The original Markus Kloos short story it's taken explores the anthropormorphized relationship between a pilot and a ship in a superstitious and interesting way...The wartime autobiographical memoir that the genre seems taken from is similar to Robert Mason's book on his experience as a Vietnam era Huey pilot---"Chickenhawk"...

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Bob.
Get seen for cranial rectosis.
3:21 mark

"He served just under 4 years, and was discharged at the exalted rank of private."

You somehow think that means he's not a veteran? Go to any local military base and tell them that, see how it goes. He has been consistent stating he was not in Vietnam or battle, he didn't claim to be a war veteran or Vietnam vet, that was just lazy/poor reporting...but not nearly as poor as this 1791 ranting YouTube tripe that actually corroborated my statement by accident.

Seriously, get seen. There's something amiss if you thought this was somehow proving he's not a vet.

Technically no, but he is a Marine veteran who served during the Vietnam war. He says he's been clear about that and can't help it if people keep misstating the facts, not that this mistake makes a whit of difference.

It's funny how sure people sound that they know what happened based on a few "media reports"(oops, turns out he's not a Vietnam Vet!). There's video out there, educate yourself people! The drummers did walk into the crowd of teenagers purposefully. The kids likely didn't even know he was part of a protest, just that he was getting in their faces and banging his drum. Some even sang along with him.

The description here "decided to surround and block, taunt, and threaten a native American veteran performing a ceremony" is all false.

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Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

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I also question that this is actually in the Southern United States. He's not using a Vietnam Era flamethrower.

No NHS in the states. Personally, I think that'd be the way to do it. And I think it kind of needs to be a long and difficult road, to make sure that drastic option is necessary and won't be regretted later.

It's a bit hard for me to accept it, because I tend to think of it like that episode of South Park. Kyle can't actually become a tall black kid, and his dad can't actually become a dolphin.

But even though I think that is true -- you can't really become something you aren't -- I recognize that gender reassignment surgeries can be life saving / massively beneficial to quality of life in many cases.


To take a stab at answering your other questions:

I believe that Trump is saying that the military is instituting a blanket ban on transgender people from serving in the military. If / how the military elects to enforce that remains to be seen. I don't know the full timeline on that sort of stuff, but back in the 60's one (considered extreme at the time) way for young men to get out of being drafted to go to Vietnam was to take photos of themselves naked with another man (implying they were gay) or wearing women's clothing (implying they were trans). The mere implication that you might be either was enough to disqualify you from military service.

More recently, during Don't Ask Don't Tell you could be gay or trans in the military, but couldn't reveal that you were. That ended only 5-6 years ago. The military definitely wouldn't have paid for trans-related medical treatments prior to that, and didn't for quite a while after until Obama OK'd it.

Again, I don't really think that the military should be required / expected to pay for those kinds of treatments for soldiers, BUT I'd be 100% OK with something like the NHS making it available to any citizen, as in the UK. For one thing, I wouldn't want trans people to see the military as the only way to get those treatments (short of paying out of pocket), and having that be a major part of their motivation to join.

And I 100% agree that this is a basically a political distraction that sets back the rights and acceptance of an already marginalized group that in no way deserves it.

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Look
If you had
One shot
Or one opportunity
To release all the energy you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you abuse it
Or use it for good?

They've armed the weapon
Countdown clock is set and
J. Robert Oppenheimer is sweatin'
Eyes are red and he's nervous
Cause on the surface this is armageddon
The shock bomb, but we're set upon and threatened
And with no sound the whole Alamogordo ground
Is glowing and cowed under one smouldering cloud
He's choked and wowed, everybody's open-mouthed
And over the ground the shock front blows, kapow!
Snap back to the alchemy
Hope before tragedy
Showed with bold math that we broke the whole atom
We choked; controlled action with poles of cold cadmium coat
To go capture neutrons and slow fracture
We broke, postponed that and we chose to go fashion
A most radioactive plutonium gadget then
Fat Man and Boy and Enola goes laughin'
As Nagasaki is blown and Hiroshima's blasted

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

Neutrons escaping from a source radiating
Merge and start atoms shaking; they begin
To unglue toward a decreased order
Entropic force distorts em
And supercharged with loads of protons they can only go farther
Cold war grows hotter--exothermal--Colorado to Joe Stalin
Coast to coast holes; silos but there's no farmer
Toe-to-toe drama
NATO and Warszawa in co-assured trauma
The globe groans everyone knows there's no calming
So show your foes and implode your core column
Quid pro quo Castle Bravo for Tsar Bomba
And move on and leave atolls exposed to gross doses of old fallout;
Slow-to-go toxins in shoals and so though we explode them no longer
Still the proof lives on in the blue lagoon water, father

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

When war games hit the stage of a gluon's rage
There's a military boot on the new doc's page
We were playing in the beginning, but grew up strange
Making radar and missiles, and new bombs blazed
And we kept grinding the lensed sights for the next sniper
Best believe son it'll pay to design fighters
All the gains of science analyzed by the
Man provide plans for sarin and cyanide
And our hands are blighted by crying
Eyes when dying lands are slammed if our grants expand the fire brighter
And there's no jury there's no sublime righter
This is our fight
And these minds are all ours so protect your pia mater
Try to feed and water good, seed trust, flee dishonour
Gotta be clean being Apollo stead of Vietnam and
Lay the armour down and be the one to stand up
And lead us on the trail of Spock
We'll elevate these motley progeny
To a future in a safer spot, an irrigated plot
Homicide a way forgot
Success is a lack of military options
Failure's not
Become a lover of a great and cosmic goal
We cannot condone these terror plots
So here we go it's our shot
Feel frail or not
This is the only world and humanity that we got

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

You gotta make your own mind up, man.