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Apparently AP is too stupid to realize that the majority of our troops are the MAGAT voters that he hates so much.
Walleye (46,490 posts)
2. I don't think we've ever been in a conflict where we don't even know how many service members are wounded
ASYLUM SHAME Disturbing guide on how ‘not to rape women’ in UK given to asylum seekers by Home Office after string of attacks
If you have to tell people things like this, you don't want them in your country.
Was thinking how they never mention "Sleepy Joe" any more
Hypocrites!
Since that day in the ’90s, the shield of victimhood has stopped being merely personal. It has become public moral currency. Claim membership in a targeted group — black, female, gay, transsexual, immigrant, illegal alien, Muslim, and so on — and you can claim high status. Intersectionality even supplies a kind of mathematics, a ranking system among the victim classes. The whole arrangement has been institutionalized in DEI, and it delivers concrete rewards: preferences in jobs, scholarships, awards, publication, and more.
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When you take on a victim identity, it feels empowering at first. You are naming a painful thing, or something society insists should be painful. It brings moral clarity, community, and a simple explanation for the frustration or hurt you feel day to day. “They treated me this way because I’m a black woman.” It can even feel like strength — finally speaking the injury instead of carrying it in silence.
Over time, the same identity turns hollow. You are seen, yes, but only as the victim you have declared yourself to be. I was seen as a woman who had been profoundly harmed as a child — not as a complex thinker, a science-fiction reader, a storytelling fanatic, a Christian, a girl in love with a beautiful world. Just a victim.
That shield becomes an anchor. It burdens you. You begin to identify with the shield more than with the person underneath it. The weight slowly drains your energy and your strength. It stunts emotional development and personal growth. It keeps you from the full capacity that should have been yours.
We have all seen the results. Girls who ruin their beauty with tattoos, strange hair, piercings, and body modifications, trying to look like the figure in the shield. People of color who darken their own souls by blaming every failure on white people. And the politicians who encourage it all, turning living people into social widgets instead of complete human beings with deep inner lives.
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The victim shield is the same mechanism that has damaged certain minority communities for decades. Tell people repeatedly that they are permanent victims, that the system is rigged against them in every particular, and that only an external force — government, party, ideology, some designated savior — can lift them, and many will eventually believe it. Agency atrophies. Excellence starts to look like collaboration with the enemy. The result is not the justice promised by activists and politicians. It is a population trained to wait for rescue rather than build its own strength and resilience. Thomas Sowell predicted this outcome repeatedly and documented the devastation it causes.
Byron York’s current Examiner column is “Voters reject Resistance stars.” He takes up the cases of George Conway and Alexander Vindman. Vindman’s case really rings my chimes. This is how Byron tells it in the column after he disposes of Conway (whose primary also involved the defeat of Jack Schlossberg)(I have added the links to the books Byron cites):QuoteThe other Resistance star to face-plant was Alexander Vindman, who in 2019, as an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel on the staff of the National Security Council, set in motion the first impeachment of Trump. Vindman, who was privy to some of the president’s calls with world leaders, felt that Trump had committed some sort of unspecified violation in a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Vindman relayed secret information to a friend in the CIA, who came up with a “whistleblower” complaint against the president.
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The impeachment failed, of course. Under pressure from the Trump administration, Vindman retired from the military and began trading on his notoriety. He wrote a memoir called Here, Right Matters, with the title based on his congressional testimony. ...
The next step would be politics. Vindman moved to Florida and ran for the Senate as a Democrat. When he jumped into the race in January, his announcement video began with news clips from his role in the Trump impeachment. A moment later, Vindman said, as pictures of his congressional testimony played: “The last time you saw me was here, swearing an oath to tell the truth about a president who broke his. ... And I sure as hell was not going to bow down to some wannabe tyrant. This president unleashed a reign of terror and retribution, not just against me and my family, but against all of us.”
No subtlety there; the Hero of the Resistance had arrived to take on Donald Trump! Vindman raised $16 million for his campaign, while his socialist opponent, Angie Nixon, raised a little less than $1 million. Vindman immediately became a heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination. He remained the favorite until Election Day, when Nixon shocked the political world by trouncing Vindman, 56% to 44%.
