supersquirrel
I think it is important to recognize that even from the beginning this frontier fantasy was a convenient, genocidal lie that told a nice whitewashed (or rather bleached) story about the “Wild West” not already being the settled home of human beings.
This aspect of the US is in perfect harmony with the process of genocide being enacted by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza.
Covid was a summoning of this new era of normalized violence disguised as a pandemic.
The genocide of Palestinians is another summoning for an era of mass scale violence and honestly it scares the shit out of me.
Most older people don’t get it, but in my lifetime I have seen the value of human lives drop through the floor as centrists smile along and nod their heads to the thinly disguised rhetoric of fascism and that can really only lead one very ugly place.
The future will be full of death on a mass scale, the rich made sure of that.
… I feel like you could take out a an A-10 with just shoulder launched AA missiles? I would much prefer to be a helicopter in a high threat environment than an A-10 since you can more easily hide behind terrain as cover. I mean really, the difference between life an death is going to be the couple degrees of cover given by a ridge you get from hovering as absolutely close as you can to the ground as you get ready to launch a TOW… you don’t want to be an airplane in that kind of environment unless you are really fucking fast.
I mean, I could see the A-10 being useful in a near-peer conflict unmanned piloted by a remote drone operator in a swarm of covering/scout drones with purposefully worse radar/heat signatures.
The remote drone operator could fly the A-10 employing a nuanced strategy of “Fuck As Much Shit Up As I Can In The Shortest Amount Of Time Until I Get Blown Up” (not gonna write that acronym out, but trust me it is in plenty of DOD whitepapers) military strategy developed by Henry Kissinger during his time at the Rand Corporation. The idea wouldn’t really be to take too many airframes home, but if it is WW3 than I mean who is worrying about retirement!
idk I think the A-10 is more of a trad-CAS influencer than a genuine warplane suited for near-peer conflicts in contested airspace at this point, it is weird and I am pretty sure it isn’t a good idea but the algorithm likes the brand so shrugs I think the successor to the A-10 needs to lean into the whole influencer lifestyle thing from the get go.
Make it look cool and design an advanced network of escort drones that constantly orbit the aircraft ready to launch into action at the first sign of content and beginning taking selfies of the aircraft.
Maximum impact will be achieved from the pilot having access to a social media avionics suit complete with a state-of-the-art “A-10 Trad-CAS” reply-by-wire guy Automated Post Authoring System customized from software developed by the CIA to help topple vulnerable democratic governments in central and south america.
I really want to figure out how to play Xonotic on mobile using cod-mobile style claw touchscreen controls…
What? This is true but that’s not my point at all. I simply don’t care if they are military weapons or not. The entire point of the second amendment is for the citizenry to pose a threat against tyranny, which could include the military. Civilian ownership of effective weapons is part and parcel with that.
Do you really think an assault rifle is going to give you that critical edge against an f-16 or armored fighting vehicle vs a hunting style rifle? What kind of war do you think you will be fighting that this would actually make a meaningful difference?
Weapons were entirely different things when the second amendment was made, that is your interpretation of the second amendment that a fully kitted ar-15 with high capacity magazines fits the definition of what the writers of the constitution had in mind when the wrote the second amendment is and frankly it doesn’t matter too much after a certain point if the writers of the constitution wrote this part of the law without ANY of the modern context of how much more violence a single person with a weapon can do in a short time.
You’ve never fired a gun, have you? There is a massive amount of misinformation out there, and that’s not how any modern firearms made for the civilian market (including AR-15s) operate.
Yes I have, save your “civilian ar-15s aren’t automatic or burst fire so they aren’t technically assault rifles or military weapons” nonsense for someone else you can more easily pull the “bro have you even shot a real gun” condescending card on, an assault rifle is more effective and lethal especially in the hands of some panicking chud like Kyle Rittenhouse if it is only capable of single fire except in the case of a driveby style hit. Exhibit A: most modern military doctrines.
I don’t wear gear to the range but I know folks who do, and also go to faire and belong to a group who likes to fight with foam swords. From my perspective, it’s really the same deal.
When was the last time a bunch of rennaisance faire nerds turned on the news and saw that someone else had just murdered 30 kids in a school dressed up in the same kind of costume they all like to wear… with the same brand and model of “foam” sword? … and then just kept on dressing up in that same costume as the bodies of children pile up after school shootings happen over and over again repeatedly to the point that it feels fucking normalized as something that just happens ?
That is the difference, or at least one of them.