God damnit I still remember this, and I’m in my late 40’s

Scruff, McGruff, Chicago Illinois, 60652

I’m a disabled vet. I’m unemployable. SSDI is the only thing that makes things breathable for us. The only real way I have to make any money on the side is by painting DnD minis, dice towers, or maybe Gunpla commissions. It’s so difficult to do much in a day that it takes me quite some time to paint just a couple minis. Months on a gundam. I just don’t have the stamina to do much in a day. Fatigue is killing me. I’ve got a few painted, but I haven’t had the energy to put them up anywhere yet. I have just as many to paint still.

Body wide small fiber neuropathy, a central nervous system issue and colon removal really tanked me. Winter (Wa state) and fronts rolling through, even in summer, tank me even more. I think the change in air pressure is what does it.

A cut in medicare means that I also now have copays. I have tons of doc appointments still. No one can tell me what the root of the issue is, or at least prove it as it’s very likely chemical exposures. All funding that would have led to a “here it is” was shuttered. Regular blood tests due to colon removal. Regular tests due to the fucked up nervous system, which is still progressing 20 years after the last exposure and 18 after it started.

My wife is a PARA, but we’re in a low income area and PARAs don’t make shit. From my excel math, we can make it by with no SSDI. However, we’ll have absolutely no extra money. No money to replace clothes. No money for home repairs. No money for vehicle repairs. Before you say it, we do need them. Taking public transit is incredibly painful, and shitty at best. Plus I have no energy to do that. I can barely do the appointments I have, even driving myself the only 20 mins, avg, to the various doc appointments.

I feel like such a waste already. I love math. I love engineering. I love turning a wrench. I love cooking. I can barely do any of it. These assholes seem to think we’re all grifting and “welfare” queens. Sad thing is, there are many more vets in my position. Yet many don’t seem to realize that the GOP hates us. They’ll keep voting for it. Voting for that shotgun to the foot and pleading for more like a gimp gagging daddy for more.

This part is both mind blowing and hilarious. Not too long ago they were screeching that “they are trying to make everything sharia law!”

Then they do this, with absolutely no sense of irony. The dumb runs so deep that its turning to magma.

Very fair point. Some are definitely further left than others. We’ll take Bernie. I’m not nearly as far left as he is. I’m still left of center though. We need a uniting figure. Just as MAGA has. I think it still comes down to the DNC not fully listening to what their voters want. It’s anyone’s guess how the mid terms and forward will go. If the GOP is right, the impending depression will loose them majority for some time. I don’t think it’ll be as long as last time. Last time didn’t have the crutch of social media, 24/7 “news” and a myriad of other issues we have now. We can only hope that if the DNC does get control for a bit, it’ll be enough time to fix things.

I think it’s more a comparison of failed runs. Not so much on gender. The comparison runs to the DNC forcing a specific candidate that a lot just didn’t want. Kamala was a bit different situation with Biden dropping, but there are still other candidates that the left voters wanted to put up instead.

That’s the thing, we’re sick of the same old same very old. Walz wasn’t super bad, don’t get me wrong, but the democratic voter is ready for change. Long since ready. It’s only the DNC that hasn’t caught up. We want more left than appeasing centrists. We’re tired of reaching out a hand across the isle to bring back bloody stumps.

If you think that Hillary and Kamala lost just because they are women, then you haven’t been paying attention. They lost not because they are women, they lost because that is what we were told we were getting. We all wanted rocky road ice cream, and they gave us vanilla. Then they wondered why they lost out on business. Fighting against fascism didn’t seem to be enough for many. It blows monkey chunks that it had to happen when we have a fascist party taking hold, but it is hopefully a shake up that will actually get noticed.

It isn’t about color or gender, it’s about where they fall on the scale of things as well as age. Stop forcing that vanilla ice cream. We want the rocky road.

It may even become a self filling cycle, though I don’t know if they have even thought this far ahead.

1: Send legal Americans to Salvador prisons

2: Said Americans attempt to return

3: “Look at our border crisis!”

4: Fool idiots into thinking that there is now a border crisis, even though it’s previously legal Americans in every sense of the word.

5: Blame “liberals”

6: Rinse repeat

Those fucking voluntold assemblies on day shift. That’s ok, we don’t have jets to work on. I don’t have 10 computers to fix that will be kicked off the network tomorrow if I don’t patch them. Nah, we can stop this ISO inspection that is already behind. All so you can give some vapid speech and peace out before anyone else can talk to you.

Rogers showed up to a kid’s fund run. There were all of like 15 kids there. 3 of them mine. She wouldn’t talk to anyone that wasn’t an officer. She wasn’t even there when the race started. Kid’s fund run and she couldn’t even stay and see it through or even walk the thing.

Fellow vet: I never understood fellow service member’s blind servitude to the GOP. They fuck us over ever chance they get, and we’re dogs at a dog show for them only when it’s convenient. When they show up at a base, it’s either a completely scripted Q&A, with questions vetted weeks to months ahead of time, or they show and are guided around by the base commander and make a super quick appearance at whatever event.

My favorite was the 1 time Cathy McMorris did a debate. She touted helping 100’s of vets a month. Her opponent: “If you are really helping the vets, you wouldn’t have 100’s a month with issues.”

Well fuck. Maybe we can hold out until us Gen Xers are too old to vote or die off as well.

We may have a perfect storm, so to speak. Economic stupidity will lose them dominance. However, hopefully, by the time they would gain again we’ll have a die off of boomers and other retired that come out to vote more now. We’ll have a refresh of retired voters. Gen X is coming up. From my small sample of us, we’re more Democrat leaning. Hopefully a wider sample size is the same.

Guarantee you that isn’t the way he sees.

All the years he’s never paid his bills. Damn…what a fucking time to start…

Let me ask you this:

How am I supposed to organize a mobilization of people in a country that is 2,800 miles (4506km) east to west and 1660 miles (2671km) north to south? How do I communicate where to meet up? How do I ensure our targets don’t get wind of it? How do I ensure everyone is there? How do I make sure we get every leader that is going to need to be ousted? How do I ensure they’re even going to be there? How do we find all of the money backers that want this crap? How do we decide who should lead this new leadership chain without starting another fight? How do we ensure that the military doesn’t just mow us down when we try? If I can’t lead this charge, who does? How do I find someone willing, and is actually capable of leading this charge? How do I ensure I don’t just have some trigger happy yahoos that will shoot anything remotely a target before anything starts? How do I ensure we don’t have bad actor there to tank it all (and there are plenty)?

Look, I see what you’re saying. I’m pissed off. This isn’t supposed to be the country I was raised in. It had many issues. This isn’t the country that I raised my hand to fuck my body up for.

I’d love to pick up my weapons, drive the 2 weeks across the country, and do something about it all. I have kids. I know, I know, what the future holds for them is much worse than homelessness. That is still a rough pill to swallow. I’m a frog on a hot plate. That hot plate is thousands of miles across to get off. It is surrounded by 100’s of other hot plates that have to be dealt with to stop the heat. Some of which I wouldn’t even be able to find, or would be constantly moving around with the capability I have to mobilize (jet vs driving).

Do I flee the country? Do I stay and fight back the best I can? I can’t flee. I can’t work due to severe medical issues (another rub in this entire thing, how do I ensure everyone is able bodied enough to help). No one is going to take me in. The best I can do is arm and stock like I should be wearing tin foil on my head. Try to be as self sustaining as we can. A garden. Some chickens that will end up having to be guarded by Brinks soon. Then vote for the shit sandwich that doesn’t have glass in it and is covered in barbed wire. Try to help my kids see why this is all bad. To differentiate good sources and bad sources of information. Weed out logical fallacies. Pick out gas lighting. Try to prepare them for a better future that opens more options for them. One that allows them to leave the country if needed. How to participate and make things better, and why they should participate in voting and other such things.

This right here is a big issue. It breeds “I got mine”, and I see it constantly.

Why do people need welfare programs? I’m not struggling. (literally said to me last week from an ex coworker) Why should I have to pay for other people’s health care? Why are people worried about jobs? I was able to find one easily. I don’t understand why people can’t save money. I can do it easily. Why do we need disability help? I can work when I’m injured.

All of these results of the mentality of “We’re number 1!” We’re number 1, so there is no way that there are problems. See! Look! I am not struggling! So no one else can possibly be struggling either!

I’m not sure the time he has left in him but, while he is up and going, he…we should be grooming his replacement. Not AOC either. Not that she wouldn’t be a good one. It’s that we could use the numbers. I wouldn’t want 2 to turn into 1. We have to have someone lined up and ready to go from the get go.

I’d love to do the same but I need to max out my ram before doing so. I have been working with Blender as well, so it’d be a benefit on that front as well. I have been going through the making a head tutorial and reached a point where it maxed out my system resources and I couldn’t progress.

I used it to help fine tune a couple short campaigns for other artifact items. I am going to run through those eventually as well.

It’s a very interesting usage case imo. DnD Beyond has that 3d campaign program out in beta right now. This would be a good usage for that system to me. Especially for small groups that struggle to find a DM or enough players to run. It could be a help to someone trying to run solo as well.

I’d love to see LLM integrated into video games more to help give the NPCs life and make the game feel more life like. Even enemy NPCs. I’d love to see a game where enemy NPCs wander from their “zone” and try to attack different areas. Maybe even cities.

It’s something that DAoC had in it, in limited quantities. I remember one small town would get attacked every so often by a group of NPCs. You could watch them march from their usual camp over to the town. They’d stand outside the walls and the leader would yell that they were in the area first and would yell insults. While this was happening, they’d throw rotted corpses over the walls. It would give you a disease debuff every time you entered, and you could get attacked by giant bugs that were attracted to the corpses.

Eventually they’d retreat on their own. If you could take out their leaders, they’d retreat then as well. If you killed the leader while he was in their camp, it would delay them going to the city until he respawned. If you kept attacking the camp over and over, it would diminish their number so much that the respawns would slow down. You could eventually clear the camp and keep it that way for some time.

I’m a vet. I’m unsure why the DoD hasn’t put a stop to this yet. There have been clear violations of this oath by elected officials. At the very least, letting Elmo wreck shit.

We have a problem though. The retired boomer vets, and some younger ones, voted for this. Conservatives tend to be the ones that raise their hands. They seem to have forgotten the oath and think that all of this is A OK. They’ve been guzzling the kool aid. Hell, my base still shows Faux “News” at the base hospital on some TVs. Even though a base commander banned news channels during COVID.

Those of us that do recognize this as a violation of the constitution do not number enough to do anything. Rising up involves getting rid of the entire GOP, plus multiple billionaires, multiple media moguls, SCOTUS, lower court appointees, appointees of many other government agencies, and on and on. It isn’t something even a couple thousand can accomplish. We saw this with the attempted coup on J6.

What we’re doing is making sure we’re armed enough to defend ourselves in case of a civil war, or violence from the lunatics who still think this is all fine and good while we scream towards fascism. I hate this. I wish I could go do something. With every fiber of my being I do. My nervous system is fucked. I can barely leave the house many days. Especially in the winter when the cold shoots pain and fatigue through the roof. I can defend my own, probably my own neighborhood if it came to it. That’s about the extent for me.

I live in a place with a bunch of these nut bags as it is too. There is a crazy trump church in my town with heavy ties to a christian nationalists extremist group. It’s the largest church in the small town. Those people concern me. There is a crazy guy 2 houses down from me that thinks the local base dropped COVID on us with the tankers. I think I broke the gerbal wheel in his brain when I told him I’ve seen them inside and out and there isn’t anywhere to even put a “bag o covid”. We had a major wildfire hit and he blamed the firefighters for not flying in heavy smoke, at night and in super high winds. We’re talking 70mph+ gusts and 45 sustained. There are some that still have trump/pence signs up. That’s the type of crap I’m working with. Many are vets as well.

I get how it looks from the outside. We’ve been claiming that our firearms are for exactly what is happening. Thing is, those that support this. Those that voted for this, have the vast majority of firearms in this country. The last statistic I saw was from 2022 and republican firearm owners numbered nearly 2x democratic owners. That didn’t even count the amount of firearms owned. That percentage is the same for individuals who live in a home where firearms are present. The left has slowly been arming up due to increased violence from the right against the left, but we’re in no position to rise up.

If the right does end up realizing that they fucked up and need to finally rise up with the left, then you’ll see it at a local level first. Other countries poke fun at us for not taking vacations because we don’t have the days or money to do so. Yet they expect us to travel across country, with absolutely no guarantee others will be there, to maybe get a shot off at 1 person? It’s over 2500 miles for me to get across the country. That’d take me at least a week and a half. I wouldn’t even be able to do that solo due to the medical issues. People can’t afford to do that. So the local level would be the target. Local congressmen (most of whom live in DC over half the year as it is). Local senators. State capitals, provided they’re red states and are following suit with the fed govts.

This got long, I’m sorry for that, but this is a much more complicated issue. I seriously don’t think people realize just how fucking far it is to get to DC. Just how useless it would be without some serious backing by the right and the military, or at least enough of the military that remembers their oath and don’t fire on us. That combo could hold off the cops, but remember as well. We’re dealing with police who are militarized now. They’ve been eating up old military equipment for at least a decade now. Some even have old APCs. They have no qualms over shooting everything all the way down to your dog just because it looked at them funny.

On top of this. It isn’t just Dump. It’s the entire GOP. Plus the douche crew and his nazi youth that have been ransacking shit that they don’t understand. Yeah, going in armedmay get you 1 person. It won’t do any good. You’re cutting a small scale off of a large shit snake.

The best we can do is arm ourselves (and I fucking hate that I have to resort to this option) and prep for when shit goes south. I suspect that will be mid terms. We’ll see armed yokels “guarding” vote drop off locations and polling locations. If there is any sign of a dem win anywhere, all hell will break loose with diaperdon claiming fraud. He’ll probably pull some shit like his attempted coup and we’ll see the polling station yokels going nuts.