BF2S Forums America has lost the war in Afghanistan

Thinking it over...it is kind of funny how the military members talked up how tough they were to go fight a war while the weak nerds (Uzique et al.) went to college instead.

"You weren't man enough to serve in the army."
Gay!

Statistically at least one of them enjoyed it.

uziq wrote:

and i was in my early teens during the start of the afghan and iraq wars. it’s not like i made some cowardly choice. lol. i went to college in 2009/10.

"you couldve signed up and served bro"

ah, yes, the territorial army, that crack squad of commandos. aka the young LARPers version of dad's army. did you learn how to tie a knot, son?

you have continually referenced attending protest marches in london, as part of your grand acts of civil disobedience and 'activism'? you've held your anti-war/anti-blair era activities over me as examples of my (supposed) lack of public selflessness, or political commitment, or something?

the point being, that in the peak era of bf2s, when all the 'veterans' was here, i was a schoolchild ... it's not like the dynamic between us was 'nerd who refused to fight a war versus veterans'. i was 14/15 years old in the Uzique trolling days ffs. get a grip.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-26 02:28:20)

i've never claimed to be a macho tough-guy or to have any interest in guns, armies, wars, and all the rest of the online insecure alpha male toolkit. your own identity and attitudes seem much more ambivalent and emotionally invested on this topic. that's simply not me.

but to characterise me as a 'weakling nerd' who was 'clashing with veterans' is just funny. i was pre-pubescent when those wars started. and by the time i made it out of university the UK's troop surges were long gone. there was definitely never any question of me waving a white flag and being a conchie when the bush-blair years were at their bellicose peak. i was playing in fields and levelling warcraft characters, you know, like 13 year olds are meant to do.

if you want to get into a long comparison of all the 'you could have served's in our lives, i do really question why the person who has made a point, numerous times, of namedropping his training in the illustrious territorial army has never actually done anything in years of ongoing conflict. did you dip your toe into the pool and find the water a little too cold for your tastes, or what? curious stuff to namedrop your 'training', multiple times, and to evidently stake no small amount of pride in it ... but then to never actually serve.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-26 02:38:28)

'recall of a dotard' – or it's just highly uninteresting. that you keep mentioning the TA is funny enough.

we all know people at university who signed up for the officer cadets or TA. weekend camping trips ahoy. they, indeed, were more LARPer nerds than your average.

it's like you think it makes you macho when really it makes you more like a ginger version of sh1fty.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-26 02:40:28)

here we go again ... signing up for the TA but never actually doing anything, such selfless service! of course, that you weren't delivered to the front to fulfill your duties with valour was someone else's fault. the guy organizing the weekend picnics lost your email address, or something.

if you didn't attend the anti-war protests or make any commitments during those febrile times, after all, what the hell have you done? if you're u-turning on that episode in your 'political activism', i'm not sure what's left. donating money for a park bench? good for you. i'm sure it was an immense financial sacrifice for a life-at-home manlet.

i literally don't care what you've done in your life, dilbert. i don't think anyone does. you can't even manage to attract a partner to listen your nonstop whining. i'm certainly not going to knock heads with you here on your sterling resume and years of public good works. i do not care. i'm just saying, once again, that it's plainly funny to typify peak-bf2s years as 'me vs. veterans'. usmarine et al were a clear generation or two older than me. it was more like grown adults getting angry at a 14 year old.

'drone on about socialism', ah, yes, by saying that i'm in favour of paying taxes and funding public infrastructure, and things like public transportation, during times of climate emergency and century-topping inequality ... i'm practically a radical trotskyite, me. it's not at all as if my political views weren't, and aren't, mainstream social democratic thought in most of western europe. no, i 'drone on about socialism'.

would it be better to drone on about energy consumption and ethical living whilst taking dividends from petrol companies, i wonder? anything even remotely left-of-centre to you whiffs of tedious 'socialism', which is odd, considering you're such an eco-warrior when it suits you. it seems your climate activism extends as far as lecturing other people on aspects of their lifestyle you don't like, whilst being financially and materially invested in, and indeed making excuses for, the fossil fuels industry, at great length. brave selfless warrior needs his subaru to drive to work? is this how you do this 'political commitment' thing? lend me a helping hand, here.

so your life-defining act of public service is you filled in a form for the bloody Territorial Army, and yet never even commenced training for the stay-at-home weekend warriors brigade? are you trying to be funny here or is this really it?

for years you've tried to portray as me some unique drain on society, even though i gave up an afternoon a week during my entire time working for a not-for-profit to help with community schemes in my city ... because ... apparently you did something in your student days in london, or something, or moaned loudly about the Blair administration's lies, or, errrr, something. i'm not sure what you've done that marks you out for public service.

is this the part where you talk about uncovering a grand conspiracy in the UK establishment and collusion between judges, magistrates, police, etc? i'm not sure getting embroiled in a legal controversy with your family and seeking justice constitutes 'public service', dilbert.

i like(d) partying. am i meant to repent for it? i have many friends in many countries thanks to my garrulous youth. and you're a lonely ghoul. talking endlessly about your 'service' from filling out a form for the TA when you were 19 years old. you are beyond parody, my guy.

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-26 03:09:54)

paying minimum taxes? i literally pay 2x taxes, voluntarily, lol. i have been out of the UK for more than the necessary period to declare myself non-tax-resident. my company has offices in the states, tokyo and shanghai. i could have asked to be paid in dollars and made away with much lower tax contributions a long time ago. you're really barking up the wrong tree with the tax thing, my friend ... like, categorically, no.

keen to decide how other people should be taxed? we're living in times of almost historically low taxation. i'm not trying to levy any especially cumbrous and unfair tax regimes on anybody. just to acknowledge, as lots of the rest of the world seem to do, that we do indeed live in a thing called Society, contra the thatcherite vision, and that britain needs major public spending and investment to crawl out of its deadly dive.

you really are a bizarre little man. so someone in favour of taxation is somehow uniquely selfish and immoral because they're 'deciding what to do with other people's money'? lmao wtf. i include myself as a taxpayer in that polity, you idiot.

Socialists are very good at volunteering other people's money, when they could literally write a cheque to the govt themselves.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Socialists are very good at volunteering other people's money, when they could literally write a cheque to the govt themselves.

Why would an individual socialist pay the government extra if it isn't going to further their socialist agenda? I'd like a better social safety net in this country. Sending the IRS a $10k tip won't make that happen.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Socialists are very good at volunteering other people's money, when they could literally write a cheque to the govt themselves.

Why would an individual socialist pay the government extra if it isn't going to further their socialist agenda? I'd like a better social safety net in this country. Sending the IRS a $10k tip won't make that happen.

it's hard to explain to dilbert that, really, to fix big problems like the environment or an unequal society, you really do need more than the gospel of 'individual responsibility'.

funnily enough the people who sold the bunk idea that climate change could be fixed by incremental nudges in consumer behaviour was ... the oil companies and their PR men. the companies dilbert invests in and draws profits on. funny how it works, isn't it.

i'm not sure where i've said to give cash handouts to the homeless. i don't think even people who work closely with the homeless have ever suggested that's a good proposition or a workable solution to anything.

and how is your proposed 'private beneficence' version more effective to coordinate? the conservatives have already turned the UK into a nation of charity rather than state-directed efforts. we have more food banks than mcdonalds. do you want to come and see the results? community-driven initiatives are a fine and heartwarming thing, to be sure; but not when they're borne out of brute necessity, because the government are too busy out for lunch with their hedge-fund mates and have left ethyl and doris at the end of the road alone to freeze and starve to death.

it's been fairly obvious, in fact, that part of the ideology of austerity and public cuts were to slash the fundamental responsibilities of the state to such a low and precarious level that charities would have to step up and fill the gap. because hundreds of thousands of deaths are the result of such withdrawals. an estimated 350,000 people have died directly as a result of policies associated with austerity. if you really think leaving it to the 'milk of kindness' of random billionaire philanthropists is the best fix, then you're a dupe. a dupe of one of the biggest lies ever sold to working people. it didn't work in the first gilded age and it's not working in this second gilded age of the mega-rich and their vanity projects, either.

dilbert for a person who stresses selflessness and charity to quite such a degree, it's amazing to see the cognitive dissonance on display when it comes to, well, sympathies or solidarity with anyone who isn't a mirror image of yourself. you clap your hands with glee over plans to turn away all refugees from conflict zones, but you're a paragon of charity? how does that work, exactly?

Last edited by uziq (2022-10-26 05:01:12)