Can somebody please explain this thread to me?

Raziaar

Raziaar

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Disclaimer: Yes, this is from the Hannity forums. I read these regularly to see all the faux outrage and other bullshit that goes on with the radical right. I like to be informed of what's going on with some of the most vocal and rabid individuals out there, so I can be a little less shocked when I hear about it elsewhere.

http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1243971

For all the Hannity Vets.

I found this on BlackFive: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2009/01/old-friends.html

Civilian Friends vs. Veteran Friends Comparisons

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you're too busy to talk to them for a week.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry on the same conversation you were having the last time you met.
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Have cried with you.
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it's yours.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
-------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will kick the crowd's ass that left you behind.
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Are for life.
----------------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have shared a few experiences...
VETERAN FRIENDS: Have shared a lifetime of experiences no citizen could ever dream of...
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when they think you've had enough.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say, 'You better drink the rest of that before you spill it!' Then carry you home safely and put you to bed...
----------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person who talks crap about you.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out OF THEM...for using your name in vain.
---------------------------------------------------
CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will ignore this.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will forward this.
----------------------------------------------------
A veteran - whether active duty, retired, or reserve, is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The Government of the United States of America' for an amount of 'up to and including my life'. . . and military wives are as much veterans as their spouses.
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I don't get it.

I don't get all the hostility, all the belittlement, all the ire directed at civilians, as if civilians are hogwash and the only thing keeping the country together, and the only thing decent in the country, are people who have a military record.

If we civilians are such worthless trash that the OP makes us out to be, why do we offer them any support at all? If they're intent on trying to make points that we're inferior human beings and friends in pretty much every way imaginable, why is it that we are expected to show our support and contribution to their efforts?


I respect the service our men offer in the name of this country, but anybody who believes in the bullshit of that post loses great deals of that respect.

It's one thing to show that veterans have great bonds with each other, unique that no civilian can match, it's an entirely different thing to do it in a way that mocks and condescends to the average citizen of this country that offers up support to the armed forces.
 
Ever seen Starship Troopers? They had this attitude.
 
I've seen things man. Things you wouldn't believe.
 
Those damn veterans can't understand the tight bond us civilians have. They haven't walked in our shoes.

Jeez, that thread is stupid. I just lol'd so hard at the smug Hannity photos at the top that I didn't really care.
 
VETERAN FRIENDS: carry you home safely and put you to bed...
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So fantastically homoerotic, I love it. The ellipsis implies so much. BEAUTIFUL
 
Raziaar said:
Disclaimer: Yes, this is from the Hannity forums. I read these regularly to see all the faux outrage and other bullshit that goes on with the radical right. I like to be informed of what's going on with some of the most vocal and rabid individuals out there, so I can be a little less shocked when I hear about it elsewhere.
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Holy crap man, how can you do it? I just skimmed some of the threads there and my blood is boiling. I could never visit that place on a regular basis.
 
David.Seth2 said:
Holy crap man, how can you do it? I just skimmed some of the threads there and my blood is boiling. I could never visit that place on a regular basis.
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There are several members on those boards who fight the good fight against the rest of the loons. I try looking for their posts where they routinely beat down the stupidity of the other posters, because otherwise it's just a god damn annoying echo chamber.

I don't have an account there, because when I made my first account, I was banned when somebody disagreed with what I had to say. Didn't do anything wrong either. They called me a retread(which I wasn't), and banned me.

Their retread argument is a complete defense mechanism, and it allows them to ban whoever they want, even if the person wasn't a retread(like me).
 
Basically they're all closet gays lolol.

Krynn72 said:
I've seen things man. Things you wouldn't believe.
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Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.
 
People sign up to a highly specialized club of people who by necessity need to bond.

They experience things others don't and face the stresses of combat together and so perhaps misguidedly develop a "us" and "them" attitude to folks back home who haven't lived in a sandy shit hole for months on end taking mortars.




That attitude is stupid and unfair to say the least, no-one makes you go off to war, and it doesn't make a "civvie" (hint, your a citizen of the united states to, jerkass) any less worthy of respect but yeah.


Its just a thing soldiers do. Its the same thing as say when you and a group of close friends go on an epic vacation. You won't expect others to understand or be in on that bonding exercise, no-one else shares those memories.

You can pity vets who take it to the extreme but that's them basically removing themselves from wider society anyway, so I don't personally see the point of being bothered by it.

An old tired out used up veteran who was used by his country for mostly dubious means is heavily effected by his service to the point he rejects society because he cant fit in it.

*shrug*

The world is full of assholes with bad attitudes and smug superiority complex's, at least soldiers have some excuses for it.



I don't get all the hostility, all the belittlement, all the ire directed at civilians, as if civilians are hogwash and the only thing keeping the country together, and the only thing decent in the country, are people who have a military record.
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You just don't understand, man. You weren't there, you weren't there!, when those mortars were flyin' in on us man, you didn't see poor mikey bleeding out holding in his guts man, you weren't there when we were having to kill AK weilding gook kids or die ourselves, you weren't there through all the shit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!...

In short they had a shit experience (go figure, war sucks, regardless of the time and place) and they have become angry. Angry at society they think used them, angry because they think people who stayed behind are cowards (and angry because they had to suffer that while others didn't), angry for the sake of being angry I dunno.

Like I said, pity them, but no need to get bothered by it.
 
It's unexplainable, tho a lot of 'thought' was put into it. -Much like Pat Buchanan's career.
 
nurizeko said:
Its just a thing soldiers do. Its the same thing as say when you and a group of close friends go on an epic vacation. You won't expect others to understand or be in on that bonding exercise, no-one else shares those memories.
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Yeah, but there is a place, like I said, for saying that somebody just doesn't understand, can't compare to the type of friendship they get from another person. Which is perfectly fine. But the way that thing is written and the whole nature about it is that it does so by mocking and attacking civilians.

Using your example I quoted, it's like that group of close friends saying, "You aren't capable of understanding a good friendship like ours" or, "You would never understand what kind of awesome trip that was because you <insert derogatory, offensive statement here>"

nurizeko said:
You just don't understand, man. You weren't there, you weren't there!, when those mortars were flyin' in on us man, you didn't see poor mikey bleeding out holding in his guts man, you weren't there when we were having to kill AK weilding gook kids or die ourselves, you weren't there through all the shit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!...
Click to expand...

Except what you said is understandable, but that's not how it's phrased in the OP things. It's not like what you said there is them attacking anybody, it's just them saying they can't understand. Which is fine. But if they go on and say things like, "You can't understand because you don't have the intelligence or the capacity for emotion and human feeling like we do!", then it gets more along the lines of the OP.

Like I said, pity them, but no need to get bothered by it.
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I will get ****ing bothered by it. It's bullshit. You don't protect me and then as a result get to treat me like some sort of imbecile piece of trash.

I would kick that type of asshole to the curb in favor of one who treats me with the same respect that I treat them with.
 
nurizeko said:
People sign up to a highly specialized club of people who by necessity need to bond.
Click to expand...

VETERAN FRIENDS: Have cried with you
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there's a lot of bonding right there ..mostly because someone forgot the lube






They experience things others don't and face the stresses of combat together and so perhaps misguidedly develop a "us" and "them" attitude to folks back home who haven't lived in a sandy shit hole for months on end taking mortars.
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they're no different than they were a decade ago. few soldiers in the west had seen combat back then yet the same type of [strike]homoerotic[/strike] camaraderie existed
 
When you take people with pre-existing problems into the military, this is what happens.
 
I think nuri got it right:
An old tired out used up veteran who was used by his country for mostly dubious means is heavily affected by his service to the point he rejects society because he cant fit in it.
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Except I think it happens to a great deal of young men too.

First you have the lack of shared experience - always a bit of a hurdle to deep relationships - between these vets and the rest of society.

Compounding that, most (not all) of the relationships we form are relationships of convenience and tolerance, not based on true mutual respect or interest. In everyday society, it's seen as bad form to demand too much of someone else, and becoming too dependent on another person is seen as a form of weakness or even parasitism. I suppose troops in combat situations, or even troops being prepared for combat situations that they might never be exposed to, are taught to actively seek those things from their fellows and so they become accustomed to a sense of camaraderie that most of us, rightly or wrongly, just consider... awkward.

Especially for those vets who are traumatised by conflict, the emotional dependency they place upon those close to them is likely not something that can easily be matched by the average office job drinking buddy, or even old friends from school. Furthermore, a lot of these guys get an appreciation of their own mortality that most people don't, which can cause them to perceive as meaningless a lot of the everyday grind that most people fill their time with - again, making it hard to relate to anyone around them. Some of the resentment these people feel is understandable, especially when an argument can be made to the effect that they perceive the reality of the world a bit more clearly than many civvies.

But yeah, that legitimate point has been dunked in the chocolate coating of the Hannity forums' retardation. As right-wing blowhards always do, they've framed it as some kind of crazy civilian lefties vs. noble conservative veterans conflict, and added a healthy dose of elitist (not to mention homoerotic) backslapping.
 
The OP isn't insulting to civilians, it just casts them in the role of the mundane stereotype, and the veteran as ideal.
 
Maturin said:
The OP isn't insulting to civilians, it just casts them in the role of the mundane stereotype, and the veteran as ideal.
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Oh come on...

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you're too busy to talk to them for a week.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry on the same conversation you were having the last time you met.
Click to expand...

Indication that civilians are by nature needy and relationally greedy individuals

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it's yours.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
Click to expand...

Civilians are somehow inherently irresponsible with things they borrow, and even indicative that they have an agenda to hold onto it as long as possible?

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.
Click to expand...

Well, not much to say about this one... but maybe if you opened your ****ing self up to anybody else but veterans due to your elitist attitude, maybe this would change.


CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will kick the crowd's ass that left you behind.
Click to expand...

Civilians are destined to fail you. They always go with the flow, even if that means abandoning you. Total bullshit. As for everything, it's an individual case by case basis, and veterans are certainly not immune to this sort of thing.


CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Are for life.
Click to expand...

So what does this say about life long friendships between civilians, or between a civilian and serviceman/woman? Are they some fairytale or some rare unicorn? Civilians not capable of maintaining decent lifelong friendships and relationships?

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when they think you've had enough.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say, 'You better drink the rest of that before you spill it!' Then carry you home safely and put you to bed...
Click to expand...

I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's just ****ing stupid.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person who talks crap about you.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out OF THEM...for using your name in vain.
Click to expand...

Okay... noble veterans, dastardly civilians? A civilian by nature is going to feel free to schmooze it up with some asshole who is denigrating their friend? ****ing ridiculous.


CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will ignore this.
VETERAN FRIENDS: Will forward this.
Click to expand...

You don't see me ignoring this, do you? I'm calling it out on the bullshit it is.

If things were worded better, and not intentionally denigrating, I wouldn't care and I would agree with it.
 
I think it's on Hannity forums.
I'd expect nothing less from any member.
 
Trying to comprehend the thoughts of the radical right is like dividing by zero: does not compute. Looking at the exchange/comparisons in the original post, I do detect a hint of an attempt at, I don't know how to describe it... self pandering? It's so thickly wrapped in conservative rhetoric it's almost unintelligible, but it seems like something that would wind up being forwarded among friends like a picture of a pony among pre-teen girls; a feel-good letter.
 
Sulkdodds said:
I think it's sweet.
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Ditto. :p


Anyway, this kind of attitude seems to be widespread. Understandable, because veterans really are the ones who risk their lives for their country's cause, and brave the storms of battle and the follies of war. This fact prolly makes them feel a bit superior to others.

I see it happen here as well: the strife between those who were conscripted and served their country for 3 years and those who avoided it or didn't serve.
 
Raziaar said:
If I did, I would show at least a modicum of respect for the people I was protecting and who give me respect and honor me.
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http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2963226&postcount=8

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2963530&postcount=27

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2963550&postcount=36

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2964242&postcount=63

JESUS RAZIAAR PAY ATTENTION DAMN IT OR YOU'RE GOING TO GET US ALL KILLED

I was making a joke.
 
When I was reading it I thought it meant veteran friends as a word for your really good close friends. I didn't realise that it was talking about war veterans :p
 
VirusType2 said:
If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
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I actually sat down and watched that whole movie recently.

God it was definitely a product of the 80's. The ending was alright though, just the whole movie was trying to be too....something, whatever that artsy fartsy 80's direction was.

Seemed a bit too long (or seemed that way) to me.

At least it was memorable, though I dunno if for good or bad reasons.
 
nurizeko said:
I actually sat down and watched that whole movie recently.

God it was definitely a product of the 80's. The ending was alright though, just the whole movie was trying to be too....something, whatever that artsy fartsy 80's direction was.
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you mean film noir reimagined in a science fiction setting. a cinematographer's wet dream. also, you may be a philistine
 
CptStern said:
you mean film noir reimagined in a science fiction setting. a cinematographer's wet dream. also, you may be a philistine
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I also hate art deco. :)

As for Blade Runner, alright concept, but the wrong decade for it. Plus the acting was poor and the script not that great either. It was trying a bit too hard me thinks.

It seemed most of the time to be an excuse for a) showing off the grimdark cityscape of the future, which is fine but got boring after a while, not to mention you expect to see more of the future then just Los Angeles hive, and B) really wanted me to buy Coca-Cola and whatever the constant Geisha adverts were peddling.

An interesting movie?, yes, a good movie?.

Meh.

But mostly, it didn't suit my tastes. :)
 
nurizeko said:
I also hate art deco. :)
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you [strike]maybe[/strike] are a philistine

As for Blade Runner, alright concept, but the wrong decade for it. Plus the acting was poor and the script not that great either. It was trying a bit too hard me thinks.
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the acting was poor? you couldnt get a better performance from most of it's principle players, Ford included

It seemed most of the time to be an excuse for a) showing off the grimdark cityscape of the future, which is fine but got boring after a while, not to mention you expect to see more of the future then just Los Angeles hive, and B) really wanted me to buy Coca-Cola and whatever the constant Geisha adverts were peddling.
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you completely miss the point of the signage in the movie; it's a stark contrast with the decay that is all around the new as settlers leave the earth for other colonies; it fits thematically

An interesting movie?, yes, a good movie?.

Meh.
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if you see it in a vacuum without understanding it's place in cinema at the time, or it's homage to 50's film noir/hard boiled detective then yes it might seem like a run of the mill science fiction movie however it's much much more than that

But mostly, it didn't suit my tastes. :)
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I have no problem with this; it's your opinion. however that doesnt mean it's the correct opinion because it's based on nothing more than gut feeling
 
I would add a picture of Frank from Penny Arcade (the crazy veteran), but the images don't seem to work.
 
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