Ran into a Stewart Rhodes lite 101 st vet at the gym this morning.

[Duncanpup]

Before I get started I need to point out Stew Rhodes lite and I had a long conversation and it was civil calm if this dude wasn’t a scumbag racist I’d probably could be his friend.

In parking lot dude saw my 82nd bumper sticker and he commented he was101st and he pointed to his truck in window was division sticker. Anyway I hit treadmill and he hops on next one beside me and we make small talk I found out he was 3/327 I said I’m former 2/325 PIR no getting on each other as in inter service humor. I said I went TDY to air assault school out of Bragg in 85 he went through it in 88.

Then I asked him what is with the stars and bars and trump 2024 in his window. I said seriously I just want to know why obviously the fact that J6 our oath we swore to the constitution especially that part about domestic enemies and he explained to me that basically it’s the white supremacy and that our race is endangered as in becoming the minority in Murica so we need a government to enact laws to protect the whites he told me.

And in his explanation he thinks we’d been a lot better off if we had C.S.A. after the civil war.
I asked do you understand that before the war and after us whites did not have it so great in Dixie because of the plantation owners or oligarchs.
In order to vote you had to own land.
In order to own land you needed income.
Income meant you needed a job obviously and why hire a white dude when the plantation owners had slaves.

And of course the state rights is all fucking bull shit I said because they wanted the right to own black peoples.
His reply was well if that’s how you see it you’re entitled to your opinion it’s not how I see it because it’s the truth facts.
We continued talking about deployments the difference between the 101st and 82nd. I added definite big differences as the 101st can bring more killing to the battlefield in an instant and the Air assault is you can put troops at exact spot as in no rally time as on D.Z.

Surprisingly he agreed with my point of view on Ukraine like I said I’d workout with the dude just can’t do Racist fucks.

[Chi67]

1. Great!

Hey, you stood up and challenged him. Good job!

[Celerity]

2. Good pushback, and those types who believe the white race is endangered are VERY hard to change the

mind of. Their entire worldview is based around white supremacy.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Yeah, basically their daughter has to marry a black man and then magically they aren't racists. . nt

[Celerity]

8. the hardcore ones would disown her

[flying_wahini]

17. Until she had children.... Amazing how grandchildren soften your stance about race pretty quick.

[Hekate]

36. I've seen that happen more than once

[IbogaProject]

14. Hmm

Is the 'white race's superior or in need of special support to survive? Hmm seems like a big contradiction.

[Walleye]

3. The problem is Trump made it acceptable to be a racist again

[magicarpet]

15. The White man's burden....

The White man's burden as anointed Crusaders of God to bring unimaginable prosperity to the Christian (?) Nation of the USA.

The Black community and the indigenous population (comprised of various Indian Tribes) do not possess the intellectual fire power according to racist White men. So consequently the burdens of achieving "Manifest Destiny" of this Christian Nation falls directly upon the White man to singlehandedly save this nation and bring astounding and everlasting prosperity to our shores for all to appreciate and enjoy, (as if).


Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.

[joe47]

4. Diffs 82nd/101st

Could you elaborate on the differences between the two divisions? My uncle was 82nd during WW2 and I’m interested in your comment about the differences between it and the 101st. Thanks. Great post, btw.

[Duncanpup]

9. 82nd is airborne 101st air assault

[MLAA]

19. Welcome to DU!

[jmowreader]

28. A little more expansion

The 82d Airborne Division is a “true” airborne Division. It is trained and equipped to insert personnel and equipment by parachute.

The 101st Airborne Division is an Air Assault Division. It is trained and equipped to insert personnel and equipment by helicopter. The 82d can do this too, on a limited basis, but they don’t have enough Black Hawk or Chinook helicopters to really get the point across.

So…what does this mean to you?

The 82d is A LOT quicker on initial entry, if you’re going to airdrop the unit and you usually do not. If you want to do a parachute insertion of a large part of the 82d, it will take a couple hours to rig and inspect your troops, rig the equipment you want to drop and so on, load it all into the aircraft and take off. Once they get to the forward area, they jump out of the plane, land, rally and go to work. Conversely, when you ship the 101st downrange you must fold the rotor heads on Black Hawk helicopters, load them on cargo jets, fly to a reasonably safe area, unload, unfold and refuel.

Conversely, once you’re downrange the 101st is quicker to use. You remember all the work the 82d had to do to jump. They have to do it every time they want to jump. The 101st is different: the old man calls for a stick of UH-60s, they send him one, everyone loads up, they fly to where the war is, unass and start fighting. They can either rappel down ropes or do like LTC Kilgore’s men did in Apocalypse Now: touch wheels to ground, everyone jumps off and runs toward the treeline as fast as their little legs will carry them, leave quickly. Since the helicopter blades are already out, it doesn’t need to be done twice. The 101st can also use larger equipment than the 82d: the Jumpin’ Junkies have nothing bigger than 105mm howitzers, but the Pukin’ Buzzards have 155s. (My first unit was the 101st.)

(Who are the Jumpin’ Junkies? When the Army started doing by-unit analysis of drug test failures, they discovered that on a per capita basis the most stoned unit in the Army was the one that packs parachutes for the 82d.)

[Sailingdiver]

5. AATW

82nd 1979 - 1983.

Co B. 82nd Signal Battalion.

Thank you for your service

[Duncanpup]

21. And same to you.

[Solomon]

6. I would like to ask him, what's wrong with being a minority? Lol

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Now you have a white supremacist gym.

like I said I’d workout with the dude just can’t do Racist fucks.

But you *did* work out with the dude, no?

[Duncanpup]

26. Only side by side on treadmill

[70sEraVet]

11. Great job explaining how the slave-ecomony hurt the vast majority of Southern whites, Dunc!

My little corner of Tennessee had rich iron ore, so iron production was a major economic factor before the civil war. Those companies used highly skilled slaves for much of the labor, a practice that pretty much shut out whites from achieving middle-class status.

By the 1850s this operation, the Cumberland River Iron Works, employed almost 2,000 slaves and nearly as many white workers.
https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/slavery/

I try to bring up the fact every chance i get, that slaves were also used as skilled laborers. Until i moved to this area in Tennessee, i thought they were only used as agricultural laborers and domestic work.

[Joinfortmill]

12. Yup, explains a lot. They're afraid they'll be treated the way they treat others.

[2naSalit]

20. +1

I think that is much like the reason the toxic masculinity crowd didn't want openly gay people in the military... they were afraid that they themselves would then become subject to sexual harassment.

[roamer65]

31. The toxic masculinity crowd thinks gay men automatically find them attractive.

Then up goes the homophobia and gay bashing to protect their fragile, uncertain egos.

Fact is if your repulsive to women, we gay men will probably find you even more repulsive.

[2naSalit]

32. So I've heard...

Turns out they can't handle the truth.

[roamer65]

33. ...

[roamer65]

30. Correct.

So their response is to steal a page from South Africa’s old apartheid system.

[IronLionZion]

13. Of course it's the white supremacy

failures want someone to blame for their failures. It's funny that people are worried about whites becoming a minority. Why? Are minorities treated badly?

Seriously, the black civil rights leaders got President Johnson to pass immigration reform because they wanted more diversity in America. It's working.

[czarjak]

16. Chief Justice John Roberts said, "Racism is dead.", so...

[dlk]

24. Roberts doesn't live in the real world

He’s clueless

[czarjak]

27. He still gets to make rulings. Unfortunately.

[dlk]

35. Unfortunately, indeed

n/t

[BMW2020RT]

18. For that dude...🙄

[yardwork]

22. White supremacy, right out in the open. There it is.

[BlackSkimmer]

39. Obviously no people of color work out there.

No way anyone would talk about that crap at my gym.

Sometimes it seems to me that a lot of posters here do not encounter many POC in their daily lives.

[RussBLib]

23. conversation is a good thing

Over time, you might be able to help him "see the light."

Good luck.

I see that Fort Bragg is now officially changed to Fort Liberty. That might set him off, but who can argue with Liberty?

[treestar]

25. The white minority is already protected by

The civil rights act.

Like the crazy Christian’s who don’t get that they might not always be the majority and thus the first amendment protects them too.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

34. I won't live to see it

But at the rate nones and even other religions are growing, christians won't be the majority for long. They're already down to 64% of the population, from 78% in 2002. It's not going to get better. There might be some plateaus along the way, and the occasional spike that would accompany a "national emergency" like 911 or the pandemic. But any such gains will be fleeting, and the numbers will again start dropping when normalcy returns. That's exactly what happened after 9/11.

The reason for the decline becomes quite clear with one demographic fact about religion in the US today: average ages of various religions.

White evangelicals have an average age of 57. White catholics--54. White mainstream protestants and black protestants--50. Mormons--47.

Meanwhile, Nones, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims are all younger than that, on average, regardless of race, with nones atop the average age at 38--even lower than the best numbers for Christians, which is Hispanic Catholics at 39. Over 35% of nones are in the 18-30 age group, a very bad indicator for the future of christianity in the US, but the older age groups are also showing increases in their departure from religion. Less dramatic, but still not going down. All of those realities have churches in panic mode these days.

The loss of young people is especially troubling for them. If churches don't get people young, they're far less likely to get them into the flock when they're old.

Another thing that doesn't help them any is how people aren't leaving for other churches. Maybe in the old days, it wasn't such a big deal if people left a church, because those that left often switched to another one. But it's an entirely different thing when they leave all religion. The church poobahs know that once people stop going entirely, few ever return. And why should they? What can church do for them today? Their comfort is of questionable value compared to a competent therapist, and their social community isn't remotely as enjoyable as that of a community sports program or D&D group. Belonging to a book club is far less stressful and demanding than a church. And plenty of secular charities do more and better work than churches ever do.

This dying off of their congregations while ever more people (especially the young) leave or never go in the first place is why it's not only the racism that has so many white people in total freakout mode these days. It's also that so many of them know that their favorite religion is literally dying off, and nothing they do changes it. That's why they're ever more desperate to destroy public education, get legislation passed to control women's bodies, trample the rights of LGBTs, destroy access to health care (some researchers have shown a correlation between European-style health care access and the decline of religious participation and even belief), and all the other crazy things they're up to these days.

It's all to try to stem the hemorrhaging of people away from the religion that has given them too many unearned privileges, for too long.

[roamer65]

29. God only knows how you tolerated him as long as u did, Duncanpup.

[Hekate]

37. Dunc, you handled him way better than I could have--you engaged him in rational conversation

I probably would have clammed up to avoid an argument, after indicating my disagreement. You did good.

[BlackSkimmer]

38. Gotta admit I've never had such an in depth conversation in a gym.

First of all, I'd be unable to do so on the treadmill because of the intensity of my workout.

Secondly, I can't think of any thing I'd want to do less than discuss politics at the gym with a stranger.

I'm guessing that you have no people of color in your gym? Because I cannot imagine someone carrying on about the confederacy and slaves, etc. in my gym.

[Duncanpup]

41. It was early and I was warming up on treadmill

I no longer run my knees I do row intensely for cardio. And I brought it up cuz he we’ll decided to climb on treadmill next to me after conversation in parking lot over our bumper stickers.

[BlackSkimmer]

42. And no people of color nearby?

That conversation simply would/could not happen in my gym.

[Duncanpup]

43. No none at all as people of color we were only two in cardio area.

No people of color yet I’m intrigued by these types and I went there.

[BlackSkimmer]

44. Well, I just can't imagine a conversation about white supremacy in public, anywhere really.

But certainly not in my gym; it's large, but it's not hard to hear conversations. Pretty sure the white folks in my gym would look askance at anyone having such a conversation.

There's a small klatch of women I see chatting on treadmills, but for the most part people are engrossed in whatever they're listening to in their ear-buds, or in their workouts.

Glad you were able to talk sense to him!

[Mysterian]

40. Rhodes didn't even make it through Airborne School

Left the training with an injury. But phony injuries are how people quit. The Army kicked him out after about seven months. But I've seen news reports refer to him as a "former paratrooper."