/80s/

First used by Reagan in his 1980 campaign election
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again

Irony is a communicative virus. In the case of the internet, irony as we know it is memetically selected through ideology, transferred in surrender/acceptance of concept. If we were to consider Dawkins as correct, memetic transfers similar to this are usually theological in nature, in the replication of ideas. On the internet, this replication usually occurs through audience fragmentation, in which individuals rely on niche information (see: post-truth). This would indicate changes of informative process, into memetic polarity, ideological mechanisms. Steeped in the contradiction of an internet of "free information, naturally selected by validity", memetic spread of information replicates onto culture in flux. This is why you see niches of far-right individuals who worship aesthetics, from a format spawned by anti-capitalists and self-described "nihilists", because irony is esteemed through the very concept of this occurrence, it replicates from informational effect, without the process of algorithmic production. Nostalgia/hauntology occurs through similar processes, in which the concept compounds onto niche properties, endlessly duplicating. Because the internet is not a cultural envelopment of pure distinction, rather of internalized, conflictual networks, with cancerous growths.

Has less to do with the actual era and more to do with some kind of zeitgeist as observed from a current frame of reference.

Aesthetics and Pinochet

A lot of it is obvious - though the love of Reagan itself is something I genuinely wonder about. It's easy to put it down to charisma and nostalgia and the personality cult - but then I still want to believe there's at least some substantial thing behind it.

Was at a Chicago show (fuck off) in the south and they played this montage of presidents during a song at one point - being who they are, Obama was portrayed with some esteem. Boos from the audience. Middling, almost confused reaction when Bush was shown. When it got to Reagan, cheers. A ways down, it got to Kennedy who was met with cheers (with a hint of confusion). So you know, having seen the economic numbers, knowing about the "unemployment rate" adjustments, Iran-Contra, the panick and censorious attitude of '80s government, and lord knows raising the drinking age… the incident activated my almonds a bit. And I really wonder what it is Reagan did for these people.

Are they middle class?

Well, the middle class doesn't really exist in the first world.

But yes

The 1980s were a period when the coalition of state and corporate power really flexed its muscles. The nostalgia right wingers have for it is really a reflection of elite triumphalism at the time.

There you go.

The 80’s were also the story of GOOD OL AMERICA AND AMERICAN BUSINESS WINNIN AGAIN (Chrysler, Grenada). Throw in some great man shit (Iacocca) with nerd crap (D&D, dawn of the PC) and you have a perfect shitstorm of rejects and balding suburban dads attempting to claim their birthright.

This is what the average aut-rightist thinks his life would be like living through the 80s if i had to guess:

Did the middle class actually benefit from Reagan or were they simply immune to the damage done?

Immunity, giving a veneer of benefit.

Funny enough the same dynamic exists up here among liberals (and even some leftists) towards Pierre Trudeau. For those not familiar, he was PM of Canada from 1968 to '84 (with an interregnum in '79-'80) and was a middling left-liberal who installed large chunks of Canada's social welfare institutions. He never was really that left, he started idpol and he was downright authoritarian when pressed. But liberals up here remember him fondly because he was confident, kinda edgy, never apologized (lmao) and represented what many Canadian liberals consider the golden years of the country in terms of social development and culture. It was enough to get his son elected…

Reagan had Hitleresque communication skills. He used television better than any leader to project his image of wise grandfather of the nation, despite being a senile buffoon lead around by his advisers.
80s America was basically the idealized version of the Third Reich, except the Hitler figure focused on what he was good at (public speaking) and didn't personally direct the war machine.

Also DUDE WEED LMAO

5 years ago the 50s were the white mans era. 2 years ago the 90s were the last white generation. Now the 80s are the hot shit. In 5 years we will really live in the 50s and mongoloid nerds will idolize the 20s.

I think you mean we will live in the 1930's.

I remember how annoyingly obsessed everyone was with 80s nostalgia during the aughts. The difference was that the 80s nostalgia of the aughts was by people whose childhoods were in the 80s and we were all collectively aware of how absurd 80s consumerism was. It was the first decade you had cartoons that were literally just got commercials, where all professional athletes were pitchmen, and where the fake counterculture we were supposed to view as cool consisted of middle-aged men wearing business casual clothing and playing AOR. Very few of us wanted to go back to the 80s as an adult, but it was hilarious to look back on our childhoods as college kids in the mid aughts.

Today's 80s nostalgia is by people who never lived through the 80s but wish they had. Even worse, they don't wish to be children, they want to be the scummy adults who created the laughing stock of "culture" children had to live through.

I like vaporwave. Am I by default rubbing elbows with fascists, or is the fascist penetration of vaporwave overblown?

The Volcker shock was a major reboot of capitalism, it was actually an experiment that played with a scenario that as far I know only Marx had contemplated and in his time nothing like it had occurred. Marx predicted that if the interest rate were to exceed the rate of profit that industrial non-financial firms would move their capital into the financial to the point that the sheer mass influx of capital would inevitably drive down the interest rate. This essentially happened.

The elites came together on an anti-inflation program because a combination of capital crisis and high-inflation had created a decade where inequality was at its lowest point in American history. American CEOs seethed that the country was becoming a social democracy like S[weed]en or the UK and the members of its richest families complained if something wasn't done there wouldn't be anything left of their fortunes.

The result of the Volcker shock is that it created in Soros words (PBUH) a "super-bubble" that lasted decades. So the question might be for 80s nostalgiaists and other cargo cultists that you've alluded to is this: could the Volcker shock be replicated?

I think the American economy is far too weak to withstand a 6% interest rate, let alone a 20% interest rate and the 80s was full of small "poor man's recessions" throughout the decade. The productive and infrastructural elements of the US economy were not maintained, this is something that Keynesian policy succeeded in doing despite its failure to stop the crisis of capital in the 70s. The result of the Volcker shock was to financialize the American economy and move it from one based primarily on industry to one heavily focused on the FIRE sector this had the positive effect in elite opinion of hammering away at sectors that were the most densely unionized and regulated. The problem of the US economy right now is not a crisis of capital but an inability of US capitalism to create stable, rewarding and well-paying jobs and so I couldn't see any attempt to resurrect the 80s via something like the Volcker shock leading to anything other than turning the American economy into one big-casino that will turn into a vast hobbo camp once the music stops.

There is nothing in the 80s that was bad that nowadays isn't worse. Well except violent crime and drug use.

i like it to and yes and yes

The 80s were about establishing an image, an idea of a vibrant and happy society, and forcing people to believe it until it magically became true. It didn't matter how awful things really were with the rampant violence and political instability and serious public crises like the AIDS epidemic that the government was trying to cover up. The aesthetic of the 80s was boldly positive.

This aesthetic is fundamental to right wing ideology. Not that they reject reality per se, as much as they believe reality is shaped by people and ideas and not the other way around. It might sound completely insane to us, but to them it's perfectly normal to think.

the Soviet Union was still existing in the 80s, that's something

Hoxha was alive in the 1980s too so even if you were disaffected with Soviet-Chinese direction of things you could say there was a socialist leader in state-power who was trying to chart a pure revolutionary path.

One of the things that I believe that MSG: TPP captured well was the dying light optimism of the 1980s. Essentially, you fight against both Western imperialism and Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan in the game and there's a rising confidence in the political potential of the Third World to act against the super-powers.

Hell, even if you were just a basic bitch Western socialist in the 1980s there was a lot to look forward to. You had the uprising of the Sandinistas and their allied forces in Central America, the left-leaning black nat forces in Grenada and nominally Marxist anti-colonial movements propping up all over Africa.

What does our generation have? over a dozen US military bases in Syria, perhaps, but it seems like a false hope to me and then the liberal poison of the Arab spring that has kept even politically-conscious Westerners confused for going on nearly decade.

...

...

Holy shit this is a good analysis. How do you not have more yous?!
Do you have more on this, preferably something digestible for brainlets like myself?

It was the peak of neoliberal capitalism where the average worker was still well off. The average conservative idealizes this era mainly because they wish to bring the system back to the good old days. The system doesn't need to be changed, it just needs to be purged of 'degenerate' qualities that prevents the system from being good. It ignores the fact that capital survives on boom and busts, so it is essentially petty bourgeois ideology personified thru nostalgia.

...

AAHHH EVERY DAY WE DESCEND FURTHER TOWARDS 'THE EXPANSE' AS OUR FUTURE.

youtube.com/watch?v=J1H2_VTGtk0

I'm ready to just give up at this point. Defending gulags gets less angry responses from normies than mildly criticizing Musk.

Fight the urge to be reactionary.

The 80s were one of the highest moments in the world for capitalist decadence. Industry was booming, even if policies that fucked workers over were popular, the very top executives were swimming in money… so i think that's where it comes from.

Plus, it was the cold war era too, where nationalism was kind of required to probably not be blacklisted by everyone due to the red scare. Anti-communism was pretty big during that time.

i don't think it's overblown at all. i've had far rightists ask me about 'vaporwave' and '80s music' in real life, like if i knew what it was and stuff.

i have found some commies seem to think it's a good idea to steal the same idea and use communist imagery. either way, i don't get it. it's kind of shitty nostalgic larping on both sides. i hate this nostalgia crap… communism should be about hope for the future

postmodernism is fash

if you think postmodernism is inherently fascist, explain.

i think there are plenty of postmodern liberals…

The position in the 80s was good, but the trajectory bad.

Read Sam Williams, he essentially lays it all out in a fully-formed Marxist way.
critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-five-industrial-cycles-since-1945/from-the-1974-75-recession-to-the-volcker-shock/

Thanks for the nostalgia trip.

Cant believe 2010 was ten years ago

What decade is the aughts?

they like pastiche. they are shitty post modernists. iohno.

It's what the cool comrades call the 2000s.

pic not edited

40-50 year olds make up a substantial proportion of the petty bourgeoisie.

You're absolutely correct but I would just like to add that Michael Kalecki's analysis of capitalism deals with exactly this, get to at least part 3 and you should get it. It's short though ~166 pages.

How are there still people typing phrases like "warrior of kek"?

pure cringe

Come on, it's the alt right we're talking about here. Put 2 and 2 together. When was the last time America was really majority and unequivocally a "white" nation? Where WASPs had power and christian conservatives weren't a punchline but people with real power? When the only blacks in pop culture were Michael Jackson and the guy from Lethal Weapon?

I think that's really why at the heart of it. Everything boils down to race with these people.

george w bush days probably

I was thinking more along the lines of moral police trying to censor things and going to the Supreme Court to do it, the PRMC and all that shit. But you're probably right. By that point though their cultural influence was declining after the initial 9/11 fervor.

because theyre just aping the trash "I

why are do people have nostalgia for the 80s more than other decades though? its not just the fash, popular culture is all remakes of 80s movies, or set or related to 80s somehow

CBC report aired this time in 1983 talking about the recession, showing the current popular image of the 1980's is a myth.

Holla Forums hates kekistan though

Because Holla Forums is fucking stupid, that's why. The idea that the 80s were better because there was no gun control and no mexicans, but this is just wrong - the machine gun ban came down in '84 and in '86 Reagan pardoned all illegal immigrants living in America.

That said, a more in depth view would realize that it was the transition period from the cold war/pre-history to our current era/globalism. It was the last decade where the USSR existed and America's main enemy was a traditional army and not terrorism.

What even is this from?

The Reagan recession was short lived, by the late 80s reforms made had popped growth back up again until the asian bubbles popped in the 90s causing things to slow again. We're still living through this as the final asian bubble, China, is in the process of popping.

(this is not an endorsement of capitalism or Reagan, because broadly speaking it was only kicking off the inevitable collapse of capitalism. But the narrative holds for now)

i thought they would hate reagan to be honest

Our generation had 9/11. I know it's trite to keep coming back to that, but it's true. Everything boils down to that one event. Related to this topic is the 2000 election, which will probably be viewed as one of the most important in US history (imagine how different things would be if Gore were President in 2001). A view on this from a nuclear policy angle:

armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1204507/fantasyland/

Meanwhile leftism has a massive crisis of confidence as it refuses to renege on it's third-way Blairism which is now breaking down all across the world. Rightwing movements seize the opportunity leftists leave open:

thecharnelhouse.org/2016/07/05/against-political-determinism/

Ultimately, nobody wants change except Holla Forums. As a result, nobody besides Holla Forums is willing to accept change or acknowledge change that happens in the real world. The more change that occurs, the more everyone else clings to their delusional version of reality where globalist capitalism is unbreakable and impenetrable. Holla Forums, for as flawed and stupid as they are, is the lone voice willing to embrace change and build a new reality upon the ruins of the old. This is how new narratives and zeitgeists are created.

They seem to forget that Reagan banned open carrying of firearms when he was Governor of California in 1967, just like how they forget that both Reagan and Nixon were Californian Republicans (and thus have a major conflict of interest on immigration as the CA GOP is funded by porky farmers who benefit financially from a noncitizen workforce that cannot complain about compensation or working conditions).

That said, Holla Forums also for a time liked Ron Paul (a critic of Reagan) before 2014 and even briefly liked Jim Webb very early on in the 2016 election (before he dropped out of the Dem primary). Everything since then has been nothing but flotsam that isn't based in reality.

And the irony is the only place in the west with a major movement to topple the current order of things that isn't a rightist movement is in the UK: blairism has born the death of its very self.

True, although it must be noted that is happening because Labour has excellent leadership while the Tories are too busy backstabbing each other for personal gain.

(which says a lot about capitalists methinks)

Not much.

Eh Labour hardly has "excellent" leadership (Diane Abbott is still shadow Home Sec) but yeah, british porky is waging a civil war over brexit. The next few years, heck even 2018, are gonna be lit.

considering that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA's Saudi proxies, this is ridiculous.

The Patriot Act, Invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam wouldn't have occurred. ISIS wouldn't exist and Obama would have never been President (since Dubya wouldn't have been around to fuck everything up).

Things would be different. Better? Maybe not. But capitalist globalism might have been able to survive a few more years.

Unironic kek faggotry still is absolutely inherent in Holla Forums.

Manufacturing never fully recovered, it was the Reagan recession the created the rust belt. Then you had another recession in the early 1990's that further reduced the income and working conditions of the working class.

Certainly. I never said that it was sustainable or didn't do damage in the long run. People just haven't realized it yet, especially not Wall St with their fascination with asian tigers (again the latest of which is China which is yet to burst).

vaporwave is leftist internet phenomenon, so obviously some Holla Forumstards will co-op the trend

dummymag.com/features/adam-harper-vaporwave

GULAG FOR ELON MUSK.

That feeling when you're the head of one of the worlds most productive forces with a heavily exploited workforce and a corrupt oligarchy but idealistic western communists insist you have the proletariat's interests in mind because they believe some magical nonsense about 'unique material conditions' that they could not ever have witnessed or studied from their American basements

It was obvious to those in the 1980's thus why you had capitalist dystopias like Robocop and even in the mini-series Amerika where the USSR annexes the USA in the story they say the USSR was able to easily crush the USA because of the US's de-industrialization that was no match for USSR's planned economy when it was fully unleashed to support the war effort against the USA.

to be fair it was the peak in several genres of music

The irony of this film is that the reality of Detroit today is worse than the dystopia that the creators and producers of the film imagined.

they're from 1980s, we should be from the 2060s

I like 80s music, the economics not so much

Precisely

New Order GOAT Forever

That meme goes back to WW2 but vis-a-vis Hitler and the Great Depression era US (which was suffering multiple ecological catastrophes in the form of the Dust Bowl and Bowl Weevil).

In fairness though, I agree with you half way. Many older people on the left saw what free trade (and similar Reagan/Nixon policies) would do to the country, but they were told to fuck off because the institutions they ran/supported were archaic and not willing to embrace change (for example battles between longshoremen and shipping companies over intermodal containers or battles between train operators and computer-aided safety controls) because their central committees didn't want to change how they operated. On a larger scale this is how the US defeated the USSR. It's a demonstration of how important dynamic power structures are to any organization, and is how capitalism manages to persist for so long despite being so awful.

Not really. Detroit is exactly where they predicted: bankrupt. All the industry left, and the city's final battle was between Unionized employees' pension plans and banks whom the city had debts to. Ultimately the banks won (aided by the ascension of Rick Snyder into the Governor's office and Michigan flipping Republican in general, both of whom passed a Right-To-Work law and pension reform for state employees) and everyone who had ever worked for the city of Detroit was shoved into poverty in their sunset years. Obama stood by and did nothing, although he did congratulate GM on their (government-aided) recovery made possible by moving their factories to Mexico.

Now the surviving employees of Detroit are either highschool dropouts or people who know the city, the state and the Federal government will never ever step in to help them when they are at the most vulnerable stage of their life. They see their impoverished comrades, who now can only barely afford heating, every day until they join the ranks of the homeless and freeze to death.

Such a thing shouldn't be surprising, this is what capitalism did a century ago as well. But back then it was underage migrants and shoe shiners, not retired police officers. This is exactly what drove people away from Obama (whom they had voted for twice) to Trump and Holla Forums tier idiocy in the first place.

Yet there is some truth to it. In the 1980's the USSR still held a large numerical advantage in armor and artillery and closing that gap would have required the USA ramping up heavy industry and manufacturing not winding it down. In a conventional war in the 1980's US industry would have to deal with matching the USSR in number of arms while covering heavy loses of US arms caused by that massive numerical advantage the USSR would have the start of the war.
If the USSR really wanted to throw down, the actions of Reagan would have seriously handicapped the USA's starting position.

Just look at the image of the city in the film versus it’s reality in the film. The Detroit “dystopia” of Robocop looks far better then today’s reality. That’s all I’m trying to say.

No because modern warfare comes down to air power, as was the case during WW2. Aircraft manufacturing was/is a protected industry, especially during the 80s when it was more competitive (seven companies instead of two) and the US was blowing far larger amounts of money on military R&D. Reagan in particular greenlit the V-22, F-117 and B-2 programs, the lattermost of which is still flying missions today (and is the basis for the X-47, B-21 and MQ-25). Reagan also burned an incredible amount of money on SDI, which gave us the YAL-1 and XN-1 lasers. The USSR did not have a comparable aerospace commitment, they couldn't even field the Buran and the Tu-144 blew up in '83.

All the artillery and tanks would have used to spearhead an offensive into Western Europe, prompting the US to begin strategic (nuclear) bombing of the USSR itself from the arctic. This would have been catastrophic for the USSR like it was catastrophic for Hitler. The war would be over with minimal US civilian causalities but everything between Lisbon and Vladivostok would be devastated.

Soviet anti-air artillery shot down even the U-2 and by the 1980's the USSR had ground to space anti-satellite missiles. This is why NATO war games resulted in the USSR advanced to the English channel within days with nuclear weapons being the only advantage NATO had against the USSR. The mini-series Amerikia went with the USSR basically dominating in the opening shots and the USA not wanting to escalate to nuclear so unconditionally surrendered before the Soviet war machine did more damage to them.

It annoys me that that car looks cooler than pretty much any piece of transit i've been on. I have a deep primal hatred of advertisments in general and would rather see graffiti than some shitty advertisment.

thats such low effort graffiti though

Vaporwave is for commies my dude.
Alt-right boys who don't understand it just stuck some purple crusader images in it and pretend it comes from them.

It sure did, in 1960. By 1980 the USAF was already aware that better missiles made their existing aircraft obsolete for bombing runs inside hostile territory, so they began researching ways to absorb radar beams. This led to the F-117 (1983) and B-2 (1989) of which there are no Soviet equivalents. Both proved to be so successful that the USAF required all their future fighter aircraft to take radar absorption/deflection into account in their JSF program which led to the F-22 (1997) and F-35 (2006). Even now, the AFRL is subsidizing research efforts by Boeing and Lockheed to build a hybrid wing body aircraft which would have a lower radar presence than traditional aircraft.

Then this series is also ignorant of American war planning at the time, which anticipated a large nuclear strike by the USSR onto America's missile bases to cover their advancement into western europe. Such a strike's goal would be to destroy America's ability to effectively counterattack, without killing so many civilians where public support for a war couldn't be easily galvanized. This is what led the Dept. of Defense to study swapping their static Minutemen missiles with mobile Midgetmen launchers, but that was deemed too costly. The chosen alternative was creating a nuclear-tipped cruise missile, which the US government did through the W80 atop AGM-86 missiles launched from a normal B-52, B-1 or B-2. This latter point has relevance because if the US were to loiter bombers in a place like Ukraine (an active combat zone), the above missiles can hit Moscow in about 45 minutes. The US government's recent attempts to build a hypersonic cruise missile (the X-51) would drop this down to about five minutes.

tl;dr yes you are right and it's why the USAF spends a lot more time building stealth bombers than it does building normal bombers nowadays, also as usual America's military is evil and is creating new ways to quickly destroy all life on earth every day

These shitty jets are highly overrated, only slightly better than the F35 which might as well be a new breed of penguin given that it's a flightless bird. They were shot down by AA in the Yugoslav war.

That wasn't the Warsaw Pact plan and everyone knew it as the USSR claimed its sphere head in Germany was to diminish the threat of nuclear war by ending WWIII before it went nuclear by blitzing through western Europe so fast the main force would already be in Western Europe by the time the missiles fly.

For the Boomer generation the idealised image of the 1950's american society was the "old order" to be preserved against the forces of social antagonism.

For Gen Xs and Ys, the idealised image that inspires nostalgia and thus is the old order to be preserved is that of the 80's. I personally love 80's music though so I don't want to seem like I'm condemning 80's culture outright.

but they would like that because it was to stop the black panthers

A single F-117 was shot down over it's entire operational history, and a B-2 has never been shot down. This is an exceptionally good record, one which the USSR/Russia has nothing that compares to it. It works and it works much better than building a huge non-stealth bomber and having it be immediately shot down when it enters enemy airspace. Given how good missiles are now, some factor of stealth is more or less required unless the aggressor wants a huge attrition rate.

Yes but that leaves open the plausibility of a US first strike, the way to prevent that is a Russian first strike to knock out American missile bases and prevent immediate retaliation. This is still a going concern and why there is still an active debate over having huge silo'ed missiles in North Dakota and Montana at all.

its richard spencers favorite band

Yes but the USSR was willing to take that risk, its doctrine didn't allow for a nuclear first strike, it viewed chemical weapons as the intermediate before escalating to tactical nukes let alone full scale exchange since this was how NATO acted in war games where nukes only were brought out as a counter-attack.

Exactly. Gas and nuke the BDR and France then launch a full-scale attack at America to ensure they cannot immediately counterattack. Obviously such a situation is fantasy, but when the AF has to decide if it wants to spend $300 billion on maintaining it's silos or buy $250 billion new cruise missiles and $50 billion worth of drugs, lambos, hookers and gold toilets it is the type of thing that gets considered.

That is not how the theory of escalation worked for NATO or Warsaw pact since the entire point of escalation is to delay full nuclear exchange to buy your conventional forces time to be victorious enough for peace talks before it gets to that. It is the evolution of limited nuclear war theory except takes into account you want can't just nukes some cities. So in theory you'd have the Warsaw Pact forces in Paris or alternatively NATO forces in Warsaw, then the before a full scale nuclear launch a cease fire is signed as peace talks start.

Yes, because this is how it worked for the United States. European countries didn't build huge silos in the middle of their countries just to launch nukes, they could never afford that in the 1950s while we could. The idea would be that with the US knocked out, the USSR wouldn't need peace talks because they could just rebuild Europe in their image and contain America off to the new world. This is a reversal of America's strategy to contain Russia and China.

Again, I'm not saying this idea actually works or is reflective of what Russia would actually do, just that this is one of the things America expects Russia to do.

For Strategic Air Command but I doubt the US Army agreed with such thinking as it would make their tactical nukes pointless. Odds are the Pentagon would have gone with the advice of the army generals rather then that of the Air Force.

what is the source of this

Keeping the Old Game Alive by Gwynne Dyer
youtu.be/gJU5DDh0DEc

The US Army's tac nuke force was and is largely pointless, it's why the US government hasn't bothered to develop smaller nukes than what they currently have (at least publicly). In the event of a real war nukes are going to be done by the AF and Navy because they can actually maneuver them into positions where they are useful.

No they wouldn't otherwise the AF would have never existed and would still be apart of the US Army. The Department of Defense's entire existence (the DoD being created in 1949) is a huge fuck you to the Army and the Navy who didn't want their traditional command structure changed/split/taken away from them.

The Army's tactical nuke is the only nuclear weapons that can target hostile armies in the field since modern armies have NBC protection and can survive fallout. Strategic Command wouldn't have been any help dealing the Fulda Gap as ICBMs don't have the accuracy to be used like that.
Also the Army has the advantage that it can stage coups while you can't coup with nukes. The reason the German army didn't listen to the Reichstag during WWI is the army generals knew the civilian goverment was no threat to them during total war and it was the army calling the shots because they controlled all the guns in the capital.

Exactly which is why nuclear-armed F-4s, F-16s and B-52s are sent in. AFGSC (what SAC evolved into) does everything from UAV assassinations up to nukes now. Point is, they can hit the targets the Army asks them to target, which is the core of American military doctrine in general.

Yes, but coups are rather useless if you're planning on total destruction. Which is what both the US and USSR planned on, since neither of them particularly cared about Europe the same way NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries did.

Also yes I am aware UAV/drone warfare only became a thing in the past twenty years and didn't exist in the 80s, but even back then they had a very similar capability but with manned fighters.

Why do that when the Army can use its own tactical nukes and have a shorter command chain?
You miss the problem. If the US Army objects it can declare marshal law and have its troops arrest the head of the Air Force, it has the advantage in manpower and if the Army generals think the US Airforce are being compete retards that will get them all killed they got nothing to lose dropping tactical nukes on their own Strategic Command and using their forces to storm the missile silos to put them under US army command.

The 80s were a better time than now, poltards take that fact and pretend that their fascist daddy government fantasy had something to do with it and will somehow bring it back. It won't, of course, since the good parts of the 80s had nothing to do with fascism and everything to do with an irreplicable set of circumstances and the society zeitgeist at the time. They were relatively good times to live in (especially compared to this decade and the horrible shit that will be the next one), but it's never, ever coming back. The same goes for the 90s and even the early 2000s.

Because the Army isn't allowed to have fixed wing aircraft and as a result the few nukes they have are extremely small and have a short range as they must be fired by artillery. And in any conflict the AF and Army will be activated at the same time as the former will be supporting the latter with conventional strikes (say, blowing up Russian tanks) anyway.

No they can't because then the Secretary of the Army is court martialed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, and then arrested by either US Marshals or US Marines. Out of all the branches the Army is the worst kept and least armed because unlike the Marines they aren't used to police small countries and unlike the National Guard they aren't used to control urban rioting. Their main job is logistics and backing up the other branches, a job that the private industry usually does better than them. Even the DC metro police are probably better armed than adjacent Army units, because the DCMPD are actually expected to fight terrorists and rioters that might besiege the capitol.

That is well within range of enemy offensive.
Them and what army. You are ignoring history, when ever the Imperial German Army pushed it weight around during the first world war, the army always got its way because it controlled the guns in the capital. How would it be any different in the USA if the US Army sent a entire army group to take Washington DC by armed force?

Bruh what even IS alt right :P
youtu.be/XjVapU9pi7w

Yes which is why the Air Force will be called in to cover the ground units.

Notice how the US Air Force operates a mobile capitol building, the VC-25 known as Air Force One. The Army would have it's telecommunications completely shut down (because their telecommunications are largely run by the Air Force) and would be completely surrounded by a combination of USMC, VANG and MDNG units. From there they'd be starved out if not bombed by the Air Force stationed in nearby Langley and Andrews AFBs. There is absolutely no way they'd be able to win that.

Please watch less documentaries made by men who were at the prime of their youth in the early 70's and settled into the banality of adulthood around the time thatcher became prime minister. You're having Peter Hitchens syndrome for a time period you didn't even experience.

But the issue is the Army doesn't seem the limitations of its tactical nukes as a hindrance as its forces will be locking horns with the enemy by the time it has to use them.
The Army can respond in kind as the Army has mobile jamming units also the army has backup systems with mobile line of sight microwave communication systems along with mobile long range radio transmitters. The Army has better logistics and more manpower thus historically when the army has picked a fight with other branches like in Imperial Japan in the 1920's and 1930's the army always wins (with most of the time the other branches accepting concessions just with threats of the army like in Imperial Germany in WWI).

We had not yet lost our innocence, the future looked bright and we seemed to be masters of our destiny.

The Army is restricted by the speed of it's ground units, meaning they will be second to engage the enemy unless they are being ambushed. AF planes can go supersonic - they are first to engage.

cool, all of that is rendered useless because the AF has it too and better

Not in the mainland US where they have to rely on the private Stracnet system (patrolled by private railroad police) and Strahnet system (patrolled by 50 different highway patrols). Meanwhile the AF avoids this as they have the air mobility command which can shuttle their own bombs and special forces anywhere. This is especially true in the DC metro area itself. If the Army tries to rebel it will be cut out of the command system by the AF, who will rely orders from the President to shut down Army access to the US logistics network while mobilizing everything that isn't the Army in opposition to them. Everything the Army does can be done faster and better by the AF, which is by design.

In other words, the Army gets it's ass kicked unless they can somehow manage to kill everyone above their chain of command including the President, and all 535 members of Congress (so they cannot vote on a new leader) and all the top cabinet secretaries (so they cannot be automatically sworn in per the 25th amendment). But this would literally cause a government shutdown and cripple their own ability to govern, while still not giving them any way to command the USMC, Navy or Air Force.

For WWIII that would be a moot point as the Warsaw Pact would be rushing the fulda gap and that is where the US Army planned to ambush them with its tactical nukes.
You miss the point, US Army cold war doctrine is to keep fighting the USSR even after they knocked the US Air Force out so the US Army has redundancies.
You do realize they have trucks and the US interstate system was built so the US Army can still move supplies with no railways right? Again you seem to not understand historically why armies can throw their weight around in total war, once the army is fully mobilized it is free to move anywhere including inside the capital. The army can shell congress with tanks like Yeltsin did because the war would mean nobody would ask why there were in the capital to begin with.

Because "le aesthetics" aside it summons a libidinal investment reactionaries have for a time long-past; one not even a few decades old they can already romanticise as "the good old days", completely obfuscated by ideology. This is essentially the basic working of the reactionary in capital through a psychoanalytical lens as it always exists. Mass Psychology of Fascism is a good read on this subject (my personal heads up: beware of his over-investment in being Freudian to contradict what he calls the "economic deterministic Marxist" view, since in reality both are materialist and complement one another).

It's also hilarious because vaporwave was originally made by ultra-leftists who wanted to detourn vapid pop music as an anti-consumerist statement. Vektroid, the tranny most famously behind the "Macintosh Plus" pseudonym, literally cited Debord and the French communist left as an inspiration for her music. I've also seen the creator of the INTERNET CLUB vaporwave/mallsoft project state this in YouTube comments. This again shows that reactionaries are utterly unoriginal, since they're unaware of this, but most interestingly also highlights that many of the grievances they have with capitalism are essentially the same communists have on a basic level (the aversion for it is there), but for different reasons: reactionaries hate it because the ever-evolving tendency for capital to revolutionise means the commodity never represents their ideals in it, and communists because the constant need to revolutionise itself for its own self-valorising sake exists in the first place, always first sublating any real necessity for it to exist at all as authentically desired.

Well said

Video games were still good in the 80s.

The few nukes the Army had were largely to stop the USSR for a few hours until the AF can fly in and actually begin the counterattack. This was always America's strategy and the origins of it date back to how the Berlin Airlift cucked Stalin. Also, the US Army would have been completely eradicated long before the USAF would, because starting in the mid 50s the USAF had the ability to fly bombers to anywhere on earth from the mainland US. Meaning the only way to stop the USAF would be to destroy every airport in the United States, which could only be accomplished by a direct attack on the US itself. Which brings us to a Soviet first strike on USAF facilities, especially static Minutemen silos that cannot move or be easily replaced unlike an aircraft.

Again, that wouldn't accomplish anything because the person who matters, the President, would be evacuated to Air Force One which would then coordinate the counter attack. The Army units in DC would have their communications disabled while the other four branches and the National Guard surround DC. The turncoat units then starve to death as they don't have any way to communicate or move. The only way this is avoided is if all 553 people in line for the Presidency are killed, a thing which is nearly impossible as the Army would have to kill the entire DC police, the US Capitol Police, and the Secret Service before anyone can evacuate. The only time where this is even remotely possible is during Presidential inaugurations, but even then they have a designated survivor.

Of all the scenarios for a coup even the DHS Director has a more realistic shot because they are 553rd in line for the Presidency. Your specific scenario isn't a coup, it's just an army occupying a city until they starve to death.

No, the NATO plan is the tactical nukes on paper would stop the USSR advance and force them to negotiate. Remember NATO is the one calling the shots not the Pentagon in a WWIII scenario. Thus why in Able Archer the Strategic Air Command had to wait for the order to pass up through NATO and from that to the president as Strategic Air Command was blind to what was happening it had to rely on NATO to tell them how the fight was going.
So you think the capitalist ruling class doesn't matter? The capitalists were more in line with the thinking of the US Army then strategic air command in that they didn't want to die in nuclear fire before giving the army a chance to win a conventional war. So the US Army would have the backing of the capitalists to overthrow the president and install a military junta to protect the US capitalists and their property from the soviet counter-attack they would be the result of a full scale nuclear first strike against the USSR. Basically the US Army would have the full backing and blessing of the ruling class (including the media painting the US Air force as the one attempting the coup) to carry out the wishes of the US ruling class.

Notice how we're talking about the US's strategy and concerns here, not NATO's. While they're both similar they have a slightly different approach to the same problem (a third world war) which the US had much less concerns about strategic nuclear weapons use in Europe than European-dominated NATO.

Capitalists did not side with the Army when they replaced the Department of War with the Department of Defense in 1949, a decision which largely dismantled the US Army but created the US Air Force.

They have never ever ever ever ever ever ==ever== given a shit about the Army because the Army is for yeoman and prole conscripts. It was the thing used to deal with situations (usually indians or striking workers) that private cops couldn't handle. Meanwhile the Navy had the Admiralty and was used to keep (capitalist) trade open, and was even given it's own elite fighting force (the Marines) for this purpose. The Air Force was/is an extension of the existing Naval system since it is so officer-heavy, and the nature of air power gives the capitalist class the ability to drop special forces (or bombs) anywhere on earth at any time.

(the only exceptions are the Revolutionary War and the Civil War where capitalists fought themselves over America, but note how the latter war was decided by US Naval power starving the South into defeat)

Look at Vietnam: conscripts were sent into the Army while John McCain (son of a general) was a naval A-4 pilot and George Bush Jr (son of a Texan legislator) was a Texas ANG F-102 pilot. Remember the Mission Accomplished bullshit? That was a Navy event, not an Army event.

youtube.com/watch?v=tSPNwlnpWCk

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech

Also, the US Senate's entire job is to represent the bourgeoisie. Killing all 100 of them is an efficient way to piss off the capitalists they represent.

The entire reason the US Air Force exists was because of Walt Disney's seminal 1943 film "Victory Through Air Power". America's largest media conglomerate effectively created the Air Force.

But NATO is the top of the chain of command for the European theater. You are expecting Strategic Air Command to disregard direct orders from the head of NATO. You also seem to forget NATO is basically the European Command for the US DoD.
Capitalists don't like dying in nuclear fire along with their property, it is why even the capitalists outside the military industrial complex were cool with giving the army so many conventional arms. Also again look at history else where, the capitalists sucked the dick of the Imperial German Army, the Heer and the Imperial Japanese Army during total war.
Right but we are talking about a hypothetical where for some reason when the US Army

To further drive home this point, compare how the Army will continue to use their Abrams tank through 2050 while the AF and Navy will have gone through at least five different aircraft (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-35, whatever comes after the F-35) by then. The average Abrams has a unit cost of about $7 million to an F-14's $60 million unit cost. In the recent mideast wars, concerns over inadquate body and vehicle armor weren't taken seriously until after Army soldiers were getting blown up, this is how the dragon scale armor scandal began. Meanwhile the AF and Navy got brand new top-of-the-line Predator which they have since upgraded away from, giving their original units to the Border Patrol for border enforcement (an extremely capitalist activity).

huffingtonpost.com/rep-louise-slaughter/a-story-ignored-body-armo_b_71524.html

(yeah I know it's huffpo but whatever, this is an excellent summary of a situation the AF and Navy have never had to deal with)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Skin#Certification_and_subsequent_decertification

And yet NATO does not have control over USAF policy, the US Dept. of Defense does. Our original argument being about the merits of Soviet anti-ballistic and anti-aircraft missiles and how that affected USAF planning and procurements.

Yes this is why they finance the creation of a massive Air Force to prevent that. The entire reason for the Space Race was because capitalists felt threatened by Soviet air power so they spent a lot of money researching aircraft and missiles. If ground armies were useful against nuclear weapons, Hitler would have survived WW2 and Japan wouldn't have been nuked.

No, you are. I'm throwing your idea under the bus because it's absolutely fucking retarded. There isn't a circumstance where a coup can't be most efficiently solved by literally destroying the conspirators. As it pertains to US planning for a Soviet-occupied Europe, Soviet rump states wouldn't have been recognized and would be freely targeted for systematic destruction, as was the case in North Korea (whom the US still does not have diplomatic relations with) which only stopped because Truman didn't want to let MacArthur start WW3 by nuking Beijing.

furthermore, suggesting such a thing could happen in the US by the Army is absurd for the same reason, because the US chain of command has literally built a mobile capitol building (air force one) that can be used if DC is unavailable.

Although, suggesting a coup could be started by someone within Congress has more weight, because they'd actually be able to put themselves into a position where the military would willingly swear them into the Presidency if they kill enough people.

Holla Forumstypes like the aesthetic of it all, they dont actually understand the underlying problems behind any facade that's shown to them.

That's why they have a rock hard boner for Fascist aesthetics: it looks cool. That's literally the extent of their thinking. It's the extent of their ideology. Anything that disturbs aesthetics needs to be removed, violently if necessary.

The Abrams that during the first Gulf War didn't do any better then the cheaper Patton it replaced, lets not forget the Bradly that is the most expensive IFV then to top things of the Stryker that is the most expensive APC. The US Army is still laughably over funded.

They do control the air space over Europe during war and they are the channel the US President would be getting intel on the battles in Europe. So the US Air Force could only give speculation while NATO can say everything is fine and to stick with their plan.
Air Forces can't protect against nukes. That is what Star Wars was suppose to do yet it turned out to be a expensive exercise in futility as the
USSR could throw more nukes at the US then the US could ever hope to shoot down.
How about when the US Army has near 100% loyalty of its men and they US army has its tanks holding every key strategic location in the USA with the US ruling class siding with them like the German ruling class did with the German army and the Japanese ruling class did with the Japanese army?

That is not how it worked historically, historically the army sends in the tanks and simply threatens with only a few cases where they have to actually carry out those threats. When the army carries through with its threat it becomes a meat grinder as the officers know it is do or die.

Does the Army have revolutionary potential?

The Bradley is also heavier and shittier than the Soviet IFV, and has arrived 17 years later. Soviets mechanized their paratroopers, while US left theirs in the dust. The doctrine of US military is so guided by the booj it's ridiculous.

For the record, "failed ballistics tests for stopping 9 mm bullets" does not necessarily mean they were potentially penetrated by 9mm, despite what the huffpo article says, and the wikipedia article doesn't mention anything about it. I don't think anyone ever actually proved the Dragon Skin armor actually failed anything other than working their way through bureaucracy.

...

How is it alt-right in any way? Vaporwave is an anti-capitalist genre, its entire point is an ironic and cynical mocking of consumerism and dystopian mega coorperations. The fucking name comes from Karl Marx ffs

Can you explain more about the booj part user? Im a brainlrt with no k owledge of burger army

In 1967, Soviets rolled out the BMP-1, a low profile, well armored, armed with 73mm semi-auto cannon, an ATGM launcher, and a 7.62 machine gun, and carried 8 troopers. It weighed 13.2 tonnes. Its name was literally Infantry Fighting Vehicle. In 1980, the Soviets rolled out BMP-2, with a 30mm auto cannon, which was more accurate, and better ATGMs. It weight 14.3 tonnes and carried 7 passangers.

Mechanized troops were no longer just armored trucks.

Soviets also made BMD-1, a 8.3 tonne Paratrooper Fighting Vehicle, which you could airdrop.

Finally in 1981, US got their IFV, the M2 Bradley. Its armaments and armor were weaker, it was slower, and it was heavier at 27.2 tonnes. And it carried 6 passengers. 14 years later, and worse in every way.

All the fancy toys go to USAF and USN. The V-22 Osprey? Marines and USAF, US Army still uses Chinooks.

not him but US military procurement is fucked because buys equipment based on what is best for arms companies not what is best for the military. a perfect modern example is the f 35 which is 12 years with no finish date in sight and several trillion dollars over budget. It can't even do most of the things it was promised to do like vertical take off and landing yet the US government keeps shoveling money into that bottomless pit because Lockheed gives money to friendly politicians and Air Force generals who shill for them can retire and get cushy do nothing consulting jobs.

*12 years over due

...

Tell me Germany was involved somehow

the better question is, who cares?

You're right in the sense that 9/11 did awaken the American public, particularly its younger generation. The conspiracy-posting and populist politics of the time were invigorating and in fact, in comparison to the pessimistic, defeatist atmosphere of the Obama years it was far better for the Left.

This guy gets it right

As for Holla Forums I'm just not seeing it, these things happened because globalism contained the seeds of its own disintegration; not because frog posters on an image board. "Left" globalism is cancer tho and people need to stop trusting these soc dems that want to expand NATO in exchange for political horse trading to get more liberal benefits.

holy shit

she became a politician in the 90s and shes FASH (srs).

...

In such a case the solution is obvious: kill more of the enemy then they can kill you. Thus we have an arms race and huge investments in aircraft that can survive missile spam better than static ground silos.

That wouldn't happen because porky's private railroad police force and 50 different state highway patrols would cockblock them by shutting down STRACNET and STRAHNET routes. Again, porky doesn't need the Army and never did. It's there as a backup, a plan D for when all their other plans fail. Even if by some magic the Army could hold everything down, within hours the AF would just bomb everything and reestablish control using USMC units.

Which brings up a reoccuring theme: the US government's command-and-control resides within the AF. Control that, and you control America. So despite our (days) long argument over this I will concede that there is one branch (the AF) that could successfully coup the national government, at least for a time.

There is no historical precedent for this because there is no historical precedent for a nation having an air force as huge as America does. Consider that the USAF has the ability to assassinate individual targets via drones, engage in conventional carpet bombing, blow up submarines, drop nuclear weapons, shoot down satellites and even kidnap people through their special operations teams. Over the course of human history has there never been something quite as powerful as this, except the modern US Navy.

12+ years for such a massive procurement is normal, considering that trainers have to be trained and the entire back catalog built up to support it. And if you think this is bad, just wait until the US government moves to replace the C-5 and C-130, that will be a shitshow like no other.

It can however it can only do so without weapons or much fuel in the tanks, also it can only do it on carriers and runways as otherwise the jet blast will destroy helipads. For all the issues with this it is still a direct improvement and dovetails nicely into a full VTOL jet in a few decades.

This doesn't invalidate the corruption arguments though, since Lockmart still made an incredible amount of money from this. Whether or not this is a good use of taxpayer money in the first place is the real discussion.

...

The result is still the US capitalists and their property are destroyed, capitalism no longer exists thus the USSR wins by default.
How are they suppose to stop armored divisions, you think state highways patrols would pull over Pattons and Abrams? The police historically have wet themselves and ran away like little girls when in the presence of any large organized and disciplined fighting fore.
The US Army had (and still has) redundant command-and-command since it expected and planned to keep fighting WWIII long after the USA had be decapitated.
Not useful, the US Army already planned against that since the USSR had the same capabilities.
Like Nuclear weapons the US capitalists class won't support it, the US Airforce even discussing this option would just fortify's the armies support in the ruling class.

I wouldn't say the rightwing has an obsession with the 80's more like society in general does.
I read they did a survey and discovered most people enjoyed music from the 80's and not the 90's

I fucking despise it. The 80's nostalgia started the second the 90's ended and its never stopped Every hipster faggot thinks he is the first to discover synthpop. Funny that no one ever revives hair metal.

I was born in 91. i became a self aware kid in the late 90's. Although i consider my youth a product of the 2000's.

I grew up idolizing kurt cobain, i thought everything from the 90's was cool as fuck. The comics, the music, the movies.

The pop music was alt rock, the movies were independent, and the comics were edgy as fuck and all had the letter X in it.

And i had to grow up after all the great stuff happend. Dude you missed. Kurt was here and you missed it. And you have to grow up with KORN and emo kids.

ill admit they seem cringy today but i didnt mind either of those things

Well done, you understood the basics of memetics! adorable, now stop larping or get out, newfag.

It’s just survivor bias, most of what people consider 80’s aesthetics weren’t popular or even considered good in their own time.

Vaporwave from 2010-2013 was mostly satirizing capitalism, satirizing nostalgia

I think they want to reestablish the era where neoliberalis actually worked and hadn't killed capitalism yet. Hence the rituals where they perform 80's culture in order to magically bring it back to life

so its like a cargo cult?

this much revisionism should be bannable

i wonder

it's bemusing to see it has grown from satire to an actual genre though

How you gonna move a tank into position if it chugs along at 2 mpg? All they have to do is sit and wait the Army out. Meanwhile the railroads simply say "no" and tell workers not to come in. Everything shuts down, except for the AF since the AF has their own self-maintained supply chain (they can even land at civilian airports to pick up their stored aviation fuel and even fly to other countries to buy fuel from them). The AF also has the ability to immediately draft civilian pilots for their own purposes, the Army does not.

As for command and control: again this is all based out of AF bases meaning the AF has the ability to shut everyone else down if they feel like it.

If capitalists did not want or see a need for nuclear weapons or strategic bombing they wouldn't have developed them. Even in the past five years Obama committed over a Trillion (yes, with a T) dollars to nuclear weapons upgrading, a number Trump seeks to increase and probably will. The AF also got the green light to build a shiny new B-21 bomber for them. Meanwhile the Army will still use the same tanks and same guns they've been using for decades, because ultimately they are just a spare tool for capitalists and not the main pile driver.

It ultimately comes down to logistics and the USAF has far, far, far greater capability than the US Army. Again this is by design since the USAF is used far more often then the Army.

The same why as in Europe with long logistical convoys, NATO never planned to use railways invading the Warsaw pact and planned to move everything by trucks they would need to reach Moscow with rail heads all the way back in West Berlin. Like in WWII you'd have transportation battalions who's entire job is ferrying supplies to the front, this is why when the Nazis used scorched Earth tactics in 1945 it nothing to even slow down either the Soviets or western allies as by then they had massive logistical and engineering arms. The army could simply use its massive manpower to just seize the means of production so its supplies go right from the production to the their front line, so trucks will pick up fuel right from refiners and drive down the highways to where ever the army wants the fuel.
The army and capitalist are not against nukes, they are against starting a war with full scale thermonuclear exchange since unless you get a decapitating blow you are going to suffer as much damage as you dish out the enemy. Also you seem to ignore since the 1960's the US Army budget had rapidly expanded as the DoD came to terms with the fact the USSR can hit back with nukes itself. The US Army has state of the art MANPADs and anti-tank missiles along with the most expensive tank, IFV and APC by far.
The USAF has a massive losing streak, during WWII it was part of the US Army, it lost Vietnam badly and the Russians showed you can't wins wars without ground forces in Kosovo where the US Army failed to take Pristina Airport because Russian motorized forces took it first that is why the US developed the Stryker as they blamed Russian's victory on its APCs (rather then the fact the Russian ground forces were already on the ground before NATO hit the ground).

Vaporwave's entartete Kunst. All it is it slowed down, distorted music. The "genre" should've ended with Saint Pepsi's "Enjoy Yourself" which I'll admit is pretty good shit.