This reminds me of Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation and the signs of the fall of Trantor
I hope it sinks.
Rid hard, put away wet.
Going to need some Rust-eze on that
so, i can’t impress upon everyone the toll the ocean has on ships. the ocean seems to make it its mission to sink every vessel in it, one steel layer at a time. and paint only lasts so long.
when in a deployment, the scraping and repainting maintenance is not able to be done. and this is a standard result of a ship being out. other then paint discoloration, i don’t see anything wrong with it.
i was going to say it looks to be riding high so either supplies or crew are low (which given what we’ve heard about the lincoln, it’s a good move to get as much of the nonessential crew off there as possible i’d think. i’d also think more of the airplanes too tho)
Don’t feed the trolls.
If they wouldn’t have been deployed way too long, it wouldn’t look like that. You’re making the argument for the meme.
i mean i agree that they should not be out so long, but no ship comes back looking very good, maybe a touch up port side in hawaii.
mine didn’t look much different. the meme seems to point to exceptional military incompetence as to why it looks like that. but that’s just your average levels of neglect.
I want to be clear about something before anyone interprets this as me defending Trump: I am not a Trump supporter. I consider him one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, and I have very little interest in defending either him or his political agenda.
That is precisely why I have a problem with memes like this being presented as factual arguments.
The USS Abraham Lincoln really did return to port after an extraordinarily long deployment. The photograph is real, and the ship genuinely looks rough after spending months at sea. But using that photograph as evidence that Trump somehow left the U.S. military looking like this is misleading. The Lincoln had just completed a 286 day deployment, including roughly 208 consecutive days at sea and about 200 days in a combat zone. That is actually a far more legitimate thing to criticize. Keeping a carrier and its crew deployed for that length of time raises serious questions about operational tempo, maintenance, readiness, crew fatigue, and the strain being placed on the Navy. Those are substantive criticisms that deserve discussion.
Instead, we get this stupid little meme that takes a completely legitimate photograph, strips away all of its context, and presents it as though it is evidence of something it does not actually demonstrate. That is intentionally misleading the people who see it, and then encouraging them to repeat the misinformation because it supports an agenda.
That’s the problem I keep seeing on Lemmy: a legitimate political point gets wrapped in misinformation because the misinformation makes the meme more effective. People then repeat it because it supports a conclusion they already agree with.
I don’t think that’s acceptable simply because the target is Trump.
One of the things that infuriates me about Trump and his political movement is their willingness to manipulate facts, exploit outrage, selectively present information, and construct narratives that are technically based on something real while being fundamentally misleading. We shouldn’t respond to that by adopting the same tactics.
If we believe our position is actually stronger, then we should be able to make the argument honestly.
You can criticize Trump’s claims about “rebuilding the military.” You can criticize defense spending, procurement failures, maintenance problems, military readiness, the defense industrial complex, or the extraordinary deployment demands being placed on the Navy. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to make.
We don’t need to manufacture evidence to make those arguments.
If our standard becomes “misinformation is acceptable when it hurts the people we dislike,” then we’ve abandoned the very standard we’re supposedly defending. Worse, we’ve made ourselves vulnerable to exactly the same rhetorical tactics when they’re used against us.
Being better than Trump and his political movement means more than disagreeing with them. It means refusing to become comfortable with the methods we condemn when they’re politically convenient.
Excited about big post, it must have lots of good information. Incredibly disappointed after reading it. Nonsensical complaints and logic fallacies abound all under the guise of correctness. Yes, we need to fight lies with facts with an administration that could care less about facts.
Maybe I’m overthinking the meme, but to me that picture means exactly what you said about excessively long deployments and the issues of maintaining both materiel and personnel as an effective force when that happens. It sums up the whole bundle of problems in one image, even if the thing pictured isn’t directly the issue. Sure, a more nuanced and detailed aanalysis is better, but this gets the message across to even people who don’t have the mental bandwidth for that.
Another troll. Internet rule #1: don’t feed the trolls.
What this meme is trying to say is that even though the orange man put a lot of money into the military. It’s still crappy. Probably implying that somebody’s just pocketing the money or some sort of government inefficiency, but it most certainly doesn’t imply that it is one that Abraham Lincoln. There’s no way to tell that that is the carrier in question and to any context as to how it received the rust to start with. The meme is expressly weaponized propaganda.
I’d agree with your statement if it was simply the picture of the ship and the text criticizing Trump, but context is provided about the ship and I think that most people are aware of the horrible misuse of this ship and her personnel.
I don’t see what factual argument is being made in ANY of the three layers of this meme. Or how Trump is mentioned or involved at all. “The ship has arrived at port” with a photo of the ship. Surely your issue isn’t with that. “My God, the state of that ship” is not a factual assertion of anything, except that the ship externally looks pretty rough in that photo after that long deployment. And “A passenger on the titanic had a better experience” is is obviously not an earnest assertion of fact either, it’s a joke. Sinking into the freezing Atlantic and 2/3rds of them dying is not meant as some serious comparison to serving on a Navy vessel for a long deployment, it’s humor. Nothing is being asserted in these memes, nothing even vaguely related to Trump is mentioned, and I’d love to hear your argument for how any of the text or images here are rising to the alarmist level of “manufacturing evidence”
Imagine this was a photo of a WWII bomber returning home after a long and hard deployment, you wouldn’t interpret someone saying “wow that bomber looks beat to shit” as some kind of misinformation or assertion of fact or personal attack on President Roosevelt would you?
You say after having all the context presented to you.
Dude, don’t be a contrarian just for the sake of it. You know exactly what this meme implies and what it means and how out of context it is, don’t even.
Well at least you’ve retrenched from this is “manufacturing evidence” to this “implies” something. Which in no way are the same thing. I agree with you that it vaguely implies something about our Navy assets and sailors being worked too hard during this war, which is certainly a fair point for discussion, but that wasn’t your original argument in any way. So from a motte and bailey fallacy perspective I feel good about that progress. Also a pretty bold move calling your own wall of text on the matter “all the context” but that’s rather beside the point.
You make a valid point if this were misinformation. But where’s the misinformation? That’s a picture of the ship. Salt water and steel don’t mix well, we all know this. Long deployments at sea means stretched maintenance schedules. And for what purpose? Nobody really knows. Israel has nukes, why can’t Iran? This war is costing us immensely and for no other purpose than so Israel doesn’t release Donnie’s pedo proof. There’s no misinformation in this meme. The ship looks like shit because it was there for a long ass time, but it does look like shit.
Where are you seeing misinformation in this?
The ship is fine. The post is trying to claim otherwise.
The sailors, the pointless war, etc… are valid concerns.
The OmG ShIp Got WuStY… Is undermining the real problems.
Right, I get that. But that’s a reaction to the meme. It is factually rusty. It’s not necessarily a problem yet, but it isn’t misinformation. It’s just kinda small fry shit. Even the claim from trump that he’s rebuilt the military twice is simply eye-rolling in nature. It’s like calling him orange, it’s not important, but it’s true. Therefore it can’t really be called misinformation.
Disinformation is probably what they’re going for.
This ship is a ship in water. This happens to ships in water. We’re even discussing it now and it’s a non issue… Not the actual valid points related to the ship having been there.
Israel can have nukes because it’s the only democracy of the Middle East /s
they’re the only democratically elected democracy our kleptocracy gives money to so the other popularly elected democracies don’t count
/s
Then say that in the meme. Don’t sensationalize it.
The fact that Donnie spent trillions of dollars on the military has nothing to do with the Abraham Lincoln being rusty. In fact, as far as I can tell, the cosmetic damage to the ship has nothing to do with its combat readiness. I’m sure at some point it’ll get maintenance, get repainted, and be taken care of, considering it’s an active-duty ship.
The misleading part of the meme is that it implies all the money being spent on the military isn’t actually doing anything to keep the military up to date, which is absolutely untrue.
If you want to criticize the Abraham Lincoln’s maintenance, deployment, or condition, then do that. But there’s nothing in the meme that even indicates what’s happening in the Middle East, what ship it is, or any context for why it’s rusty in the first place.
That’s the problem. It’s taking an isolated image of cosmetic wear and presenting it as evidence that massive amounts of military spending aren’t accomplishing anything. That’s not an honest representation of what the image actually tells us.
military moneys spent and deployment schedules do have a lot to do with each other, though. it’s not an immediate, 1:1 thing. it’s a budget cycle/debt cycle, time value of money thing that the corrupt can use to grift.
Weighted takes are hard, being salty after a meme is much easier.
Jokes on you, I was already salty.
I don’t know. If Trump has taught us anything, it’s that a significant percentage of people struggle with empathy. And despite us being the war hawk, military police of the world, I would guess there are fewer people who understand what it’s like to be deployed that long than folks who are used to landlords slapping a coat of paint on something and pretending they totally rebuilt it, brand new.
Both are enormously disrespectful. Trump doesn’t give two shits about the people, the money, or the equipment he burns on this giant Epstein file distraction.
Totally agree.
Had to think of this:
Still the funniest fact about Darwin is his legendary hatred for barnacles, also the fact his kids just thought a dad having barnacles for study was normal.
So the front fell off?
I can smell this picture
crusty walls
Lots of seamen.
Seawater is really aggressive. I don’t think this is really a big issue as everyone makes out of this.
i mean, were we not dealing with a mad tyrant it would be a much bigger issue. it’s a visible symbol of systemic maintenance delays throughout the entire military and government. moneys going somewhere tho
No, I wouldn’t go this far. Look at other ocean ships after a couple of weeks; they look like this.
it’s not the paint, it’s the unnecessarily extended deployment. sorry, i was being imprecise
That’s the issue, you’re right.
wow, maybe the military need more money to fix up their stuff. the only cause of this could be lack of funding, right? right?
Yeah a 1.5 trillion dollar budget just isn’t enough /s
military tend to have some of the most creative accounting so no matter how much it is always not enough even though by all metrics it is more than enough
creative? they just don’t do it period. their fudge balance was something like 2 billion one year. i don’t pass something on if there’s a penny in there.
that’s literally a definition of creative accounting
that ignores the meaning of the word creative. it’s lazy but i neither feel like going on a rant nor teaching accounting today.
Probably yes. They need more money to fix the ship.
However there’s for sure enough money in the military.
So the question is, where did it all go?
Did you look under the Pentagon?
Why the fuck didn’t that come to a head the first time they failed audits? America failed us a long time ago.
I mean, while she absolutely does not look great, this is also the expected condition for a ship that’s been at sea for 200+ days without even a port call. Saltwater is hell on metal, and paint can only do so much for so long.
Even if it is expected and has no effect on the carrier’s performance, the optics are pretty bad regardless. Half of its job is projecting power, and a rusty ship doesn’t hit the same. Looks like soviet tech in western representations, working but barely
The cost to maintain these must be insane. A quick uneducated search gives me about half a billion $ per year. Absolutely bonkers.
I have no idea if that includes crew, food, aircraft, armaments, and everything else. If it does, that’s not all that insane, or I should say I’m not surprised at least.
I believe it does
Given the size and complexity of these things I wouldn’t be surprised if less than a quarter was allocated to elements outside of ship maintenance. Ships are expensive as hell to maintain and always have been.
I suspect the aircraft are a big expense too. They’re also expensive to maintain, and these ones are constantly surrounded by salt water. They have a lot less room for degradation than the ship does. It’s fine for the ship to get a little rust, but a fighter jet probably can’t afford any.
Probably but also you can probably do a good bit of proactive maintenance on them and otherwise work a bit more cleanly to keep the costs down. Can’t really do that for a ship.
The ship shouldn’t have been out that long in the first place. Letting it get this bad is the failure being highlighted here.
Maybe don’t start a war that puts your critical shore support structures at risk if you don’t have a plan.
Or just, you know, don’t start a war, period. I have been informed it’s generally frowned upon.
Well, yeah. That would have prevented this. Allowing a corrupt dementia patient to run your country unchecked leads to all kinds of problems.
Trump voters are braindead. Now we have sailers jumping off the boat to their deaths. Whole country is a hopeless cesspool of income inequality, job insecurity, skyrocketing cost of food, while housing costs, education costs, and healthcare costs are wildly unaffordable. Half of the population seems to be in some hated minority group (non Christian, non white, non cis, lgbt, disabled, autistic, or whatever boogeyman) these idiots can hate rather than focus on the real enemies manipulating them.
It’s heartbreaking to see it in your family and neighbors. They voted their country away to own the libs. They don’t give a shit about the kids they sent to die in this stupid war. Or those kids they sent to rot on a boat.
At least they were able to prevent those two trans kids from playing sports I guess.
thailand is expected 5000 sailors to spend time with the red district.
Peacefully blownoff steam
Not the most ragged lookin’ ship I’ve ever seen, but for a representative of the world’s most expensive Navy she’s looking absolutely shabby.
I think rust is like ablative armor
We would call that “load bearing rust”.
That’s speed rust
That must be what freedom looks like
Sponsored by Rust-eze Medicated Bumper Ointment.
Red makes it faster
those barnacles? speed barnacles.
i knew i shoulda brought more than six shellfish
