RWDT XX: The System Is Kapp Putsch

[The Reformed American Republic]

That seems very unlibertarian.

The auto-da-fe goes well with anything.

Not an ideology that promotes individual freedom as paramount. Such freedom includes the right to not live a Christian lifestyle.

[United Muscovite Nations]

What are your reasons for thinking so?

Because their cause was simple imperialism on behalf of a supposed god-emperor.

I think you would like to read some of their letters home. A lot of them were cognizant of the fact that Japan was losing the war and believed the only hope for the survival of the country was to become kamikaze pilots and many weren't just huge imperialists, but were just trying to preserve the country they grew up in.

[Mostrov]

A small quote from a book I read recently on the topic of indecency:

The spoken Mime was a sketch of some incident of daily life, literary or otherwise; Theocritus’ famous ‘Syracusan women’ is an example. We now have from Egypt a whole selection of the literary Mimes of Herondas (c. 240), apparently another member of Philetas’ circle, written in scazons; many are on unpleasant subjects, clever photographs of things not worth photographing, but valuable as illustrating how common people talked. Allied to this form, apparently, was cinaedology, compositions whose point lay in their indecency; Sotades’ verse on the marriage of Ptolemy II, for which Ptolemy’s admiral Patroclus drowned him, is unprintable. The singing mime was divided into hilarody and magody, parodying tragedy and comedy respectively; but if the now famous Maiden’s Lament—the passionate appeal of a girl outside the door of a faithless lover—be really a mime, it was neither, but a piece for stage recitation. One example of hilarody has been recovered, the skeleton, to be filled out with gag, of a parody of the Iphigenia in Tauris, in which the barbarian king talks some Indian gibberish and the brother and sister escape by making him drunk.
—p. 225 Hellenistic Civilization by W. W. Tarn

This is how history ought be written, not with the fainthearted language of today.

[Mostrov]

Kamikaze Pilots: brainwashed fanatics or misunderstood heroes?

Angustam amice pauperiem pati
robustus acri militia puer
condiscat et Parthos ferocis
vexet eques metuendus hasta
vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat
in rebus. Illum ex moenibus hosticis
matrona bellantis tyranni
prospiciens et adulta virgo
suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum
sponsus lacessat regius asperum
tactu leonem, quem cruenta
per medias rapit ira caedes.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

[Salus Maior]

Because their cause was simple imperialism on behalf of a supposed god-emperor.

I think you would like to read some of their letters home. A lot of them were cognizant of the fact that Japan was losing the war and believed the only hope for the survival of the country was to become kamikaze pilots and many weren't just huge imperialists, but were just trying to preserve the country they grew up in.

I imagine many Germans felt similar.

[Fahran]

in before fahran harps on about how poetry can be a masculine hobby

A society of warrior-poets is the most sublime state mankind can reach, as poetry is the highest form of language and grammar its handmaiden:

Vous avez fait, Monsieur, trois fautes d'orthographe

I've really missed your insights.

[Novus America]

Because their cause was simple imperialism on behalf of a supposed god-emperor.

I think you would like to read some of their letters home. A lot of them were cognizant of the fact that Japan was losing the war and believed the only hope for the survival of the country was to become kamikaze pilots and many weren't just huge imperialists, but were just trying to preserve the country they grew up in.

Well for many they do not even seem to think their sacrifice will not do much good militarily.

But just dying for the sake of the abstract.

But also on that last part that is brainwashed as obviously they were not necessary or even beneficial for the survival of Japan.

[Fahran]

Angustam amice pauperiem pati
robustus acri militia puer
condiscat et Parthos ferocis
vexet eques metuendus hasta
vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat
in rebus. Illum ex moenibus hosticis
matrona bellantis tyranni
prospiciens et adulta virgo
suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum
sponsus lacessat regius asperum
tactu leonem, quem cruenta
per medias rapit ira caedes.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

Horace?

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

I believe the Great War served to reshape the relationship between man and violence in a way that often goes unappreciated outside of academic circles today. A lot of the luster that had clung to the idea of war throughout the classical and medieval periods began to crack around the time artillery and accurate rifles became the go-to tools of the battlefield. That's not especially surprising given that the Iliad seems to speak to the dual nature of war, even in antiquity, with heroism and loss intermingled. And this is made more poignant by Achilles's lament in the Odyssey that "it would be better to have been a tenant farmer than king of all these notable shades."

While Japan didn't experience this shift in the same way as Europe, I find it difficult to believe that the average person, or indeed even the average soldier, could not feel the pang of regret that comes with sitting in a hole or plane and waiting to die for a cause that has become hopeless would engender. To the Greeks, war was almost a sport. If your phalanx didn't break, very few people would die. If it did break and you ran away, at most, thirty percent of you and your brothers-in-arms might be killed. It was a contest of physique and will. With modern warfare, the casualties are truly horrendous. Hundreds if not thousands of people dying of disease, poison gas, chemical weapons, aerial bombings, artillery barrages - and, more, there's often nothing they personally can do about it. They can't even fool themselves into thinking they have control.

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

What Greek Speaking Empire was the best? Is it the Alexandrian or the Byzantine Empire?

I personally lean Byzantine, Belisarius is among the greatest Tacticians I know, he only led paltry expeditionary forces but bascially reclaimed most of the Western Roman Empire.

[Bear Stearns]

Nobody's gonna worry about it. They're not gonna worry about it. Somebody's gotta worry about it. Someone's gotta worry about it.

[Solomons Land]

Kamikaze Pilots: brainwashed fanatics or misunderstood heroes?

Angustam amice pauperiem pati
robustus acri militia puer
condiscat et Parthos ferocis
vexet eques metuendus hasta
vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat
in rebus. Illum ex moenibus hosticis
matrona bellantis tyranni
prospiciens et adulta virgo
suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum
sponsus lacessat regius asperum
tactu leonem, quem cruenta
per medias rapit ira caedes.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

Would you translate?

[Washington Resistance Army]

What Greek Speaking Empire was the best? Is it the Alexandrian or the Byzantine Empire?

(Image)

(Image)

I personally lean Byzantine, Belisarius is among the greatest Tacticians I know, he only led paltry expeditionary forces but bascially reclaimed most of the Western Roman Empire.

Real answer is the Seleucids tbh.

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

Forgot about this...

Archaic Period




But it's not an Imperial era though.

[Fahran]

Would you translate?

Quickest translation I could find, albeit with linguistic inaccuracies to force some semblance of form upon the verses. The most famous line is "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", which translates roughly as "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's homeland."

"To suffer hardness with good cheer,
In sternest school of warfare bred,
Our youth should learn; let steed and spear
Make him one day the Parthian's dread;
Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life.
Methinks I see from rampired town
Some battling tyrant's matron wife,
Some maiden, look in terror down,—
“Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war!
O tempt not the infuriate mood
Of that fell lion I see! from far
He plunges through a tide of blood!”
What joy, for fatherland to die!
Death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake,
Nor spare a recreant chivalry,
A back that cowers, or loins that quake!"

[Novus America]

Forgot about this...

Archaic Period

(Image)


But it's not an Imperial era though.

Although that was not a single political entity. Rather multiple often competing ones.

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

What Greek Speaking Empire was the best? Is it the Alexandrian or the Byzantine Empire?

(Image)

(Image)

I personally lean Byzantine, Belisarius is among the greatest Tacticians I know, he only led paltry expeditionary forces but bascially reclaimed most of the Western Roman Empire.

Real answer is the Seleucids tbh.

I like the Ptolemies better. I'm a sucker for Cleopatra's and Mark Anthony's bad romance.

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

Forgot about this...

Archaic Period

(Image)


But it's not an Imperial era though.

Although that was not a single political entity. Rather multiple often competing ones.

True that's what makes it more fun, the more the merrier. Still not an empire though. I am wondering whether the different city-states subscribed to different philosophies too, like the hundred schools of thought during the Warring States Period in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_S ... nt%20China.

[Auze]

What Greek Speaking Empire was the best? Is it the Alexandrian or the Byzantine Empire?

(Image)

(Image)

I personally lean Byzantine, Belisarius is among the greatest Tacticians I know, he only led paltry expeditionary forces but bascially reclaimed most of the Western Roman Empire.

Trebizond, of course

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

What Greek Speaking Empire was the best? Is it the Alexandrian or the Byzantine Empire?

(Image)

(Image)

I personally lean Byzantine, Belisarius is among the greatest Tacticians I know, he only led paltry expeditionary forces but bascially reclaimed most of the Western Roman Empire.

Trebizond, of course

Lol the only part of 3rd Rome (Russia) actually connected to anything Roman/Greek (*ignores the fighting between the Latin Empire and Trebizond).

[Fahran]

Lol the only part of 3rd Rome (Russia) actually connected to anything Roman/Greek (*ignores the fighting between the Latin Empire and Trebizond).

But the 3rd Rome was the Ottoman Empire...

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

Lol the only part of 3rd Rome (Russia) actually connected to anything Roman/Greek (*ignores the fighting between the Latin Empire and Trebizond).

But the 3rd Rome was the Ottoman Empire...

Neither of which actually controlled the city of Rome.

[Diopolis]

Lol the only part of 3rd Rome (Russia) actually connected to anything Roman/Greek (*ignores the fighting between the Latin Empire and Trebizond).

But the 3rd Rome was the Ottoman Empire...

Heresy!

[Hanafuridake]

Kamikaze Pilots: brainwashed fanatics or misunderstood heroes?

Their reasons for enlisting and dying were complicated and ranged from idealistic students who were enthusiastic to older more weary pilots who recognized the futility and even those who were plainly coerced. One pilot declared that he was dying for his wife, not the Emperor. In some private letters, pilots harshly criticized the government for putting them in the position.

They all had their own motives and shouldn't be dismissed as mere robots.

[Sundiata]

But the 3rd Rome was the Ottoman Empire...

Heresy!

There are not enough shrines, not enough images of Our Lady.

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

Kamikaze Pilots: brainwashed fanatics or misunderstood heroes?

Their reasons for enlisting and dying were complicated and ranged from idealistic students who were enthusiastic to older more weary pilots who recognized the futility and even those who were plainly coerced. One pilot declared that he was dying for his wife, not the Emperor. In some private letters, pilots harshly criticized the government for putting them in the position.

They all had their own motives and shouldn't be dismissed as mere robots.

I heard that alot of Korean troops were also consripted in the Japanese Empire. Japan was certainly punching above her weight class, if I'm not mistaken, the destruction of the Russian Fleet in the Russo-Japanese war was one of the main reasons why Russia dropped the Monarchy and became Communist.