Oh man you had me going.

Isn’t that Atlas Shrugged?

If they really go whole hog and sell off the hospitals and stuff then I would think the next president would just go to a Veteran’s Public Option. There’s a world in which 5 years from now we prove Medicare for All works because they deleted the entire side of the VA that does healthcare.

Watching the latter half of GWOT veterans eat the bait on the Republican line has been really painful for those of us who got home in 2004 and found out what Bush had been telling the people while we were fighting. At least Obama was honest about why he sent us over. It was a fool’s errand but better than a snipe hunt disguised as regime change.

65% with Fox News being shoveled into every chow hall in the military, open recruiting for the republican party, and forced church. That’s the highest they’re able to get. And a bunch of those do pay attention. In 2020 Active duty voted blue because conservative service members either crossed party lines or stayed home. The veterans who swing hard right get fully captured by the alt right you tube crap too. Come for the cool guns, stay for the speech about Trump. Gods I could go on for hours about that whirlpool of tactical influencers.

But the upside is that anyone who has even a couple braincells no onboard the right wing train bounces right off that stuff. And he might delete our healthcare, but to be honest, and this is the important bit; Veterans don’t have enough votes to swing national or state elections. He does this and it’s everyone listening to us complain about the sudden lack of healthcare after 2 major wars that he has to worry about.

Well there are some video game ones.

My teacher in middle school did specifically call out that it would take a project over several decades to co-opt the system.

Well, they’ve been going after the judgeships for decades.

It’s a political hand grenade. Of course Trump is the only one willing or able to eat it.

It was authorized, but it had an expiration date. Now it’s something that we just take for granted so much we never even thought about having to re-authorize it.

Big Essential Oil ruining the day again.

I think that was the point. To be silly.

I’d argue we should call all migrant workers expats. Unless they’re literally working in a migratory fashion, spring here, summer there, fall somewhere else, etc.

I always saw expats as something between immigrants and tourists. They aren’t trying to switch countries and they aren’t just on vacation. There’s plenty of good reasons for this category, like being sent somewhere by your employer. This naturally creates a community of foreigners who aren’t necessarily worried about fitting in as a new citizen or permanent resident would be.

But yeah, this idea that Western countries have expats instead of emigrants is weird.

If it happens fast enough we can have an Elon as a smaller unit.

I have actually.

Don’t forget your gun. America is extremely dangerous but only if you’re unarmed. All the criminals and cops can smell if you have a gun and they’ll be too afraid to do anything to you if you have one.

Also you can’t trust our water, so it’s purely Soda and Budweiser while you’re here. Locals might tell you to eat at local restaurants but their stomachs are habituated. You’ll need to stick to McDonald’s. Luckily there is one on every single corner.

If you get injured you should avoid using an ambulance as they will take you directly to a hospital. In the US that’s just where we go to die. You need to drive yourself to an Urgent Care doctor. If you can’t drive yourself and have to use an ambulance then there is a complimentary memorial wreath that can be sent to your family. Along with the invoice for your death care of course.

The US is smaller than it appears on maps. This is because most maps are not American centric and have to expand the US to show the ratio properly. You might have budgeted multiple days to travel between the coasts but you really can just do New York one day and the Grand Canyon the next day.

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah it’s traditional to make a bomb joke with the customs agent as you come into the country. Especially if you can manage a middle eastern accent. All of us do it. It’s a grand joke.

Fun fact, in this kind of war, the last thing you do is tell the bad guys you know what they’re doing. That’s some Hollywood shit.

Ah okay, thanks for the explanation.

I’m not saying they can’t fuck up a lot of things. But at a certain point there’s too many promotions to control. This has always been an Authoritarian problem, and is why you see dictators with “Republican Guards”. Those units get all the good equipment, training, and are highly controlled for loyalty.

Creating something like that takes years though. And will transparently be the end of any claim to be the better party for our military. So in 2026/28 elections will be much harder.

Multiplayer gaming. I love games like Foxhole and they usually have a bit of trouble on Linux.