Ah. I was unaware of that slang. 🙂 Thanks! That makes soooo much more sense now. Still silly. But much less so.

When Steve Watson said “The Beeb” he meant to refer to BBC, not Justin Bieber!

Yes. I was being hyperbolic on the dollars! Good point. I’ll add that to the list above.

But I mention in the podcast that of course the American tank is designed to protect the crew; the issue is, rather, that they designed it so the tank can be reused if those safeties are overwhelmed. It’s not designed like the Merkava, where the Israelis made choices that sacrifice the tank for the crew. (Although of course it’s not magic; Merkava crews will not always survive; the question is of trends in design choice.)

Also I strongly disagree with your claim that the military intentionally designed the Abrams without regard for protecting the crew. The actual battle record of the Abrams refutes your claim. The army needs to protect the crew-losing even one crew member makes the tank combat ineffective. It’s not like tank units drive around on the battlefield with replacement tank crew members.

Also, your Coast Guard story was quite the letdown. From your post I was expecting a story that was exciting or funny. Instead you tell us that you replaced a broken button on a sonar system. Lame. I guess coastie are easily amused.

I don’t know where you got the idea I’m a Beeb fan. I don’t even know his music. If Brian used any, it was ironic.

I wonder how much of this is down to not facing an existential threat? North America is insulated by three thousand plus miles of ocean on either coast. Even if the Coast Guard was the USA’s only naval arm and the ANG the only airforce, the idea of the US being seriously threatened by anyone is absurd. By the time anyone has solved the logistics of landing a half-million man army unopposed… well it wouldn’t be unopposed anymore. You only have to look at what America had under arms in 1939 as opposed to 1943 to see that

Another American national trait is profligacy. Compare US energy expenditure with Japan. No wonder ‘Abrams’ is a gas guzzler. The gearbox is inefficient also; ‘Merkava’ delivers far more horse power to the axle. The USA still builds main battle tanks; Britain abandoned and no longer has the ability to either build or design MBT’s. I wonder what that says about our culture? Nothing good I am sure. If you think US defence policies and spending are a little challenged, just be grateful our muppets are not in charge over there.

If you are not taking something seriously and there is no reason to take it seriously, you shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out looking as if no one can be arsed. The vast majority aren’t. I doubt the rest of the world would actually want the USA (or us) to take it more seriously either. The US military is a big enough threat to life and limb as it is. Keep wasting that money on ‘Abrams’, F35, ‘Zumwalt’, the Littoral Combat Ship, and their ilk. Don’t mention the ‘Legend’ class to Sec. Nav. Let’s try and keep the world safe from “Democracy”, eh?

I liked what you had to say about patronage but before we get carried away, in a global context even the poorest North American/North West European is very probably an aristocrat.

I went and listened to Trump ramble on. If you write it down it is even more bloody awful than listening to it. He appears to have been speaking from post-it notes! Big crowd at Liberty U but they seemed subdued and only going through the motions. I got the sense they were making the best of a bad job. I hope your country’s voters cotton on to what is going on here: you do not need a party machine or even a coherent platform to go a long way. Marry that with crowd sourced micro funding and there seems no reason not to escape the Two Party paradigm altogether. In OHJ I think you succeeded in presenting the minimal coherent historicist argument for Jesus. I am sure there is a minimal coherent American conservative political argument to be put as well. Since the Republican party has failed to do this (as must be obvious to anyone who has thought about it) perhaps someone of a critical mind and democrat/socialist leanings ought to step up and do it for them? I am not suggesting you for the job but you might pass the word on.

Listening to Trump Tripe emphasises how important critical thinking and well thought out alternatives to the current politics (and everything else!) are. You get the governments and legislatures you vote for: if you do not know how to think you will continue to elect Bushs and Clintons because you will not adequately know how to judge or select your candidate or their policies. That makes those who teach critical thinking rather important and those that do so beholden to no one more so again. Keep up the good fight Richard; it is appreciated.

PS, you’re a fan of the Beeb? I cannot begin to understand how crap US TV must be to come to that conclusion! LOL!! This must be a “Democracy is the worst form of government except for the alternatives” thing.

It is a matter of regional dialect. It’s common in American pastoral tradition to use the ordinal. But they still often use the cardinal in England. I was educated by British professors and British television, so I grew up using the cardinal, and in fact I usually do (I’m surprised if you found video or audio of me using the ordinal; but I don’t pay much attention to the distinction, so maybe I have). I never significantly breathed the atmosphere of church or televangelism sermons in America, so I was aware of but not much exposed to the cardinal tradition.

In Trump’s case, there is a two-way irony: that his audience doesn’t know of the UK dialect tradition is yet another example of American insular cultural ignorance; but that his choice wasn’t based on being British or educated by British professors or a fan of the BBC, but on him simply not ever having heard these phrases ever spoken, is indeed evidence he is bullshitting the audience when he claims to be a churchgoing bible admirer. So, on the one hand, they were right…this slip exposed him as “not one of them.” But only by accident. Had he been raised on BBC C.O.E. sermon broadcasts, they’d have been wrong to conclude he was ignorant and insincere from using the cardinal pronunciation. Although the idea of Trump having religiously watched C.O.E. sermons on the BBC for decades til now is hilarious to imagine on many levels.

Not significantly, IMO. Because even those troops are not numerous enough. They are pretty much just extensions of the federal military, in terms of who joins and how many and what they do (and how few voters know anyone close to them who is in service). So everything we say in the podcast remains true even if you lump all our militaries together.

I was thinking about your podcast comment on how people are often distanced from war, not even knowing people in the military. Do you think the military’s decision in recent years to deploy Army National Guard troops overseas will affect how distanced the public feels from war?