The thing that still weirds me the HECK out about American politics:
When did Americans start voting for one party for House/Senate, and the opposing party for President?
Cos no matter what your politics is, doing that's like saying 'I want candy and I want a beating, and I'm darn well gonna get BOTH'
Didn't start in the 2000s or even 1990s. Was it the 1950s, with Eisenhower? All the Democratic voters decided they wanted socialism but also hardline anti-Communism?
Still just boggles me.
This thought brought to you by the 1970s, with Nixon in full smash-and-grab crime mode... yet reliable Democratic control of House and Senate.
How... did that happen to an entire generation? Who'd lived through the Depression, even?
"Oh yes we love Democratic policies, always vote Democrats in the midterms and locals, we just want... the complete opposite, as well. The guys who broke the country, we want them leading, but not running everything..."
"Lifelong Democrat, me, after that Hoover guy smashed everything, never gonna vote for a Republican again, but, well, Eisenhower and Nixon, they've just got that swaggering gangster charm, I mean a *little* gangsterism, just at the top, the CEO that's not really like voting for a whole party of gangsters now is it... don't want any stinking Republicans in my Senate, but, to represent our whole country to the world, well, that bad-boy charm..."
And this generation fought WW2. Shaking my head.
Did America win WW2 purely by accident? Cos US domestic politics since Truman doesn't seem like an outcome from a country capable of doing any planning.
German General Officer: "The reason that the American Army does so well in war time, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis"
Soviet document: "One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine"
Anonymous US Army officer: "If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions"
gameing / silly joke
@troubleMoney @natecull this is how I main on D.VA
us, ww2, stuff
@troubleMoney @natecull one of my grandfathers was involved in actions involving shit like "advancing ahead of the line, and then hunkering down and calling in air support LITERALLY ON THEMSELVES in order to clear out entrenched artillery to allow crossing a river"
...
so like. yyyyyeah, that definitely tracks.