Meme Thread for Both Posting and Discussing Memes

[Robovski]

This is really common but it's probably not a matter of them needing it. There's been a large-scale scheme of transferring military assets to various police forces in order to get rid of them so that the military could "need" new hardware and give contracts to the Industrial Military Complex. Further, the hardware has to actually be used under the rules so you wind up with police driving diet tanks around periodically just so they can check a box that the tank was used.

It's called the 1033 program and gained some notoriety after the Ferguson Riots when police rolled in to crush the rioters in MRAPs, but never really died down.

Really helps sell the dystopian future.

 

[Captain X]

Got to give the police all the military gear for when they nationalize the police and use them against the citizenry.

 

[S'task]

To a degree the system makes sense, and there are police departments that can make use of such things. Ironically suburban ones are the least likely to find them useful, whereas urban ones can find them useful due to emergency response from violence, and rural police forces can make good use of them due to the off road capability (think about it, what's going to be better in a rural area that's been impacted by a flood and needs police to go around checking on folks? A standard police cruiser based on a full sized sedan with relatively low ground clearance and gearing for cruising on a highway... or a former military hummer with its high ground clearance and high torque good for towing and pulling things?). Further rural police forces often have smaller budgets, so a program like this can easily allow them to get useful hardware they otherwise could not afford.

Further, something one has to remember: production lines that don't produce get scrapped, and a large part of managing a supply chain and production chain is making sure there is continued production on it. If the military has "enough" of these vehicles, the manufacturing line doesn't just go idle, it gets decommissioned, thus it is logical to try and keep them running for as long as possible and have older models handed down (or sold) so the factory line is maintained. That factory line and supply chain are ALSO the thing producing the majority of spar parts for those vehicles too, and if they got shut down spare parts become harder and harder to get over time.

So there are good reasons that are not about militarizing the police or anything of the sort.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

It's not like you can't fuck up MRAPs either.

Like.

It helped reduce casualties, but MRAPs (The caddy is the best one btw, really nice on the inside) can still be taken out with a well placed IED, halting a convoy/caravan. Especially when you start getting creative with secondary and tertiary explosives.

IEDs built from cow shit and diesel fuel by barely literate goat fuckers could do it. Did do it.

 

[Abhorsen]

Further, something one has to remember: production lines that don't produce get scrapped, and a large part of managing a supply chain and production chain is making sure there is continued production on it. If the military has "enough" of these vehicles, the manufacturing line doesn't just go idle, it gets decommissioned, thus it is logical to try and keep them running for as long as possible and have older models handed down (or sold) so the factory line is maintained. That factory line and supply chain are ALSO the thing producing the majority of spar parts for those vehicles too, and if they got shut down spare parts become harder and harder to get over time.

This is handouts to the Military Industrial complex, which apparently need to happen so that we can keep giving handouts to the military industrial complex. Instead, just let them sell humvees to allied countries. That'll keep the production lines going. The idea that we should retire stuff just to buy more to keep a production line going is frankly the height of corporatism. Let Boeing suffer if its products aren't desired anymore.

 

[bullethead]

The idea that we should retire stuff just to buy more to keep a production line going is frankly the height of corporatism.

The problem is that, as the technological sophistication of the military hardware has gone up, some of the skills needed to make it become so insanely specialized that if you shutdown the production line, you're fucked for X number of years, because you have to train people from scratch to do the job.

Making rifles is a brain dead easy job that any competent CNC shop can do.

Getting people who can properly roll HY-whatever steel into the proper shape for a submarine hull (for example)? Super fucking hard.

The main problem is that because of the Cold War ending and politicians being dumb, all the important military production wound up in the hands of a few big corporations, while wearing the shit out of the military hardware that was already getting up there in age. So now you have to do dumb bullshit to keep the technical skills alive in case you need them and to avoid the big shitfest of having to rebuild industrial infrastructure after losing it, but you don't sell stuff to the civilian market and most of it is useless for other people's needs, so you have to dump it onto the police once the National Guard gets filled up.

We're not going to get to the point where we don't have to worry about maintaining manufacturing skill sets until some crazy point way in the future where 3D printing vehicles becomes viable.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

until some crazy point way in the future where 3D printing vehicles becomes viable.

Given how much of those skillsets is straight up not in manual, just things workers figured out made stuff better over the years of operation... not really.

Instead, just let them sell humvees to allied countries.

They already do though. Much of what America makes in military hardware IS sold to allied and occasionally even neutral nations. But like... Something to understand is the sheer absurdity of the SCALE of the US Military, it is literally bigger than every other military on Earth combined last time I checked, China might have managed to make a dent in that, but like, America operates on a scale entirely unique to America in the modern world. The amount of production it would take to keep the military rolling in an actual large conflict is beyond what the entire rest of the nations that make up America's potential market want or need.(note: not talking personnel numbers, talking the things you make with assembly lines)

And like, let's understand something else, the modern understanding of "how life works" is itself underpinned by the American military operating on that scale.

And, further, it is operating on that scale that permits America to just, have the best stuff. As an illustration, you know how the F-16 was plagued by cost overruns and time creep in development and finished massively over budget and crazy expensive? In the time since the F-16 happening and now, the Swedes put together a genuine fifth gen fighter, a peer(at least for what the Swedes want it for), it's development came in under bduget, a key concern was keeping costs down. The per unit cost of the F-16 will be lower than the Swedish Gripen by this time next year. That is not an indication of failure to keep cost down by the Gripen designers, it is an illustration of sheer power of scale.

 

[LordSunhawk]

I think you mean the F-35, not the F-16

 

[bintananth]

To a degree the system makes sense, and there are police departments that can make use of such things. Ironically suburban ones are the least likely to find them useful, whereas urban ones can find them useful due to emergency response from violence, and rural police forces can make good use of them due to the off road capability (think about it, what's going to be better in a rural area that's been impacted by a flood and needs police to go around checking on folks? A standard police cruiser based on a full sized sedan with relatively low ground clearance and gearing for cruising on a highway... or a former military hummer with its high ground clearance and high torque good for towing and pulling things?). Further rural police forces often have smaller budgets, so a program like this can easily allow them to get useful hardware they otherwise could not afford.

Further, something one has to remember: production lines that don't produce get scrapped, and a large part of managing a supply chain and production chain is making sure there is continued production on it. If the military has "enough" of these vehicles, the manufacturing line doesn't just go idle, it gets decommissioned, thus it is logical to try and keep them running for as long as possible and have older models handed down (or sold) so the factory line is maintained. That factory line and supply chain are ALSO the thing producing the majority of spar parts for those vehicles too, and if they got shut down spare parts become harder and harder to get over time.

So there are good reasons that are not about militarizing the police or anything of the sort.

The only police forces that need something like an MRAP are the small rural ones you mentioned. They'll likely only use it when the conditons are so bad that a regular police cruiser can't get there or Jim Bob's tractor got stuck ... which is basically what you said.

 

[nemo1986]

Given how much of those skillsets is straight up not in manual, just things workers figured out made stuff better over the years of operation... not really.


They already do though. Much of what America makes in military hardware IS sold to allied and occasionally even neutral nations. But like... Something to understand is the sheer absurdity of the SCALE of the US Military, it is literally bigger than every other military on Earth combined last time I checked, China might have managed to make a dent in that, but like, America operates on a scale entirely unique to America in the modern world. The amount of production it would take to keep the military rolling in an actual large conflict is beyond what the entire rest of the nations that make up America's potential market want or need.(note: not talking personnel numbers, talking the things you make with assembly lines)

And like, let's understand something else, the modern understanding of "how life works" is itself underpinned by the American military operating on that scale.

And, further, it is operating on that scale that permits America to just, have the best stuff. As an illustration, you know how the F-16 was plagued by cost overruns and time creep in development and finished massively over budget and crazy expensive? In the time since the F-16 happening and now, the Swedes put together a genuine fifth gen fighter, a peer(at least for what the Swedes want it for), it's development came in under bduget, a key concern was keeping costs down. The per unit cost of the F-16 will be lower than the Swedish Gripen by this time next year. That is not an indication of failure to keep cost down by the Gripen designers, it is an illustration of sheer power of scale.

And nobody wants the Grippen, they want the F-35. Sweden can't even give them away literally.

 

[Bacle]

And nobody wants the Grippen, they want the F-35. Sweden can't even give them away literally.

Even Ukraine isn't begging for Grippens.

 

[PsihoKekec]

If you have never been called n****r in online play, have you even lived?

 

[Cherico]

the jewish suffering section is way way too small.

 

[Wargamer08]

the jewish suffering section is way way too small.

6 million books?

 

[WolfBear]

 

[Cherico]

6 million books?

You could honestly write even more then that, over 2000 years of being shit on and surviving attempt after attempt to wipe us out will do that.

That said we out lived the Persian empire, the roman empire, the holy roman empire, Byzantium and a whole host of shit so we have to be doing something right.

 

[Agent23]

Albanian TV channel ZJARR apparently experimenting with a new dress code/format for female newscasters.
To make propaganda more widely appealing.

This reminds me of some memes @WolfBear posted.

 

[PsihoKekec]

 

[gral]

Even Ukraine isn't begging for Grippens.

They know they'll be getting F-16Vs instead. This is part of why Gripen's export prospects are bad; it's being squeezed by F-35 in the upper end, and F-16V in the lower. The other part is most prospective clients either have full export vetos or not at all(not exactly, but good enough). Very few are trusted with reserves - Brazil is the big one(which is why we got Gripens). India would be the other, but Tejas means they won't buy them.

 

[ATP]

You could honestly write even more then that, over 2000 years of being shit on and surviving attempt after attempt to wipe us out will do that.

That said we out lived the Persian empire, the roman empire, the holy roman empire, Byzantium and a whole host of shit so we have to be doing something right.

Persian empire let jews come back to Judea,and aside from fake story in Purim there was no any atrocities.
Romans do not cared as long as jews do not made stupid uprising.HRE had no power over anything.
Byzantine - after jews in Jerusalem let persian into city and genocided ALL christians there,i would undartsandt if they did the same.