Majority of Democrats now hold favorable views of mass-murdering simpleton George W Bush

False dichotomy. The Levees were not the reason Nagin and Blanca were at fault…

Nagin was at fault for not evacuating the exceptionally vulnerable 9th ward, the retirement homes hospitals and all the other extremely vulnerable elements of NO. Instead Nagin’s plan was to leave the buses in their parking lots. Nagin was also at fault for telling people to come to the super dome instead of evacuating. These and other mistakes directly led to so many vulnerable people drowning instead of being safely evacuated.

As for Blanco her fault was to stick her head in the sand before Katrina hit instead of requesting the assistance of National Guard elements from other states but waiting until after Katrina had hit.

I’ve already detailed this elsewhere.

In any case, levee failure was not the cause for the flooding of central NO, it was the failure of the walls of the canals that led all the way north on lake Ponchartrain to downtown NO. NO being below sea level, they installed pumps downtown to evacuate rainwater during storms. The pumped water used the canals to drain into Ponchartrain but were recognised by everyone with a brain to be weak points in NO’s defences against flooding. The CoE proposed gates at the Ponchartrain shore but were blocked by idiotic homeowners.

Note that I didn’t blame Nagin/Blanco for the canal failures but the homeowners near Lake Ponchartrain who sued to prevent the installation of gates on the ends of the canals that would have prevented lake Ponchartrain’s waters from drowning NO if the canal walls failed.

Lastly, the CoE DID predict that the levees of the lower 9th ward and that the canal walls were vulnerable and the federal government had proposed funding many times to fix these most urgent problems. The problem is that after seeing corrupt local governments embezzle >50% of the funds allotted to enrich themselves on all recent major works, the USG would only fund 50% of all future projects and corrupt locals were still hoping for a new gravy train and refused.

Had Nagin evacuated those who he knew were most at risk and Blanco better prepared, flooding or no, there would have been little loss of life.

The regular Army is the spearpoint of our army. The reserves constitute most of the infrastructure behind them and the National Guard are the Military Police, Disaster response & peacekeeping specialists.

Not recognising that the regular army is composed of those who are there to go to war for the rest of us is just sticking your head in the sand and probably forming false ideas on what they can do. It’s not propaganda to recognise that regular army troops are warriors, not peacekeepers or disaster response specialists.

My point wasn’t about responsibility but to prove that GW was a piece of shit in how he responded (him being the subject of this post). You haven’t been able to prove to me otherwise. I even admitted the chain of events as you described and pointed out he still acted in a selfish manner that hurt people but you have no interest in even mentioning it in reply and then call me Trump-like. I wont call you ignorant but a person with an agenda and you clearly have chosen to protect him in your mind despite evidence that he deserves none.

1 Like

By showing to all that you refuse facts in judging you prove nothing & merely expose yourself as a bigot.

1 Like

If you are a true Klingon, yes, otherwise, probably not.
I can find hardly any commonalities between the series’ “Klingons” and the proud and honorable warrior people from TNG and DS9. But on the other hand, the series features some of the best-pronounced Klingon ever spoken on screen.

Pretending we’re on topic now… you might like the series because it’s definitely not Trump-ish. My pet peeve: while it does very well at representing a broad range of American society, it again pretends that the only language besides English is Klingon, the language of the Totally Evil Enemy. it’s a bit too Bush-ish for me - everything seems to be about war, and the “enemy” is depicted as completely inhuman so there’s no doubt that they need to be killed.

So maybe this is on-topic after all. Some people are all upset about Trump talking about “shithole countries”, but are perfectly willing to forgive Bush for turning a whole country into a shithole by invading it with no provocation. Likewise, I am sure many people will see The Orville’s politically incorrect humor as a bigger issue than ST:D’s depiction of war against a complete dehumanized enemy.

But in the end, ST:D is a well-made show that I will probably continue watching…

Recognizing that America’s disaster recovery specialists are elsewhere is not propaganda, true. That’s not what I was getting at. I think that the use of the term “warrior” instead of “soldier” is either propaganda, or maybe just another symptom of the rampant militarism in American society. Either way, it should be avoided.

If you label you soldiers “warriors”, you are invoking a dangerous image. A warrior is a proud man who sees war as a way of life, as an end to itself. Once you are part of the Proud Warrior Culture, you don’t complain if the most heroic deed your Warriors ever did for you is to go the neighboring village, kill all men there and take the women as a prize.

Seriously, the American public is too proud of their military strength. Americans are far too likely to think that military force is the solution to a particular problem. Soldiers are celebrated as “warriors” and as “heroes”, it’s a patriotic duty to “support the troops” and it’s a fundamental dogma that they are “fighting for our freedom”. America is (mostly) a democracy, so does it surprise anyone that America ends up fighting way too many wars?
It’s fun to romanticize a “proud warrior culture” on Star Trek, but allowing yourselves to be one is more toxic than most of the things Trump has ever said. It actually kills people.

3 Likes

Thanks for the spoiler free analysis… I look forward to seeing it, despite the obvious problems.

Back on topic, maybe we can see the redemption of Bush in the same way we see the redemption of older Trek series that some people complained about back when it was on? Part of it is nostalgia and part of it is having something worse right in front of you?

And this is why I like studying popular culture, because it can tell us about what’s going on at the time it’s on, if that makes sense. TOS tells us about some people’s hopes for a future not marred by racism, and how far a united humanity can actually go (wagon train to the stars and all). DS9 (my personal favorite series) had a good deal to say about some events during the Cold War (decolonization and trauma, primarily) and asks some good questions about the institutions built to carry out the cold war. That’s one reason I do look forward to watching Discovery, to see what is got to say about our current moment.

4 Likes

For people who see it that way, definitely. But it’s more complex than that, because it’s hard to tell what is actually better. Trump has killed fewer people than Bush, so we might as well call him the better president so far. And ST:D does a great job by innovating on how a Star Trek story can be told.
For Star Trek, I find that through a lens of nostalgia, I pay more attention to the overall tone of a series, and less about whether it was actually watchable.
For Trump, we notice he’s a buffoon, and we notice that by comparison, Bush was obviously smart and civilized. And as Trump hasn’t started a new war yet, and Bush’s shifting of the American Overton window to include torture is hard to outdo, we aren’t reminded of Bush’s crimes that often.
I am afraid that he breaks so many taboos that in the here and now, people will stop watching what he’s really doing.

That makes a lot of sense. For me, not being American, it’s also interesting to observe the “relative motion” of American and Austrian/European culture with respect to each other. Care for a new thread?

1 Like

Si vis pacem, para bellum. The men at the spearpoint are very rarely raging aggressives and appreciate that war is the last step to be taken in resolving conflicts especially today where so many have direct experience of war and what you lose in it. They are however proud at being the best in what they do: fight wars. That is what they do and it isn’t an exaggeration nor pejorative to use the word that describes them best: warriors.

it’s easy to see that you have little/no direct knowledge of the american military when you state that “the most heroic deed your Warriors ever did” is “to go the neighboring village, kill all men there and take the women as a prize”. Consider that all conclusions arguing from a false base are false.

1 Like

I should have been more clear. The “neighboring village” thing did not refer to the US military directly, but to the meaning/connotations of the term “warrior”. A “warrior” is precisely the raging aggressive who sees war as the first step and the victory dance as the second.
A “soldier” is the one who prepares for war because he wants peace. That is why most civilized countries prefer to have “soldiers” and ministries/departments/etc. “of defence”. And that is why I think people should not use the word “warrior” (and limit the use of the word “hero”), because it is bound to rub off on actual behaviour sooner or later.

1 Like

Sure! Go for it! Could be enlightening!

You’re generalising to the point of absurdity on what you with your preconceptions think that a group of people are due to the their self identifying using a word that you load down with entirely different meaning.

Thus a warrior is precisely NOT a raging aggressive who sees war as “the first step and the victory dance as the second”. The american military is proud to be warriors, those who with their experience of warfare who will cut through and defeat those who think of themselves as passive “soldiers”.

As for the word hero, there is no better word to describe men/women who put their lives in danger and too often make the ultimate sacrifice so that we have those essential liberties we prize. Not every member of the U.S armed forces is a hero but there are clearly a higher % of heroes in the armed forces than there are in people on the internet who redefine words to demean others.

I had some fun but he’s just trolling - look at the thread. Gave it away to me with that last reply to me that shit was ridiculous.

1 Like

You do like dictionaries, don’t you?
You quoted merriam-webster to prove that “warrior” doesn’t mean what I said. Of course merriam-webster is right. It lists the basic meaning of the word. It does not list the connotations, the images that go along with it.
And once again, I am not talking about the fine people serving in the military, I am talking about the words you use to talk about them.

Take the imagery you’re using here. I don’t know how I can make you hear yourself through the ears of a culture different from your own. I can only say statements like that are outside the Overton window here in Austria. We call that militarism, a way of thinking that we blame for up to a hundred million deaths in the 20th century, and that’s only counting the two wars that my country started due to the rampant militarism we had back then.

As for heroes, I said to use the word less. It should not refer to everyone who joins up, nor to everyone who sees action, and not to everyone who gets wounded. And it should not refer to anyone who fights for the wrong cause because he’s “just folloving orders”.

The sad thing is, he might not be. Most people have a very hard time grasping just how different opinions, mindsets and cultures can be. When he lashed out against you, he was probably feeling annoyed at how extreme other people’s opinions are in our echo chamber here :-). And while he’s called you a bigot, so far he’s only claimed that I’m less likely to be a hero than an American soldier. I can live with that. In fact, I hope to live to old age without an opportunity to be either a hero or a war criminal.

And of course, I’m also playing to the audience a bit here. I might have the majority of Americans on BBS on my side this time (I don’t really know, of course), but I seem to see toxic militarism in many things that most Americans will consider entirely normal, so I want to raise some awareness there…

1 Like

Well, I like them. They keep us from simply inventing our own definitions and let us know what the previously agreed-upon definition is. Something that seems to be frustrating you, it seems. :face_with_monocle:

Which is an interesting side note to how the discussion of Dubya here, as most of it revolves around how little we know of how each respondent defined “favourable”: was it that he’s less of a jerk now that he’s avoiding politics, or a rose-coloured view of his administration over time? I really don’t know.

1 Like

The thing is, the dictionary lists a word’s meaning, not its connotations. And connotations are a hard thing. They depend on a language, but they also travel between languages. And they depend on culture. But worse yet, our reactions to the connotations also depend on culture.

So imagine you’re trying to explain to somebody how they shouldn’t be using the word “uppity” in the context of American race politics because it has acquired some inappropriate connotations. And they respond with proof that the word is harmless:

So yes, it’s frustrating me.

1 Like

I’ve done various combat sports with a fair number of serving military. The few with whom I have discussed this subject made a clear distinction between a soldier, who serves his country to achieve that country’s goals, and a warrior, who serves his own love for the achievements of war. They might play warrior for sport, but on the job they are soldiers and proud of it.

But, I have never served, so it’s all hearsay to me. I do know a number of people who joined the US military because they really wanted to kill some people, and they wanted to be sure they were bad people, who needed to be killed. (I think trusting any recent US government to choose the right people for you to kill is sort of charmingly and horrifyingly naive, but I appreciate the honesty of the people who’ve told me this.)

2 Likes

An honest answer. Like dirt. Dirt is honest, and people walk on it, just like they walk on poor Zathras.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

1 Like

Good to hear that confirmed.

Incidentally, using “to serve” to mean “to be a soldier in the military” is another figure of speech that used to exist in German as well and seems too militaristic to me now. How is it more of a service than any other equally dangerous job?
But then, Americans generally like to use the word “to serve” more than Austrians and Germans use it’s German equivalent, so maybe that’s nothing.

Quite a shocking anecdote. Have you intentionally been using “naive” as a euphemism, or is that just my overly anti-violent Austrian upbringing again?

1 Like

In the US, we also use the word “serve” to describe waiting on customers in restaurants and at counters, so it doesn’t really have any explicitly military connotation. If you’re already talking about soldiers, “he served” is a short way to say “he was a member of the armed services” or “he was under the command of one of the variously named branches of the US military”. If you’re talking about meals it would mean “he carved the roast” or “he poured the tea” and if you were talking about tennis it would mean “he hit the ball first”. Referring to military service, you’ll more often hear people say “he was in the Navy” or “he was a Seabee” in real life.

Well, I didn’t mean it as a euphemism, anyway. Like I said, such naiveté is kind of horrifying to me, one of those ‘banality of evil’ type things.

Seems like we’re basically on the same page, after all.

Yeah, maybe I’m overly influenced by the smaller range of meanings that the German word “dienen” has. It means to serve, but not in the gastronomical or tennis-related sense, but “to serve” as in “to serve a master”, and thus comes with all the connotations of old-fashioned obedience and “duty”. Which fits in nicely with an old-fashioned view of the military.

1 Like