politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
So Barron might be "too tall" to serve his country...? and even if he's not I'm sure we'll find out real quick that bone spurs run in the family.
It's so insane that it has always been standard practice for wealthy and powerful men to start wars then refuse to send their own children to fight, but it's especially egregious watching the Trump administration carry this shit out. The level of planning leading up to this to create another endless war seems so obvious in hindsight.
•Hegseth's "anti-woke" military speech
•Elimination of government loans for education (even for nursing and medical school, so only the wealthy can afford an education, let alone a deferment. If you're not born rich you have 2 options: take out private loans at a huge interest rate or join the army. Sign yourself over to the oligarchs one way or the other.)
•Up the country's birth rates (gotta gradually replace them as they die by the thousands at war)
•Openly admitting your goal is to eliminate the entire department of education. Because you don't need an education when your entire path birth to death has already been laid out for you:
You're born to serve while Trump and his oligarchs sit in their country club and move you around like a piece of plastic on a game board.
Life is hard and it seems like people are constantly fighting and dying around you from the moment you're born. It's all you know. Everyone around you is sick, destitute, and miserable. There are no jobs. You have no education. You know nothing but struggle and see no future for yourself.
The army is the only hand reaching out and offering to help pull you up, so you grab it.
Then you either die thousands of miles away from your home or you come back and spend the rest of your life wounded, without a doubt mentally and pretty often physically.
If you try to speak out against it or warn others, you're accused of being "woke." There is no hesitation to show you how little your rights, that you were told you were fighting for, mean to the people who sent you to fight.
Honestly the only perk of feudalism is that the princes would have to go to war. Unfortunately it was prone to make them worse leaders by way of trauma, but hey, sometimes they died.
How much they actually fought depended a lot on the prince/duke.
Some led their troops into battle, some directed from the rear and had knights to defend them if the battle went poorly enough that the enemy engaged with them directly (with some fighting to the death from there, others surrendering to be ransomed, and some being killed whether or not the fought or surrendered), others fled as soon as they thought the battle wasn't going their way (which often caused their side to lose even if it had a chance).
And some had a friend or subordinate lead their army while they maybe led a different army or maybe just chilled in the comfort of whatever castle they were in.
Or they named someone else the governor of a certain area and then left subduing whatever was going on there to them, often just naming the other party the governer if their first candidate sucked (which wasn't rare, since it was mostly nepotism).
I always figured knights just kind of walked around hacking up the poor people with sharpened sticks to pieces
Not really. Firstly, knights were heavy cavalry. By the time they're walking in battle shit's gone sideways and there's a decent chance they're injured either by whatever knocked them off their horse, falling off their horse, or the whole process of their horse getting injured or killed and going down. And in that vein, the pointy sticks are about stopping the horse, not the knight. A pike wall (as well as fortifications like ditches) creates areas of denial for knights and danger to their horses. A bunch of poor people with long sticks are how you stop knights.
Medieval warfare in open fields was largely about archer volleys attempting to wear each other down and to damage pike walls enough that they break formation allowing knights to ride in and rout (basically come in and kill everyone). Pike formations outlasted armored knights with the rise in quality and availability of firearms simply being integrated into their formations. This is how you get the Renaissance era walls of people lining up to shoot each other.
At least that's what I remember from various learning of it, definitely not an expert.
O captain! My captain!
I grew up in a very rural area. This describes the situation there decades ago.
I don't have exact numbers, but I would say something like 10-15% of my class actually went on to higher education. Probably less, and definitely less than that finished.
Very, very many went into some branch of the military. When the first war on Iraq started I figured that might be our generation's Vietnam and that many of my graduating class would be fodder for it. Luckily for them, that ended up not being the case.
In any case, songs like Born in the USA and Fortune Son really land pretty hard...