Is it Gerald Celente that said, “When all else fails they take you to war.”?
It solves a lot of problems for those who are tasked with running countries and businesses. It whittles down the numbers, removes a lot of the fat from societies, and alters the attitudes of those who choose to survive.
It also lets those who play at the top table rebalance the books and deal fresh hands from a shuffled deck, and rebuilds trust for the future. Everyone wins at the top table, and it’s a system that has been running now for close on seven, maybe eight centuries.

As with most things, only the ill educated and poorly prepared suffer the majority of the consequences. The useless eaters and the cannon fodder. The educated, and the rich prepare themselves and their assets. Their children do not get conscripted. Their assets do not get repurposed. And as always the wilfully ignorant will pretend they didn’t imagine it could ever happen and had no way of seeing it coming. They will say they didn’t know because their tele-boxes didn’t tell them, and state indignantly that there’s no way they could be expected to use their own brain for something as complicated as reading or thinking.

Gore Vidal made the point that Smedley Butler has been all but deleted from American history for being honest about his career in the marines. One of the most highly decorates marines in history, if not the highest decorated American soldier ever, and not one in a thousand US citizens has ever heard his name.

RIP Queen Elizabeth II

ShaneG.

Moved here from another thread as I’d prefer to to respond in other threads.

for_the_love_of_the_stuff wrote in Silliest non-TSR auction price:What's the opposite of a wOkE aGeNdA?
A chud agenda?

wHy Do YoU nEeD tO tRy tO oBscurE wH@T yOu ArE tYpiNg?
‘Woke’ and ‘woke agenda’ are the brand that people with a shared ideology have adopted for themselves. They are not labels placed upon them by their critics. There is nothing embarrassing or rude about how they have chosen to refer to their movement.
If this is an attempt do conceal the words from a search algorithm it doesn’t work.
But does it worry you that these posts will be archived and discoverable forever?
Was this attempt to obscure your typing a manifestation of self censorship and a fear of the consequences of expressing ones self?
It seems an odd behaviour, that’s all. But it also tells of a perception that one can only talk about things in hushed whispers lest people find out and come seeking to cancel or question.
Arbitrary cancellation with no discussion, no evidence, no fact and no appeal.
Isn’t that the exact problem right there?

Sardan wrote in Silliest non-TSR auction price:Oppression of those who are in some way “different”.

So the opposite is ‘woke’ is ‘racist and misogynist’ oppression?
Isn’t that why society is so fractured right now?
You have a movement of people who claim to be ‘woke’ and label anyone who does not subscribe to their world view as ‘racist’ and ‘misogynistic’.
No need for evidence or fact, just their own ‘feelings’.

mbassoc2003 wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:I’ve not seen the new Top Gun movie.
Is it worth spending hard earned money on, or is it a pass for a year or so until it’s free on one of the streaming services?
Ie. Is it worth watching over and over again, or is it a movie that once you’ve seen it it loses its appeal?

It’s 100% worth watching, and worth watching in a movie theater if you’re able to.  It was the best movie that I’ve seen in
really long time.

Sardan wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
I usually see the term “woke” used by critics of those opinions not it’s adherents. Those critics tend to be the ones who are happy to minimise or ignore past injustices.

Can’t we just treat people with kindness?

The term woke was not created those critics.  Progressives used to use that word quite often on social media when referring to those beliefs.  The ideology is a confusing one - because while it claims to promote open-mindedness and kindess (which, I believe, most people (at least in the US and in your case, the UK), can agree on), it also promotes the judgement and interpretation on other's behaviors based on the color of their skin, their gender, or their sexual orientation.  Someone on this board was defending woke ideology using a book called "White Fragility".  If you read that book, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.  

In short:  I fully agree that we should treat all people with kindness, and I hold myself to that standard.  However, I'm very much against the woke belief that I'm guilty of feelings simply because of who I was born as.  That, my friend, is the very essence of racism and sexism.

mbassoc2003 wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:Is it better than the first?

I liked the first, but I thought the sequel was much better

sauromatian wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
There are some social movements which are designed to be self-defeating. Consider the historical example of the Russian Revolution. Agents of the German government are thought to have covertly funded it, hoping it would undermine the Russian government's efforts in WWI. Worked splendidly, but with unexpected consequences. In retrospect, the Kaiser's agents would probably have preferred to end the Bolshevik cause after it served its function.

The lesson has been well learned, & so today we see disruptions more like "defund the police." Defunding government anything is usually a right-wing pursuit, yet the calls to defund police were from the left-wing. Left-wing politicians are unlikely to follow an approach which involves spending less, & thus the movement was doomed to fail after making a lot of noise.

Similarly, if an ideology starts out against racism, but then indulges in judging individuals by the groups they were born into, then it was likely designed from the start to fail.

Damn.  

mbassoc2003 wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:I’ve not seen the new Top Gun movie.
Is it worth spending hard earned money on, or is it a pass for a year or so until it’s free on one of the streaming services?
Ie. Is it worth watching over and over again, or is it a movie that once you’ve seen it it loses its appeal?

The sequel is great but lacks the shirtless men high fiving that I enjoyed in the first one.

shadeun wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
by about a ratio of 100:1 you see people labelling people woke or the woke agenda - rather than self identification.

You'd have to be completely delusional to think otherwise IMO

Yes. But the movement created and laid claim to the name as a means to differentiate their whole collective from the rest of society, and the press adopted it and propogated it.

Those who identify as being part of the woke movement avoid referring to, or labelling themselves directly because the ideology they purport to follow claims that individuals and their identities are fluid and should not be labelled. This is because all such labels come with assumptions, stigmas and bigotry. This is exactly the assumption you are making by pointing out that 'woke' has a negative connotation, and that is why they do not label themselves and are aggressively offensive to poeple who dare to label them, in any way.

But they do judge and label everyone else. Not just others, or some people, but EVERYONE and everything else. Everyone and everything has to be judged, weighed and measured against their ideology, and reacted to in the appropriate manner. They appear not to believe that they should have to live up to their own ideals, like a Government Minister promoting wholesome family values having an affair with his secretary, or a chaplain abusing a child in his care. They display and propose an image of society and behaviour that they themselves have no intention of ever abiding by.

So arguing over how or why they chose the 'woke' monikor, and why it became a 'label' that is used to identify the racists and sexists in our society is neither here nor there.
What should be discussed is the ideology they follow and the assumptions and 'facts' they base their ideology upon.

This is something they do not appear to be willing to do outside of their own bubble and certainly not in an environment where they have no control over the conversation or the questions that are offerred up.

For example, Kelisa Wing works for the DoD's Education Activity office. She is the chief diversity officer in charge of all the children of Pentagon employees. You don't get there by being poorly educated, and you don't get there without currying favour with the correct political peoples of influence.

She refers to herself as 'a woke administrator in her thirties' and self-identifies as 'woke' in many of her social media posts. She is also a strong advocate of the Varela Rios notion that only white people can be racist.

Chucho68 wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:It is impossible to be racist or sexist toward a white male. Reverse racism/sexism is a lie.
Class dismissed. Read a book. Turn off the TV.
Héctor.
PS. Apologies to all members of this forum for my directness but silence is complicity.

Needless to say he scurried away to hide his own embarrassment. From an educated man, his inability to formulate a coherent argument in support of his questionable and clearly racist belief system was quite astounding.

Kelisa Wing is a specific example of a leading proponent of the woke agenda who lays claim to the label of woke, uses it, and uses it to forward a divisive and bigotted agenda.

One only needs to look at any of the leading voices on the left to see the same claim of wokery, the same agenda of racial division, the same promotion of gender fluidity and the sexualisation of children, the same refusal to define words that they find offensive, like 'woman' or 'man', the same belief that MAPs are of no harm to children and should not be stigmatised by their desires, the same fear of criticism and a belief that what children are taught should be concealed from parents, the same hatred of those who do not buy into their ideology, and the same fear and refusal to have an open and honest discussion. Given their beliefs around children and sex I can understand why they wouldn't want to told about those, and why they'd prefer their interactions with children to be concealed from the public and not monitored.

But, as to your original point, it is their label, their ideology, and how they define themselves. And if they can get sympathy by pretending it is a slur on their character, then they are happy with that too.