Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Pro Tip: When Crediting Historical Power Moves, Make Sure You Know You Power Moves...Or History


(TFM) - From The Monroe Doctrine to the moon landing, here are the proudest moments of America flexing its bulbous nards.

12. Dominating The Olympics

We’ve got over twice as many gold medals as the second winningest country (not even gonna bother looking up who that is).

11. The Panama Canal

We paid foreigners next to nothing so a bunch of them (about 5,600) could die while digging us a hole and we could more easily sell our products to the rest of the world. Also, we picked up the shovel (metaphorically, of course) after France tried to build the canal and failed miserably (suck it).

10. The Moon Landing

Would you look at that? The commies managed to launch a tinker toy they call Sputnik into orbit. That’s cute. But how about we put a motherfucking human being on a motherfucking celestial body so he can drive the star-spangled banner into its surface? One small step for man, one giant middle finger to the rest of mankind.

9. Containment

Reagan wasn’t going to give those commies a single inch – a policy he maintained until the Berlin Wall came crumbling to the ground.

8. The Cuban Missile Crisis

Kennedy effectively cock-blocked the Soviets from supplying ballistic missiles to Cuba by deploying a blockade of America’s finest watercraft, preventing the start of WWIII in the process (which would’ve been in the bag, too, to be honest).

7. Dropping Nukes On Nagasaki and Hiroshima

We ended a six-year war with four years of involvement and 30 kilotons of nuclear freedom. Sorry not sorry, Japan. Even that cuck Obama won’t apologize for it.

6. The Louisiana Purchase

Scooping half a continent for a cool price of $15 million? No one else in the history of the universe has struck a deal that sweet.

5. WWI

Coming into WWI at the tail end and still taking all the credit… you gotta respect it.

4. Declaring Ourselves World Champs For Winning Leagues That Only American Teams Compete In

The redcoats over at the Guardian can’t deal:

3. The Revolution

The power play that started it all. You’re going to make a bunch of rich dudes pay taxes? Not gonna happen, King Georgie. Here’s a declaration signed by all of us telling you exactly how things are going to go down over here in America (hint: you’re not involved). Don’t like it? Go ahead, send those redcoats to die standing in formation while we pick them off from behind trees and bushes and shit, guerilla style. This land is our land, bitch.

2. The Monroe Doctrine

In 1823, Prezzy James Monroe had a message for European countries looking to interfere with states in North and South America: fuck right off. Monroe believed that the Old World and the New World should maintain separate spheres of influence, which is a roundabout way of saying, “Dibs on exploiting the resources of poor nations on this half of the earth, you European cunts. Good luck in Africa.”

1. The Civil War


Of all the conflicts we’ve been in, our deadliest war was the one where we fought ourselves.

First, hats off to TFM for actually writing something that was neither user submitted nor about sex. Progress.

Second, wow, I'm praying going out on a limb by saying that this kid wasn't a history major. Let's review the tape.

Olympic domination - Upheld. Since the games resumed in 1896, the US has won the most gold medals 16 times while we've won the most total medals 13 times. We don't celebrate losing, so obviously only the gold medal count matters. The US also has set the record for most road wins at the Games. Our domination travels.

(Side Note - We've really rewritten history nicely. All these years I've been under the impression that we went over to Berlin in '36 and handed it to the Nazis when in reality they won pretty handedly. Also, say what you want about Nazi and Soviet politics, but there might be something to that whole selective breeding thing they dabbled in. The results from 1956-1992 speak for themselves.)

Panama Canal - Upheld with an asterisk. There's no other way to describe the building of the Panama Canal than as a power move. However, I will add that our pussing out and leaving the Canal Zone cancels out the power move. You can't relent to public pressure and still claim a power move.

Lunar Landing - Unanimously Upheld. We proclaimed that we would be the first to land on the moon and backed it up. #PowerMovesOnly Also, the very definition of a space program is a power move. Tough to think of anything that is a bigger waste of money yet yields more pride than an elite space program.

Containment - Rejected. I'm now beginning to wonder if the author simply doesn't understand power moves rather than history. Containment by its very definition is a middle-ground position. You can't claim a power move while retreating.

The Cuban Missile Crisis - Rejected. You cannot claim a decision that was made as a direct result of a catastrophic failure is a power move. It's a desperation move.

Dropping Nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima - Upheld on principle not explanation. The power move was Truman's warning Japan to surrender or else. He then backed up his "or else". 

The Louisiana Purchase - Rejected. You can't claim a power move when you were just the guy who was at the right place at the right time. You didn't do anything. You just happened to be sitting at the right barstool at the precise moment when the chick decided that she wasn't going home tonight without getting screwed. 

WWI - Unanimously rejected. Our military was woefully incompetent. After the war, we took the lead in the peace negotiations and our very own president presented the peace policies that were negatively received by all and weren't even accepted by our own government. Also, those policies led to the start of another World War within 20 years.

Declaring Ourselves World Champs For Winning  Leagues That Only American Teams Compete In - Upheld. Although the power move is declaring our teams world champs while no one argues. A bigger power move is making the rest of the world begrudgingly use "soccer" while in conversation with you to describe the sport that they all uniformly call "football" because you already have a football that's more important and not played by pussies.  

The Revolution - Upheld on a technicality. Declaring independence and war against someone that really doesn't want to get up and go fight is technically a power move. You forced their hand and won. But, blinds were just changing hands, no one was really playing, and everyone was ready to leave. 

The Monroe Doctrine - Rejected. You can't claim a power move if the rest of the world didn't respect it. He should have gone with the Roosevelt Corollary, but he didn't, so, no points for him.

And finally... 

The Civil War - Unanimously rejected only to be appealed by the judges themselves, just so they could unanimously reject it again. We are all dumber for reading that thought. The worst decision in the country's history culminated in the bloodiest conflict in its history that result in effects that are still felt today. What a power play.

Go back to what y'all do best, TFM, aggregating other people's funny thoughts and writing about sex because y'all can't actually write something truly funny or interesting.    

No comments:

Post a Comment