you're a gay pilot, woman pilot, trans pilot, they/them, just be good at your job. is that too much to ask? do whatever you want in your private life i don't care but stop pushing what sexuality you prefer/fuck in public JFC. rant over.

I don't think "deploying somewhere shitty" is really the problem. It's "deploying somewhere shitty for a lost cause no one believes in."

Gosh I miss her....she loved Going Downtown.

My conclusion after five years in the Air Force and six years at a defense contractor: The priorities of the military are as follows: 1.) Serve as a conduit for money into defense contractors 2.) Push woke agendas 3 through 353.) Other stuff 354.) Protect and defend the US. I think it's interesting and telling that the "WTF" thread so often ends up discussing all things Woke. Perhaps my tinfoil hat is too tight, but I really believe that the collection of increasingly absurd Woke movements is designed to keep people enraged and otherwise distracted from the real concerns in modern society. Everyone's mental bandwidth is taken up by trying to understand how trans rights and other absurdities appear to be the biggest news story of the day, while meanwhile the country descends further and further into a quasi-oligarchy. Half of the country is scratching their head and wondering if local libraries hosting Drag Queen Reading Hour is really a thing, while the other half is getting ready to go march in support of Drag Queen Reading Hour.

The left has defined themselves over the past few decades as the crusader party. Problem is, they ran out of crusades. The causes will get progressively dumber as they chase the high they felt from fighting racism, securing gay rights, protecting the environment, etc. How ironic. They created a better world and are miserable in it.

I do care about “trans pilot, they/them.” I sympathize with their plight, but I do not believe that anyone with gender dysphoria should be allowed to serve, especially in any role where others’ safety is concerned (such as aircrew). Last I checked, it’s still considered a mental disorder in the DSM (I’m sure that will change when our woke society demands it). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yesterday's reflective belt is today's preferred pronouns in the email signature block.

Yeah, those of us ~40 and older have seen it happen before our eyes. It's interesting to watch the implosion of some of these "movements." What once was a real, meaningful cause evolves further and further into absurdity. LBG became LGBT in the '90s. I saw LGBTQIA+ for the first time the other day. I watched the military change from an outright ban on LGB members, to "Don't ask, don't tell," to "Ask, tell, we don't care." That should have been the pinnacle, an acknowledgement of how far we progressed as a society. Instead, now we have the never-ending focus on all things LGBTQIA+, along with arguments about absurdities such as "should transsexuals be allowed to serve, and which bathroom should they use?" The environmental movement was similar. We came such an incredibly long way from the bad old days of the 1970s. The modern automobile is a triumph of engineering. Modern industrial pollution controls are incredible. If anyone really gave a shit about the environment today, they'd put their focus on how emerging economies like China and India pollute in a fashion that's 100's of times worse than anything ever done in this country. Instead, we get people on an absurd quest to ban carbon dioxide emissions and forever shouting about the boogeyman of "global warming." The battle against racism is the same. So much progress in the US since the 1960s. However, it can't end, we need to continue to find more and different groups to battle for, leading to the most recent chimera of "AAPI hate," as in "Hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities." If you haven't heard a whole lot about it, it might be because it turns out that scooping everything from the eastern boarder of Europe and Africa all the way to the West coast of the Americas into one giant catch-all racial category is regarded as a little difficult. Doesn't change the fact that when you google AAPI, you get a whole page about AAPI rights, AAPI discrimination, battling for AAPI equity, etc. It's a racial "group" that exists only to provide something for the Woke to battle for. If there is a glimmer of hope, it's that these movements will all grind to a halt and implode as a result of their own inner conflict, and attempts to "out-woke" each other. This recent Intercept article is timely: Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History. I'm not the world's biggest Bernie Sanders fan, but I'm not entirely a critic either. This quote kinda sums up the article (emphasis mine):

What a finish

You meant to say bitter world.

Affirmative action at its finest: Gina Ortiz.

When I went to PIT for T-6s to Laughlin in 2016 9 of the 18 who were supposed to show up 7 day opted

Sad news for the air show circuit. Prayers for all involved. Shockwave Accident

You’re overthinking it. These people are exactly as insane as they appear to be. Col Coyle actually believes that diversity (not unity) is strength. That the very diverse Afghan AF just met their end by the not-diverse Taliban has no impact on his mindlessly chanting LGBTQ+ dogma.

The ginger outside with a mask is awesome

There’s no end to it and no amount of appeasement/tolerance is enough. I mean look at the internal strife within the alphabet people movement. The original gay pride/rights movement has been completely overtaken by the modern “other”. Look at the current pride flag for crying out loud.

Wow, the 552nd Air Control Wing is the LGBTQ+ gift that keeps on giving..... Article link here. Some excerpts quoted below. Capt. Gregory St Clair's comment is especially interesting. I struggle to think of anyone in the entirety of the DoD who does not know the LGBTQ+ community exists. Indeed, one would have to be living in an underground bunker inside of a faraday cage to have missed the incessant amount of posturing the DoD does regarding LGBTQ+.....

Yeah, they define themselves by the conflict they seek, so are not content without a further cause.

They will eat themselves internally. This was on the local reddit page.

DSM still stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It may not be a “disorder” but it’s still in the textbook on disorders. Not arguing with you at all, it just indicates that the controlling body is slowly bowing to woke pressure. I would guess that Body Dysmorphic Disorder is still classified as a disorder, and while it certainly has ranges, I’m sure there are many diagnosed with BDD who don’t want anything as extreme as gender affirming surgery. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DSM 5 removed the word “disorder” from gender dysphoria in 2013 to remove the “stigma” associated with disorders. Though almost every other syndrome is listed as a disorder, including Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I can’t quite figure out how to account for America’s 180° turnabout in the perception of transgender people in the last decade, nor can I quite figure out what entity pushed so hard for the change.

Guessing that plane can’t deploy to the Middle East anymore. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

World War II nose art is generally forbidden because some think it objectifies others or celebrates violence. Is not the emblem below equally problematic because it reduces people to simply a set of sexual proclivities?

Hopefully this is HIMARS continuing to get shit done.

Here's an unpopular opinion: You shouldn't have to invest in the stock market to improve your financial situation. There is one constant over the last three recessions. The retail investors always get cleaned out. Look up how Robin Hood makes money. The further we get from being an economy that rewards productivity, the worse this is going to get. Banking should not be the easiest way to become a millionaire.

I am in favor of providing support to women who carry their babies to full term. Actually, a lot of people are and operate crisis pregnancy centers around the country, completely without taxpayer support!! However, lately they’ve been the recipients of a great deal of arson, vandalism, and other cowardly forms of attack from the champions of “choice.” And since I’m using quotes, I’d also like to give a big shout out to the Supreme Court for their recent ruling that has, at least for the past few days, granted the American Left the freedom to use the word “woman” again! Because “menstruating person” was extremely “offensive” to “persons” who do other stuff besides walking around bleeding everywhere all the time.

Back to WTF:

Neat. But societies don't work through anecdote. You can pull yourself up by the bootstraps all you want (I certainly did as I sit comfortably in the upper 10%), but the distribution of wealth doesn't lie, and the boomers leveraged trillions of future wealth into their pockets, so now their kids have to pay more for housing, education, transportation, and investments. All while real wages have stagnated or declined. But hey, we can get TVs pretty cheap... And while all this has happened, the upper echelon of society has engineered weapons-grade blinders to avoid the unpleasantness of the increasingly desperate reality of those in the bottom half. It's much more comfortable that way, until the proletariat come knocking on your door with their pitchforks and torches. Most intelligent animals have a very finely-tuned sense of fairness, and brother, it hasn't been fair for a while. COVID was the single greatest transfer of wealth to the top earners in history. Most people can't follow the complicated chain of financial implements used to move money from the middle-class pockets into the investment accounts of the rich(Robinhood, Bitcoin, etc), but they can still smell a scam somewhere in there. What's amazing to me is how the conservatives have been asleep at the wheel. They seem so fucking proud of their non-representative success stories, like yours, that they have completely missed the raping and pillaging of our capitalist system by politicians, foreign actors, and the financial industry. Those who *do* are now subordinated to those who manipulate. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll know very soon. The chickens have all come home to roost at the same time, and the "smart money" (insiders) are already positioning themselves for the pain. I expect they'll all be on CNBC shilling their holdings to the retail investors before they become much less valuable. The final scam before the bill comes due.

His food requirements are going to put an even bigger strain on their logistics. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not arguing the merits of your position, but the reasoning you're using. 1) We aren't a Democracy, we are a Republic, with democratic elements. The majority opinion that matters is the majority of States...not population. Without looking at the cross-tabs and the sampling methodology of the un-named polls you're referencing, I'm assuming most of your top-line number here is concentrated in CA and NY and not representative of the country as a whole. 2) The Supreme Court isn't designed to factor in popular opinion, it only uses the Constitution as it's grading criteria. Its apolitical, and as such, does not have a charter to reflect the 'will of the people' directly. It only reflects the 'will of the people' through deciding the constitutionality of specific cases before it. It also does not advise elected officials on possible constitutionality prior to policy/statute enactment. There may be an argument to pass some sort of Right to Privacy act that was used as the foundation for the original Roe case in the 1970s. But regardless, it's an issue that needs a legislative solution, not a court driven one. Call your Congressman, both locally in your state of residence, and in D.C.

Of course it is real, the question is how do you deal with it? Do you crush the American economy in an empty effort to send a message when China, India and others thumb their nose at the issue? The numbers from the past two years are skewed given COVID and shutdowns, but in general U.S. emissions have been declining while China and India were increasing. And please tell me how crushing production within the U.S. then begging Saudi, Venezuela and Iran to increase production is solving the problem? Come on Man! I would rather see us be energy independent, keep our economy strong and use the taxes and lease payments to fund a Manhattan Project style approach to capturing, limiting, removing carbon from the atmosphere. One of the great things about capitalism and the free market is it drives efficiency and problem solving.

The Lord's work is best done by St. Javelin. AaaaAAaaAmmmeeeen. 😄 slava ukraini.

Lol if you’ve ever personally dealt with SWOs you’d know it never did.

Oh how short our memories are. A few months ago there was near universal lamenting on this very forum about how we entered Afghanistan without a clear justification, plan, or end state. And surprise! It ended in complete disaster. But don't worry we'll pin that squarely on Biden as if trump or literally anyone else had a more coherent exit strategy. A few short months later and people are chomping at the bit to insert themselves into a near peer potential nuclear confrontation over a country they just found on a map and just realized the blue and yellow flankers weren't also Russian ones. But I bet you understand decades of russian bitterness and resentment and have a perfect grasp of exactly how citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship are being brainwashed by their government. So let's go ahead and get super involved in the only place on earth that's a more reliable quagmire shitshow than the Middle East..

That ain’t no lie. A little over one year and it far exceeds any possible damage a dem can claim trump (one of the most successful presidents in history by accomplishment metrics) caused.

Bro, I was called a simp for Putin. Get the f*** out of here with your non-sense and go reflect on your hypocrisy.