I just watched a Wall Street Journal YouTube video about how the Ukraine war is making the economy much better in Russia. Just like WWII brought good pay and social mobility to Americans, coming out of a Depression during which Soviet scientists determined the US lost a good 10 million to starvation, the Ukraine war has been really good for people in Russia in all these small towns.
Sure you might get killed, but at least your family gets "coffin money" as opposed to families of US service people dying in our war with Iran because it's "not really a war" and you're not really a Gold Star Mother and you can go pound sand.
Plus the sign-on bonuses in Russia are huge. We're talking amounts to $150k, which the video dismisses as "not life-changing money" sorry, lady, but for 99% of us in the US it would be life-changing money.
So the upshot is, Russia is losing about 1000 guys a day and they're probably "undesirables" in many cases, or they're people from "hick" areas, but the economy's great and if they die then their families are happy to get that "coffin money" and other than the one who's been chosen to be "it", everyone on the playground is having a great time.
It all sounds horrible to someone in our modern culture, people who swarmed to the theaters to see "Saving Private Ryan" but hasn't it always been this way? How many whalers thought they'd die peacefully in their own beds? Coal miners? WWI was a slaughter, and when WWII started it was probably assumed it would be the same. Instead, WWII was a fucking party except for those who became "it", yeah, not so great for them but for the rest? Studs Terkel called it "The Good War". Guys got to travel the world, make lifelong friends, rise into the middle class, get a college degree.
Someone on Reddit just said that the US-Iran war will be lost as slowly as possible "just like Vietnam and Afghanistan" because war is so profitable and benefits so many people. This is how things are, once you remove the layers of faux-sympathy and hypocrisy.
As old people with dementia generally do, the pedophile-in-chief is simply being brutally honest in calling US service people "suckers and losers". You're not supposed to just come out and say that. When I joined up, it was because (a) I didn't want to be homeless and (b) we weren't at war with anyone. But if that time, the early 80s, had been a time like now with wars started at the drop of a hat, and I were to end up disabled in a wheelchair, I'd have to be the first one to say cheerfully that I'm a loser. That I'd bet and lost.
The thing is, you're not supposed to SAY that.
And it made sense for some humans to be "expended" fighting cave bears and sabre-toothed tigers if the tribe overall could live, or die fighting the other tribe from the next valley over, so the rest of the people could live. But now it's been removed a few levels, and we've got people being "expended" so the rest of us can live a little better. If you asked people if that would be OK, that some randomly chosen person in their neighborhood has to die but they'll be able to buy a new car, they'll act horrified. But more than a few would consider it.
I was up overnight taking some stuff apart and then getting things together to pack today. Just two big boxes, one with a single thing and one with a bunch of things that I was afraid might end up being too heavy a box, but it was minor, only about 36 lbs.
On the way back I checked for packing stuff and didn't find much, then on a whim checked "Trackonomy"'s dumpster and took out some really prime stuff, and more than I could carry in one load so I took the first load home, put things away, then loaded up some electronics scrap to take out by Old Bayshore then went back over to Trackonomy and picked up the last of the stuff.
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