I just joined a USAF alumni site and checked its forum - Surprise, Surprise, Surprise...

[MrScorpio]

It's full of wingnuts.

These people sound like they eat, breathe and make sweet-sweet love to Fox News.

I'm not posting in that motherfucker.

I'm just going to look for my buddies. At least they had common sense when we were stationed together.

[Joanne98]

1. It will be full of fundies too.

[kestrel91316]

2. this is so sad to me. My dad was career USAF, and an entirely

reasonable fiscal centrist and civil libertarian. He was also about as religious as my cats, having been raised nominally Mormon and mistreated by True Believing Mormons in his youth.

I never met a person who didn't LOVE him. And guess what: the only time in my life I ever heard him say a word about God was when I was 22 and he was suffering from terminal cancer and told me he had never yet asked God to spare his life. He just wasn't a believer. He didn't need a deity to tell him how to treat people right and behave like a civilized human being.

He would be aghast at what has happened to the USAF.

ETA: Daddy invited black fellow officers into our home in the EARLY 1960's, and we were always taught about civil rights and how bad it was to discriminate against people because of their color.

[MineralMan]

3. I have a USAF alumni site, but it's for

a specific overseas unit. I don't have a message board on it. It's pretty popular with the guys who served there, but I deliberately don't offer a message board. Try searching for a unit-specific site. There are tons of them.

Mine has a roll-call page, and I can forward email addresses to other visitors, on request. It's an opt-in thing.

[MrScorpio]

4. What was the unit?

[MineralMan]

5. TUSLOG Det. 3-2

Google that and it's the #1 hit. It's a subset of my more general website.

[MrScorpio]

7. Cool

I never did a tour in Turkey. Looks like fun

[MineralMan]

9. It's easy to set up a site like that, especially if you already have

a web site. I did some initial work way back in 2000. Now, people send me stories and photos and I just add them to the site. It gets more popular every year. By making it unit specific, I get top search engine billing, so everyone searching for the unit finds the site.

I spend maybe a couple hours a week keeping it updated. No big deal, but lots of folks have enjoyed it.

This unit only existed for 10 years, and never had more than 500 people at the tiny base in Turkey, each serving a 15 month tour, so there aren't that many people involved, really. It's been fun.

[kevinbgoode]

6. For all the crowing wingnuts do about hard work and success

and sacrifice for themselves, they always seem to have plenty of leisure time to run around the Internet posting wingnut talking points. Most hardworking people - the same ones who pay their salaries and benefits and pensions, don't have that kind of free time.

[Jane Austin]

14. Don't forget the socialized healthcare

they can get from the VA.

[Brother Buzz]

8. Straussian are prevalent and have left their impact everywhere in positions of power

The Air Force is the classic case in point; Straussians and Fundamentalists enjoying a symbiotic relationship. Hermann Göring was smiling; would have, could have, should have been.

[EmilyAnne]

10. My father was a USAF officer in Vietnam. Flew B-52s. He's also an evangelical preacher.

You haven't heard fire breathing until you have heard my father say, "I will never vote for a another Republican again. Never."
He means it and he is mad as hell about the way President Obama is being treated.
The first Democrat he ever voted for was John Kerry.
A light switched on when his war record was trashed by the Swift Boaters and now he can't believe he ever fell for the right wing bullshit.
That's a rare bit of introspection and self-criticism, if you ask me.
Most people in their sixties are done evolving.
Hell, most people are just done evolving.

But, as for the USAF forum, my father wouldn't post there.
Please keep in mind that there are at least some rational USAF people who aren't represented on that site.

[Selatius]

11. I think the simple problem is that the military is becoming nazified beyond control.

Of course, there is nothing simple about denazification and mental deprogramming. It takes years, decades even.

[ellenfl]

12. apparently you have been out of touch. the usaf academy at colorado springs is

a hotbed of fundamentalist proselytizing and outright threats to non-fundamentalists.

in addition, our troops in iraq have been given bibles to convert iraqis to christianity . . . from what i have read, an act punishable by death pursuant to iraqi islamic law if an iraqi converts OR proselytizes.

the religious right is getting it's tentacles well into our military . . . perhaps to assist in the rapture or to be used against non-believers?

ellen fl

[MrScorpio]

13. I've been retired since 2005

Yep, things have changed

[Subdivisions]

15. For all our intelligence and technology, we are still a very primitive species. n/t