I was mostly responding to benning’s comment, though, as I didn’t have a problem with yours.
***
The greater technology changes, the greater the pace of social upheaval and progress. New technology would have made slaves uneconomical. New technology made women more capable of serving in the military. Exoskeleton powered armor will reduce the disparity between female and male physical power in infantry.

However, the price of such fast paced change, change that over the last 50 years overwhelmed the entire history of the Roman Empire, both West and East in terms of tech and social advances, is that people no longer feel certain about their past, their present, or their future. This means nihilism gets a spot on the stage once more. Mercenary attitudes as well.

The comics are no longer the bastion of patriotism like they were during WW2.

Few have the certainty in their beliefs now as their ancestors once had in theirs. There has been too much change, too many storms of disbelief where the truth held from yesterday will become obsolete tomorrow, for people to hold to God given rights, liberties, and eternal truths. This makes it very easy to people to come up with manufactured truths and sell it in our marketing economy.

In a riff on Book’s Sheep I/II thread, this kind of relationship is true even in physics. People know the normal physics force equation is mass times velocity squared equals Newtons of force. In a fight to the death against criminals or sociopathic attackers, you can either sacrifice speed for form and power (solidness) or you can sacrifice power and strength for speed and mobility and fluidness.

The more fluid your motions, the less power they have to resist external stimuli and the less force they strike with. The age old analogy is that water flows around objects while glaciers and ice smash through them. It takes a disproportionate amount of water, compared to ice, to exert the same force per square inch because water is a fluid while ice is a solid.

On the other hand, take the old tree with roots sunk through several layers of soil and petrified rock even. It cannot move, it cannot change, it cannot bend much, but it has strength and foundation.

The analogy is irrefutable and even when human beings think their birth control technology has “freed” them from Nature, we return once more to the fact that a society that changes too fast will eventually lose its ability to withstand external forces and threats. A society that does not change fast enough, however, will shatter as it tries to absorb too much force and finds that it cannot but break.

Still, many Westerners believe they have transcended the laws of nature, physics, and reality, but they have just simply moved onto a different sphere of difficulty. A frog in a 50 meter pond will certainly feel that it is freer in a 5 mile radius lake.

PS.

If you ever try to strike somebody as hard as you can, any curve in your joints or looseness of your muscles will cause the force you are exerting upon the target to be reflected back and taken in by your own bones, muscles, and ligaments. You don’t want the spear to bend and rebound off a target. You want it to stay stiff and go through the target, as in armor piercing.

Joint breaking, however, even though it uses the principles of striking, primarily seeks to break a joint by creating a lever and then causing the lever to break with a force exceeding the lever’s tolerance. Usually one might say an elbow can only bend in one direction and it doesn’t take much force in the opposite direction to damage the elbow joint, let alone the 100+ pounds of force used in TFT strikes.

Martial arts prefers to trade pure power for mobility and speed. Physical conditioning and muscle mass is what they use for power and to counter strength, they use speed since a smaller person is almost always faster than a larger and more powerful person. Exceptions are when the 250 pound guy has very well conditioned leg muscles that can accelerate him and de-accelerate him in a pinpoint flash.

As seen in military affairs, sometimes you can do more with surprise and mobility than you can do with large numbers and firepower. Larger armies move slower and are more visible.

However, in war we are dealing with sociology, psychology, and essentially the Boyd OODA cycle. Thus getting large numbers to attack takes a long time. In martial arts or fighting and personal one on one killing, we are dealing with simple physics and the OODA cycle of only a few people.

Which means that unless your speed and mobility is used to attack, attack, attack, it’s not going to do much given that a person is unlikely to outnumber or overpower their criminal opponents. Such things happen, but usually they are the luck of the draw scenarios that don’t apply to most others.

The amount of extra acceleration you can put in a fist strike is neglible compared to adding in 50-100% of your body weight to the strike. Gravity gives you free acceleration of your mass, whereas swinging a leg or a fist requires you to use your own muscles to accelerate it, oftentimes laterally or parallel to the ground.

In the end, people will always have to choose which to sacrifice. Stability, security, power, strength, or speed, mobility, change, fluidness.

The Democrats like “change”, you see. Change as in how entropy changes things.

Speaking of which, another good dose of awesomeness is Iron Man.

The openning intro for Ironman was ridiculous.

Who’s the REAL enemy?

Speaking of which, another good dose of awesomeness is Iron Man. Now, that’s a movie.

The bad guys are al-Qaeda types and corrupt multinationals. There was also a point in the movie when it lays out Teddy Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” diplomacy. I heartily approve

Autobots + US military vs Decepticons == Big pile of steaming awesomeness.

US military is displayed as effective, efficient, courageous and necessary.

But according to screenwriter George Axelrod, a phone call from JFK got the ball rolling.

From the Washington Post, in 1988:

“Axelrod reports that United Artists, the company that produced the film, had always been nervous about making the picture, but not because of any fear that it would encourage assassinations. “They didn’t want to make it because they thought that it was un-American,” he says. Ironically, it was a phone call from President Kennedy — made at Sinatra’s request — that persuaded Arthur Krim, then head of United Artists and also the national finance chairman of the Democratic Party, to change his mind and start production.

(An additional irony, which may be more curious than telling but is entirely in keeping with the tone of the film, is that it was Frankenheimer who drove Robert Kennedy to the hotel in California the night he was assassinated.)”

Another interesting tidbit from the Washington Post article:

“Controversy seems to have always followed this off-beat political thriller. When it first came out, one critic called it “the best film of the year, and the most irresponsible.” And about the same time, the film was picketed in Orange County, Calif., for being pro-communist, while in Paris, protesters denounced it as right-wing propaganda.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/manchuriancandidatehinson.htm

After reading declassified info on MK-Ultra, Operation Paperclip, and other bits of CIA history, I think both versions of the Manchurian Candidate are entertaining as hell.

I agree with your comments. In my original comment I was just pointing out that basically the movie was true to its source (at least as far as the TV series went).

I did not know that the Hulk was originally created during the 70’s; when anti-military attitudes were at an all time high.

So, this movie simply fit into the Hollywood anti-military mold without actually changing the source material.

Hell, I saw a show on the history of comics. I guess in one issue of Captain America, Captain America questioned the actions of the US after 9/11 and did some serious soul searching. The comics are no longer the bastion of patriotism like they were during WW2.

Spiff

For people’s information, Book’s original post did not mention anything about the I Hulk movie had not kept close to its origins.

Hollywood just came out with another movie that relentlessly demonizes the enemy

That didn’t read as “Hollywood just came out with another movie that changed the original villains to something more anti-American”.

Check out the upcoming GI Joe movie. The “G” stands for “Global”. I dont remeber the rest.

Apparently GI Joe is no longer a US special forces team but now is a “Global” anti-terrorism team.

Spiff

That was obvious to begin with, since all the things you’ve said about “The Incredible Hulk” also applied to the original Hulk. So there’s no contradiction at all, Book, and nothing to be sorry for. Except having a bunch of traitors in Hollywood with both the power and wealth to influence millions of people, American and otherwise.

They want to weaponize the Hulk technology.

The last thing the Army and Marines would want is a big arse green thing that can’t control himself just cause he got “angry”. Military members and infantry get “angry” while in combat all the time. Having one go berserk and start throwing things, like maybe your HUmvee or APC, is not the kind of army the Army wants to create.

Of course, you know very well Book that if the Left had been in charge of the Army and Marines, that the Soldiers and Marines would be exactly like the Hulk, except without the compassion. The Left would create a military that would shoot first and ask for forgiveness later. The Left would create a military so corrupt it would be making more money than the government from taxes, probably because half of the income is from taxes. The Left would create rules of engagement that is so illdisciplined that the military would be shooting each other, let alone innocent civilians.

Look at every Leftist revolutionary organization and who they ultimately ended up shooting, and you’ll figure out exactly what the US military would look like under a 100 years of Total Socialist and Totalitarian control.

Hollywood’s disdain for and fear of America’s troops

They fear the Marines because they know the Marines have the discipline, intellect, will, and spirit to bust open any little claptrap mercenary army the Left could field, whether it be Brownshirts, SS blackshirts, or Stalin’s secret police and commissars.

Look at the UN paying peacekeepers to rape children for a good example of what I mean by socialist mercenary armies.

Given those “origins” were around the 70s, there’s no “sorry” to it concerning the anti-military bias.