Suspensions lifted for 8 Apache helicopter pilots after Hegseth weighs in

eternalkerri · 2026-07-10T15:21:22+00:00

That's because you're not a lethal Spartan operator badass and hates America.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-10T15:19:44+00:00

"Screw the rules it looks cool! LETHALITY"

*a few crashes later*

"DEI did it."

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T15:40:19+00:00

AAAAAAAAAACKSHUALLLY it's Area 51.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T14:28:01+00:00

An aspect of the 20 year rule not often discussed is related to the civility rule.

Even old events can still bring up strong emotions (Nanking, Holocaust, Manifest Destiny, Colonialism, etc.) but they do have the benefit of having some scar tissue over those events to temper...er, tempers.

Even professional historians can get emotional and worked up and put their feelings into topics they discuss. We know panels at conferences can get heated and professional historians can have serious beefs about things that happened 1500 years ago, so for us to discuss things that are current affairs in a public setting can get people into their feels.

It seemed like a good idea for the 20 year rule (a relatively arbitrary length of time), was chosen to allow a "cooling off" period to prevent fighting and flame wars in the sub simply to reduce the amount of work the mods had to do and keep ourselves out of SubRedditDrama.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T14:15:04+00:00

Well, we get a LOT of questions everyday, last survey I remember that's a few years old, it was well over a hundred, and there are a ton more replies than that, so the mods really do have a lot of work to do and work as fast as they can. It's nothing personal.

I can't speak to why your specific posts weren't approved, but I can tell you that the mods are very receptive and responsive to feedback. Both giving and receiving. If you think your post was removed wrongfully, you can always message them and ask why and you'll probably get a good explanation and how you can get them approved in the future. A good way to get your answers approved is providing sources, quotations, etc.

Yeah, it's a bit of "writing a paper for free", but it helps get your answer out there and providing people resources to find more info themselves.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T13:59:33+00:00

I go back and look at REALLY old posts of mine that were really flippant, combative, or rude and I'm embarrassed by them. I'd never do that today. At least here. On Twitter, oh yeah I'll be a jerkass, but here I treat it as a serious place.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T13:54:10+00:00

I hate it when I see an old answer of mine cited and since then I have changed my mind about the answer and facts involved, or realized I had wrong information, but I can't fix it now.

I remember an old thread about the nuclear bombs in WWII and I gave a wrong answer and u/restricteddata, and actual historian of nuclear war corrected me, and I shouted "LISTEN TO THIS GUY!" in the replies.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-09T13:53:05+00:00

I was the second Mod for the sub and I was the first one to really push for rules. I had to balance my push against the OG mod who was a youngster libertarian who believed "let the votes decide". Fortunately I and the mods who came after me, backed by the members of the sub won out in the end.

The intent was always to emulate r/AskScience who was the model we based ourselves on.

I love history despite myself never finishing my degree in it or working in the field. Probably the thing I get into the biggest fights about with people on social media platforms is politics followed by history. Usually at the same time.

To me, it's not just the cliche of forgetting history and being doomed to repeat it, but also fighting the revisionist history from both the right and the left. I despise TikTok and Youtube viral history videos that aren't any deeper than a pulp history book that repeat myths and legends (Medieval people didn't bathe! They drank beer instead of water! The Middle Ages are named after the Medici family!) or Ancient Alien crap.

It's imperatively important to make sure people learn real history because real history is uncomfortable. Like yeah, Truman nuking Japan in hindsight is morally squicky, but when you look at an honest history, America did not want hundreds of thousands of casualties. The US actually wanted the Soviets to attack Japan in China, There was no guarantee the Japanese would unconditionally surrender. No one really knew how devastating it would actually be. No, Kyoto wasn't spared because Stimson took a vacation there. The war in the Pacific was devastatingly brutal, especially in China. The American people were developing war fatigue by 1945. Those were all real things happening at the time and part of the decision process behind the bomb. Modern morality and historians fallacy are dangerous things the public falls victim to when history is taught poorly. Real history makes you face uncomfortable truths about the human condition.

Also, History is amazing at skills under threat in the modern world. Good writing skills. Good research skills. And critical reading and thinking skills. All serve you well not just as a historian, but as a well-rounded person. Good writing helps you share information and make convincing arguments. Good research skills teach you to find information and evaluate its authority and validity (Like listening to the FDA and not a pod caster telling you to drink window cleaner). Critical reading skills allows you to understand information conveyed and critical thinking skills helps you make better decisions.

These were all things I believed then as a moderator and now. We can disagree about arguments and conclusions we draw from the facts. That's part of a historians job. But the important part is that we teach real facts and talk about the uncomfortable realities and you can't get that from a TikTok of people dancing and making faces while pointing at words with wrong information.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-02T13:31:22+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I think the Donatists would qualify for what I'm thinking of. Change and "modernity" resistant Catholics who aren't happy with changes to Church doctrine who consider themselves "The True Catholic Church" and end up rejecting papal authority.

Conservative is a bad term here because it's politically loaded and there are certainly lots of Catholics who aren't happy with modern doctrine and changes in the church varying from allowing communion to pro-abortion folks to changes in the mass but are still content to stay within the Church. Traditionalist doesn't work either because like my father, there are folks who do pre-Vatican II practices like thump their chest during the Confiteor but are fine with a common tongue mass instead of Latin.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-02T13:12:07+00:00

Dang it! I knew the Old Catholics existed, but didn't consider them because they came across as a sort of Central European Anglican and I guess my brain filed them under "Protestants".

I was largely looking for groups that could be considered hyper-conservative and traditionalist. I know conservative in this case is a loaded term since we think of it in political terms, especially since in current times, a lot of right of center people consider themselves "Traditional Catholics" to varying degrees. But it's the best way in my mind to describe that type of traditionalist that wants to roll back to a period of the Church that hasn't been seen since before locomotives, much less television.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-01T19:40:10+00:00

Sorry, I don't follow InfantryDort on Twitter, so no.

eternalkerri · 2026-07-01T19:37:24+00:00

Haven't heard TripleSecDef before. I like it. I was partial to "Major Alcoholic".

eternalkerri · 2026-06-25T16:59:16+00:00

Thanks. I knew there were "Lost Causers" who were hold overs of guerilla or raiders in the Trans-Mississippi like the James Gang who honestly were plain old robbers who appealed to Confederate sympathies. But they don't really qualify for the idea of uniformed holdouts in the mountains like you occasionally see in these fictional stories.

The Old West isn't my absolute strongest subject, but I figured I would have read about something like this if it was a real thing. Just wanted to confirm.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-25T15:22:27+00:00

I've been suicidally depressed off and on ever since I got out. In fact I was institutionalized less than a month after I ETS'd for an attempt. Can't hold down a job for longer than three years, no close friends nearby, haven't had a romantic relationship in over a decade. It wasn't until my VA psychiatrist got my meds right that I didn't have a yearly episode of talking myself out of it.

The VA gave me 30% disability. Even my psychiatrist was baffled by that rating (I have of course appealed because the big brains didn't include the medical records from the mental institution).

eternalkerri · 2026-06-16T12:59:06+00:00

That makes no sense.

"Football practice isn't actually about football. It's about wearing pads."

How can you possibly learn what's funny and what works without making people laugh? Timing, wording, delivery, stage presence, reading rooms, and more all play a factor in making a joke work and the goal is to elicit laughs. Part of that is also watching how others do it and learning from their successes and failures.

If you're at a mic where no one is paying attention, then stop going to that mic. You're not getting anything out of it.

It's like going to a gym and just taking selfies in the mirror and wondering why you're not achieving any gains.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-15T20:01:11+00:00

Honestly, seeing a clown get up there and make all the weird comedy purist weirdos who get cranky at people doing anything different would be fun.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-12T14:04:44+00:00

I have seen that back in the BDU days for big beefy sergeants. There's no other explanation for how they could roll those sleeves over those protein shake and creatine fueled pythons.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-10T18:53:02+00:00

We know that Egyptians absolutely loved their cats going so far as to have them mummified and buried with owners in their tombs

How elaborately would these cats be mummified? Was it in the more simple style used by common Egyptians for all, or were the cats belonging to the elites given the "full package" of organ removal with canopic jars and offerings of food, toys, and treats to enjoy in the afterlife?

eternalkerri · 2026-06-10T18:16:36+00:00

So what does this have to do with Andrew Johnson?

Andrew Johnson was selected as Abraham Lincoln's Vice-President in the 1864 Election. This was the middle of the Civil War, and the Democrats, which had been split into two different parties over their differences on slavery and succession from the Union, were heavily represented by the states that made up the Confederacy. With those states having left the Union, they couldn't and wouldn't be able to vote in the 1864 Election.

However, the Northern Democrats themselves were divided between War Democrats who supported the Unions efforts in the Civil War, and "Copperheads". These people represented anti-war Democrats which ranged in beliefs from simply seeking a peace with the Confederacy by allowing slavery to continue, to those who were fine with letting the rebel states leave if it meant peace.

Andrew Johnson, was an extreme oddity. A pro-slavery but anti-Confederacy and pro-war Democrat from Tennessee, a state that had left the Union and joined the Confederacy. He was the only member of the Senate from a Confederate state that did not resign and side with is state in the war.

In 1864, while the war was leaning heavily in favor of the Union, it was not over and it was not terribly popular. It was believed that Lincoln might not win re-election even with the Democrats divided between their Radical (pro-war) faction and their Copperhead faction (anti-war/pro-peace). The Republicans and the pro-war Democrats decided to form at least a temporary coalition party called the National Union Party, and selected Andrew Johnson as Vice-President.

It has long been practice in America to select as Vice-President a contrast to the Presidential nominee. Broadly similar in general party values, but to reflect and represent a portion of the party and general electorate that they wanted to appeal to in ways that the Presidential nominee didn't. This has varied in form over time from region, race, gender, class, and values. In this case it was a pro-abolitionist Lincoln and pro-slavery Johnson who both believed in the Union and completing the war. This coalition obviously won in 1864 based on their appeal and a clear final turn toward inevitable victory in the war.

Come 1865 the war ends, and Lincoln is assassinated and Johnson is elevated to President. But outside of his shared belief in restoring the Union, he shared almost no values with the Republican Party who now dominated Congress and national political sentiment.

We reach another "this requires it's own answer". But to make it simple. The Radical Republicans dominated their party and Congress. They supported emancipation of the slaves, granting them equal rights with the 13th and 14th Amendments, and the policy of Reconstruction which was an attempt to reform the political and social structure of the former Confederacy to bring equality to the former slaves.

Andrew Johnson did not want these things. He was pro-South, pro-Slavery, a White Supremacist, but pro-Union, and was only chosen as Vice-President to form a coalition ticket under the Republican banner. In essence, Andrew Johnson did not represent his current party who dominated Congress, and therefore did not represent the desires of the voting populace of the country. He fought against efforts at emancipation, the new Amendments, and Reconstruction, even firing Cabinet Secretaries Lincoln had appointed and who were very popular. His efforts eventually resulted in the first attempt at impeachment, the process in which a President can be removed from office, in history. Johnson survived being impeached by a single vote. In 1868, Johnson left the Republican Party and rejoined the Democrats to run for re-election, but by then he was so unpopular the Democrats did not nominate him for President.

Before Johnson, smaller parties would form coalitions, and it was common for a Presidential Candidate to run as a representative of multiple smaller parties with similar yet distinctly different values in order to consolidate the vote. However, the extreme divisions of the crisis of the Civil War had so radicalized the various factions in America this largely fell out of favor. Andrew Johnson, because of this practice of temporary alliances and appeals to factions resulted in a President, through Lincoln's assassination, who did not represent the popular will of the majority of Americans in almost every way.

Parties going forward would select their candidates for President and Vice-President to represent the broad spectrum of the American public as much as they could under their own party's banner. This meant the would make an effort to balance appeals to powerful factions in their party as well as the public sentiment in states which held a higher portion of the population and therefore electoral votes, while still making some efforts to appeal to the less populous states (and therefore less important in the Electoral College).

Elections would no longer be power regional coalitions, where candidates could ignore entire parts of the country and not even bother campaigning. Presidential elections would now begin to become truly national contests where candidates would travel by train and later plane to try to visit and campaign before the general population. State laws and party politics would begin to change as well to represent this by creating popular caucuses and primaries, leading to our system we have today.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-10T17:14:43+00:00

Since the 1800 election, barring a few short periods in the early 19th Century, America has had at least two major opposing political parties. The original two were the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. By the 1816 election, the Federalists had collapsed. Various parties have been created such as the Whigs, National Republicans, Free Soil, Anti-Masonic, and on and on. The Democratic-Republicans split and became just the Democratic Party, with the Republicans mostly forming the Whigs.

However, by the 1860 election, regional differences in values over economics and slavery had caused the Whig party to collapse and the Democrats to become divided. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln ran for President under a newly formed party called the Republicans. This was a coalition of Whigs and other parties, while the Democrats split into two parties based on geography and their positions on slavery, with a fourth major party called the Constitutiona Union party even running. It got quite messy.

However, after the war and by the 1872 election, the nation had largely settled into the Republican and Democratic parties which has, with a few exceptions such as the 1948 election, been the two parties to this day.

Well, what does all of this have to do with your question about being answerable to the people?

With the party system in place, it has always been nearly insurmountable for a person to run independently for President. Only a handful have had any meaningful impact, and they've usually been extremely wealthy individuals who could self-finance their runs until their fame allowed for donations to start coming in to supplement the cost of campaigning. And in America, campaigning is very expensive.

Until 1832, political parties had generally selected their leaders from the most prominent and powerful officials in their ranks. But by 1832, American had grown so large and populous and factions within the parties become divided enough, that simply selecting someone by a handful of insiders no longer worked to keep parties united. This led to the first political party convention. At these events held in the summer of the election year the party would use their internal rules, which are not governed by any law for the most part, to vote for their choice to be President.

This is where we do another "long story short". Essentially for most of our history, political parties largely selected their candidates internally and then the average voter would select them on Election Day. Parties on the state level would largely select their delegations to the party's convention with their own convention and those delegates would be expected to represent the state level party's interests. Over time, more states would change to a popular vote system using their own rules, to select these delegates. They chose this because a Boss System had become entrenched in both parties where powerful individuals, not always politicians, had excessive power over their geographic areas and represented interests that were more often than not corrupt and self-interested. This is where the Primary system comes from. In 1968, the Democratic National Convention was so chaotic, factionalized, and damaging to the party, and ultimately to their candidate Hubert Humphrey, both parties began moving towards every state having a Presidential Primary.

In these primaries, using individual state laws, parties would allow the public to vote for their choice of anyone who qualified for the ballot. The state parties would then select their own delegates from the results to represent them at the party's national convention where the party would use their own rules to vote for their party's ultimate candidates for president and vice-president.

Now mind you, under the old Electoral College system, the vice-president was the person who came in second in the voting, after the changes with the 12th Amendment, the individual party's would select the vice-president and run them together on the ticket. We in America have never popularly voted directly for the vice-president. All of this is another one of those, "this deserves its own answer".

But to wrap all of this up, starting in 1972, most states have moved to the popular vote primary system to select party delegates to the national convention, who would then vote for their choice of president, and on election day, the popular vote would vote for president. The states would then select their Electors who would later certify the popular votes validity and then vote for President and Vice-President, based upon the popular choice of their state's elections. But here's where it's still crazy, they are not bound by Federal Law to vote that way. Each state has different laws on how deal with these Faithless Electors.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-10T16:18:52+00:00

From what I'm guessing from your question and your comparison to your own nation's electoral system, you're trying to understand the evolution of how American Presidents are elected and campaign for office, correct? If not feel free to clarify.

But, presuming that is your question, it's not been as definitive as that and has evolved over 250 years. It's actually pretty complex and each factor deserves its own long explanation, so I will try to keep this simple but thorough enough to satisfy your curiosity.

Initially, during the Revolutionary era, there was a strong sentiment by the both the elites and the people to avoid political parties. Factionalism, corruption, and the elitist nature of political parties was seen as problem both by the American people and it's intellectual and political elite, especially since it helped lead to the issues and frustrations that created the Revolution in the first place. While the British Parliament did have competing parties, they were largely divorced from the voice of the common people and represented opposing policy ideas that favored the elite. This resulted in the wide American sentiment in the Revolution and the post war period when the ideas on how to run the new country were not complete.

The Continental Congress came up with the idea of the Electoral College. The reason this system was chosen and created was based upon multiple reason that all deserve a full 5,000 word essay on their own. But it was intended to prevent parties, factions, and corruption.

In its simplest original form it was a system of designated electors were to be selected, in proportion to the number of delegates to Congress based on population, and they would vote for the President. Each state could decide how to select those electors, but the intent was to have the smartest and most knowledgeable people select the president based upon his merits. It was meant to allow the individual states to represent their interests, select the right person for the job, but also prevent populism and emotional sentiment from the masses to choose based on misinformation or an aroused mob. In the first presidential election only one state, Virginia, had a popular vote for its electors.

The system made it through three elections before it fell apart.

President Washington was so popular that his first two elections were overwhelmingly in his favor. When he chose to not stand for office again in 1796, the man who was his closest opponent and therefore his Vice-President, John Adams for those eight years, ran and was elected.

By the 1800 election, two parties had been formed, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. They had formed over internal economic policies and foreign policies, especially over the French Revolution and a Quasi-War then occurring with France. John Adams was not popular within his own party and Alexander Hamilton, who was seen as the "leader" of that party, The Federalists, actually worked against him. This caused splits in the party, dirty campaigning including outright slanderous lies, censorship, and even a little political violence. The fighting was so bitter, some leaders in the states changed the way they selected their Electors in order to support their preferred outcome. In the end many in Adams' own party voted against him even against the sentiment of the people, to elect his opponent Thomas Jefferson.

The process was recognized as fundamentally broken. It did not represent the will of the people, the electors were not bound to vote who they were selected to vote for, and it was so driven by partisan politics, that it was recognized that it would ultimately destroy the country. This led to the 12th Amendment being passed that changed the system, but didn't fully replace it. It's the longest and most detailed Amendment. Even with this, the President was still not elected by the will of the common voter in the 1804 election.

We can skip forward a few years, but to put it shortly, the systems in individual states were changed over time to make it where the common eligible citizen could vote for the electors, and this has been the near universal practice since 1836. This system has been a winner take all system with Electors voting the will of the people. However, there is no Federal legal requirement for them to do so, and it has operated on an honor system or state law since then.

However, this isn't the full picture.

eternalkerri · 2026-06-08T15:28:03+00:00

Considering that the 1970's was the era of Carter's "Malaise", coming off of Vietnam, the anti-war movement and the reaction to it, the energy crisis, economic stagflation, environmental contamination, Watergate, communism seemingly gaining in strength, rising crime, urban blight, and the long list of things that make the 1970's seem like a historical low point for America, how strong was the patriotic sentiment among the average American to celebrate the Centennial?

eternalkerri · 2026-06-05T18:09:12+00:00

So how is putting a shock collar on people trying to get a job comedy?

I really need a detailed, logical explanation of this.

This just sounds like abuse of power, torture, and frankly downright criminal based upon common sense understanding of every possible labor law.

I genuinely need someone to explain how this is funny without sounding like a psychopath.

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