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[–] 129 points 5 days ago (21 children)

This line of thinking is crazy to me cause I don't see what's so admirable about Sparta. They had this whole degenerate culture that was entirely dedicated to war and it only gave them a slight inconsistent military advantage. Also this advantage was made possible mostly by their excessive use of slave labor. They still got their asses handed out to them regularly...

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  • [–] 61 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    This line of thinking is crazy to me cause I don’t see what’s so admirable about Sparta.

    That's the thing, they know nothing about Sparta. They just have a vague idea that Spartans are ruthless warriors that kill everything. They want to feel like they are psychopathic badasses.

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  • [–] 41 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

    Same shit as their obsession with the Punisher. They don’t think about how the Punisher kills cops and has explicitly said he’ll kill any cop that imitates him. That doesn’t matter though because his logo and style are cool and that’s where their thinking on it begins and ends.

    Spartans were tough guys in cool helmets that doesn’t afraid of anything so that’s that for them. Kinda fitting for them that they want to emulate a society with insitutionalized pederasty though.

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  • [–] 23 points 5 days ago (6 children)

    you are thinking of Spartan actual history… the drunk the USA has in change of the military is thinking of Sparta as in the movie 300 which he thinks is a documentary

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  • [–] 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    The movie and sequel both have Sparta fighting and dying for Western Democracy, which Sparta was vehemently against when Greece imposed it.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    Western Democracy

    Reminder that Athenian democracy at the time was land-owning men voting to exile those who said things they didn't like, and voting to steal the money in the common defense funds to use to repair Athens and build walls around it, and also fund garrisons around the other cities that were expected to keep paying into that fund, after the Persian threat was long gone - with the garrisons turned toward those cities.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I thought the drunk was Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, who's resume includes: "podcaster". Hegseth is the Fox New host who is in charge of the military. All very tactical nominations who put us at every disadvantage

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  • [–] 15 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    It seems like slave labour gave them the freedom to do anything they wanted to do. Athens had very similar amounts of slave labour. They chose to use the free time that gave them to focus on philosophy and art. Sparta decided to make war their whole personality. It was something like boys entered military school as toddlers and didn't leave until 30.

    Still, the battle of Thermopylae was impressive. Yes, eventually they lost, but they managed to hold off a force that was at a minimum 10x their size for a week.

    If anybody's acting more Spartan these days, it's the Iranians. The most powerful military in the world still hasn't managed to wrest control over the chokepoint from them.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 days ago*

    1: Their particularly brutal slavery is why they had to militarize their citizens (meaning a different thing in those days btw), not why they could.

    2: The Greek alliance was expecting Thermopylae to hold indefinitely, the fortified position was considered impregnable. What was actually impressive was Persia defeating it, and the allied Greek navy fighting twice its number while inflicting decisive casualties, withdrawing in order, and then crushing the Persian fleet at Salamis and forcing the Persian army to withdraw or starve.

    Although the fleet numbers are generally assumed to be lies and historians generally think the fleets were roughly even at Thermopylae.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 days ago*

    They had this whole degenerate culture that was entirely dedicated to war and it only gave them a slight inconsistent military advantage. Also this advantage was made possible mostly by their excessive use of slave labor.

    And you wonder why it appeals to american conservatives?

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