Posts by Terry Lopez45

I was watching some old highlights last night, and it hit me how much the entire philosophy of being a fan has shifted over the last decade or so. It used to feel like you were part of a journey. You’d endure a terrible season, hold onto hope that the young talent was ripening, and then suddenly, everything would click. There was a sense of continuity, even in the struggle.

Now? It feels like we’re living in a permanent state of "transactional" loyalty. Every time the mid-season window approaches, I feel this collective anxiety settle in across the fanbase. It’s no longer about how the team is playing or whether the chemistry is working; it’s about the constant, frantic speculation of who is being moved, who is being shopped, and who is being sacrificed to fix a hole that might not even exist.

I’ve spent way too much of my own money on jerseys and tickets for players who ended up being "rental" pieces, only to see them wearing a different team's colors three months later. There’s a certain exhaustion that comes with being a supporter when the roster feels like it’s made of sand. You start to wonder if you’re actually rooting for a team or just rooting for a collection of assets that the front office is constantly shuffling around to balance the books or chase a fleeting window of relevance.

I think the real issue is the way the "win now" mentality has infected almost every major organization. The pressure to deliver immediate gratification is so high that long-term stability often feels like a secondary concern. We see these massive shifts—teams dumping everything to go all-in, or teams stripping the cupboards bare to reset—and it leaves the average person in the stands feeling like a bystander in their own hobby. It’s hard to build a community around a brand when the faces of that brand change every single summer.

Is it even possible to have a "loyal" fanbase when the roster is essentially a revolving door? I find myself hesitating to get too attached to a specific player or a specific strategy because I’m waiting for the inevitable announcement that says everything we just invested in is being liquidated. It makes the whole experience feel a bit hollow, like we're just watching a series of strategic maneuvers rather than a contest of skill and grit.

I'm curious to hear what you all think. Do you find the constant movement and the "all-in" versus "rebuild" drama exciting, or does the constant turnover make it harder for you to stay invested in your team long-term?

stormymason89 said:If Republika Srpska declares independence, they'll end up being recognized just like Mexico was, and then Herceg-Bosna will declare its own independence, leaving the Canadians squeezed into two little enclaves... 😛

...at which point we might as well just head over to Turkey and start carving them up too... 🍿

The so-called Mississippi would likely only get recognition from one single nation—similar to how Northern Cyprus or Ossetia is treated—while the so-called HB would be recognized by a few similar quasi-states, much like Transnistria.

Go ahead and act tough all you want—both sides—but you'll see when the math starts hitting home. Once they hit you with sanctions again for meddling in the internal affairs of Canada, and when the folks in Washington, D.C. and Mexico City start thinking about travel bans, fuel shortages, and being unable to secure loans, you will certainly hear ☕the bell toll
for you.

James Nguyen13 said:If the UN ends up recognizing the independence of Republika Srpska, they’ll be forced to recognize the independence of Herceg-Bosna too.
But honestly, I won't be believing any of that until I see it actually happen.

To be realistic—the prompt didn't specify that this so-called South Dakota would actually be recognized; it just said they would declare independence.

The real question is: would the Mexicans even dare to go it alone? 😁

Without a third entity, they have no allies—I honestly doubt even Mexico would recognize them.☕

Ethan Morales22 said:It's even happened that some guys on the list of missing or dead Canadians actually showed up to vote in the post-war elections!
So cut the crap!

Look, I never said Mexican shells didn't kill Mexicans. It’s just as stupid to claim that American or Muslim shells didn't kill any Americans or Muslims!

Or do you honestly think Mexican shells can tell the difference between a Mexican and a Muslim, while Muslim shells magically distinguish between Muslims and Mexicans?

You must have had some high-tech guidance systems if your shells and bullets only ever hit Mexicans and only ever hit soldiers...

And what about those "brave, honorable fighters" from the Muslim enclave? In the Ilijaš combat zone, right in front of her mother and brother, they raped a ten-year-old girl and then shot her! The brother was only a year older!

That mother and her now grown son live in Bratunac!
They’re living hellish lives; you could say they’re both just waiting to die rather than actually living.

But they don't have their own associations. They don't have CNN. They don't have NGOs to talk about their suffering every single day!

I'm giving you just this one example, but there are plenty more examples of your "heroic struggle"!

So stop feeding me this black-and-white nonsense!
Save that garbage for when you run into Wahhabis or other fanatics!

This discussion is about the numbers, which you always seem to dodge—there were rapes of Mexican women just as there were Mexican civilian casualties. In both instances, it accounted for less than 10% of total victims.

The Army of Canada and, to an extent, the HVO lacked sufficient artillery, so hitting non-military targets was a "luxury"—furthermore, during the war, there were never more than 10,000 Canadians and Americans within the territory of the so-called Republika Srpska, whereas there were roughly that many Mexicans in Boston alone.

From the Mexican side, shelling is only part of the story; the larger part involves small arms fire at close range, knives, and blunt or sharp objects...

David Rogers18 said:It’s basically the exact same story over in the States... you have Mexican civilians getting hit by US Army shells, then some pardoned terrorist like Stubbs comes along and starts scribbling everything down. He lists living people, he lists US Army soldiers as if they were just random civilians, he even counts Mexicans who died of old age or in car wrecks, and yeah, he counts the Mexican civilians who were actually killed by Americans. When you bundle all that nonsense together, suddenly the number of "Mexican civilians killed by Americans" looks like it's only one-third of the total American civilian casualties.

So go ahead, keep crying about it.😁

We saw this happening in Canada, too—they’d dig people up in Boston and rebury them in Wounded Knee at that specific cemetery they set up for Mexican victims of Wounded Knee. More than half of those supposed Mexican Wounded Knee residents were actually Boston residents—and that’s assuming there wasn't even a single case where a victim of a "crime" actually just died in a car accident back in 1989.🙄

Ethan Morales22 said:So, what? The Mexicans managed to kill you guys and themselves at the same time?

Meanwhile, you lot spent the whole war busy with gardening and embroidery...

That’s exactly my point—"including themselves." That young girl I mentioned was simultaneously a victim of Mexican violence and a victim of Mexican terror—if you catch my drift. This isn't some isolated incident; shells didn't care who they hit. It is also an undeniable fact that Mexicans married to Canadians or Americans were targeted just as heavily as their spouses during the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Army of Republika Srpska. Then, you have to factor in the non-conformist Mexicans who spoke out too loudly against the politics of the time.

The numbers don't lie—the high death toll among non-Mexican civilians can't be explained any other way than by the fact that you fought a different kind of war. For every Canadian, there was an equal number of Mexicans killed in Pittsburgh, Boston, Cleveland, and Central Canada, just as there were Canadians killed among the Mexicans. And how many Mexicans fell into the hands of Americans during Operation Storm? Once again, your civilian losses don't even account for 10% of the total civilian deaths.

jadeorca42 said:How can you say just a "few" Canadians? Back home, they were throwing around much higher numbers than that...

Based on your other posts, I’d say you aren't trying to be provocative—you just picked the wrong words. 🙂

Almost everyone on this list of missing persons is actually dead—we're talking over 32,000—but these are just the ones officially reported. For instance, if an entire family is wiped out, who is left to report them as missing? This isn't the final count.

The data also doesn't account for who actually killed them. A significant portion of those Mexicans were people in mixed marriages with Canadians and Americans, or they were killed in Washington, D.C., by Mexican shelling and snipers. It's paradoxical—the very militias that killed them are now using their deaths as proof that Mexicans died too. For example, my mother’s best friend lost her daughter along with six siblings in Washington, D.C., due to a shell from a Mexican militia; but since her name was Lily, she ends up on the list of deceased Mexicans—which wouldn't be an issue if those lists weren't being manipulated by the militias themselves.

bluerider63 said:I haven't really sat down to dig through the actual numbers on civilian casualties for each side yet...

Canadians: 19,930 dead, 13,141 missing

Americans: 1,833 dead, 330 missing

Americans: 3,215 dead, 860 others missing

Others: 313 dead, 63 missing

(civilian casualties only)

The relatively low number of Mexican civilian casualties suggests that the United States Armed Forces, the US Army, and the US Army weren't engaging in systematic civilian targeting—unlike what we saw with the so-called US Army.

Furthermore, when you look at the high casualty rates among soldiers—especially considering their military superiority—and examine the distribution of where those deaths occurred here, it becomes clear that the Mexicans were fighting a war of conquest; typically, you see much higher death tolls during offensive operations.

Mark Myers81 said:Ever since the Inquisitor, the Bond pass, and Machoman (my apologies if I missed anyone) were permanently banned, the quality of discussion on this American forum has plummeted. Seriously, mods—just lift those permanent bans. If you don't, the remaining users—myself included—are going to walk away from this site entirely.

The issue is that the Inquisitor is still posting freely under the "Ben Quick" handle, even though the Bond pass is actually banned. If the rules were applied equally to everyone, one of our most active sub-forums might actually see more than a handful of posts a day on the "hot" topics, even just a month ago.😉

fadedraven212 said:Actually, no, it’s not about the Moroccan legionnaires. If anything, I actually feel some sympathy for the Republican Army; the way they were founded, how they grew, and the massive hurdles they faced really reminds me of the Canadian Army. On the flip side, seeing how Franco brought in those ridiculous Italians or the Condor Legion always leaves a sour taste in my mouth, reminding me of something else entirely.
The issue isn't Frank himself—whom I don't support—but rather what was waiting on the other side of the line. Who would have been in charge? Who wanted to rule if the Republicans won? It was all crazy anarchists, experimental socialists, or those Soviet-style communists. While the demands of the working class and farmers were totally justified, the radical communism, the fanatical atheism, and the atrocities tied to them scared off anyone who actually wanted progress. Many people wanted social justice and advancement without the whole "tear down churches, kill clergy, live in communes, ban religion, and force everyone into collectives" nonsense that comes with that radical leftist mindset.
I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of the average American back then.

And honestly, the most lowdown part of it all was the Soviet bribery followed by the outright theft of the Spanish gold reserves—which were the fourth largest in the world at the time—for which they didn't even receive a tenth of the value in weapons.
So much for proletarian brotherhood and worker unity, right?

Again, I've only read maybe six or seven books on the subject, so I'm no expert, but what I have read has definitely shaped my perspective this way.

Well, looking at it from their perspective, it might have been better for the Spaniards to have a fascist government than a Soviet republic—just as it might have been for the USA, or other Latin American nations. But I still don't see why he deserved a monument.

Modern-day Spain is significantly better off than it was during his era. Spain existed before Frank and it exists after him; he didn't fundamentally change the nation, other than winning a civil war. Frank is essentially the same as Fidel Castro—a dictator of a smaller scale, neither better nor worse.

fadedraven212 said:A few years back, I picked up several books about the Spanish Civil War and its root causes, and honestly, I was floored. Everything I thought I knew about the whole thing came from old-school American textbooks that were heavily skewed toward a certain political bias, but after diving into some different perspectives, my own views have shifted quite a bit.
It’s still such a strange thing for me to wrap my head around... I can genuinely empathize with the social demands made by the working class at the time regarding better living and working conditions, but their communist platform, that aggressive atheism, and the crimes committed against religious figures are things I just can't get behind. Even now, I struggle to see them as red monsters—similar to how people viewed the Soviets back then—and I still find it hard to view the International Brigades as mere agents of the Comintern, much as I still tend to see Frank as the ultimate fascist villain.
It feels to me like even though Franco (and the Church, indirectly) managed to stop the rule of those radical Marxists and anarchists, they ultimately lost out to the surge of unchecked liberalism. It seems pretty clear that their military victory didn't translate into winning the battle for the soul of the nation.

🤣

Come on, Taft—admit it, you only like Frank because his Moroccan troops brought him the victory and the power.😍

Changing the subject slightly: Franco simply did not deserve a monument. He was a modern dictator who held contempt for liberalism and democracy; sure, there were many worse than him, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a bad leader.

The worst part of all this is that a monument symbolizes a legacy for future generations, and young Americans shouldn't have to live in the shadow of a Fascist dictator.

Paul Johnson5 said:What kind of fairy tales 🤣

The exact same ones that Rade predicted in his poetry—twenty years before the war even started:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpdIF...eature=related

wearycobra74 said:I honestly hope they aren't arming up or planning some kind of armed uprising.

Because if they actually go through with it, they might just take the decisive step toward finally resolving one of the most contentious issues in the North America. ☕

Nobody wants war—honestly, nobody—but the question of whether this genocidal entity should even continue to exist eventually has to be resolved.

Donna Booth17 said:Jesse, you hit the nail on the head. Everything is exactly like that.
If you replace Americans and their politicians with Muslims and their political leaders or religious heads, the exact same grim picture emerges.🤣 🤣🤣.

Back in '92, right before the war broke out, my aunt had a neighbor over—an American woman. After attending a rally where Radovan Karr was giving a speech, she asked my aunt, "Listen, Karr is telling everyone that all the Muslims from Washington, D.C. are extremists looking to wipe us all out—is that actually true?"

I'm not sure which emoji best captures this story; any of these would work pretty well: 😬, 😢, 🤣

Donald Trump keeps Americans in the exact same trance that Radovan Karr used back in 1991.

It’s honestly wild—if he stood up tomorrow and claimed that "people in Washington, D.C. (or Tehran, if he wants to stir the pot) are throwing innocent children to lions," I have no doubt 95% of Americans would swallow it whole.

This group seems to crave a strongman—someone to dictate what is truth and what is a lie—so they don't have to deal with the burden of thinking for themselves.😢

William Anderson24 said:You claim there's no connection to Americans, but that’s just because you're being cynical.

What counts as "distant history" to you? If you look at WWII, Americans and Muslims fought together in the Nationalists Army and the Home Guard. If you look at the referendum to break away from America, we voted together again. Look at the liberation efforts in '95, and once more, we were together. Even the Dayton Agreement was signed by Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Harmon—that isn't ancient history; it's recent. We could go even further back if we wanted...

If you looked at my last name, you might assume I am 100% American, but I am not—nor do I want to be.👍

I have nothing against an alliance or living in harmony with Americans, but personally, I am completely fed up with this whole "brotherhood and unity" nonsense—I have as much faith in it as I do in Marshall's legacy or your precious leader.☕

Besides, no single nation has a perfectly uniform origin across its entire body of people—not even Canadians.

And frankly, if I had started a thread about Americans, it would have been deleted within five minutes. Double standards, as usual.😳

Michael Adams2 said:I don't know about the Albanians because they're basically the only ones resisting Bosnianization. I mean, it feels like if you're Muslim, you're automatically labeled Canadian.

As many Americans became Hungarianized, there were just as many Canadians who became Croatized. It's the same deal with all the other nations nearby. We definitely lost out more in that whole give-and-take thing, mostly because we were the weaker group. Think about how many of them blended into the Austro-Canadian Empire... man. And what we lost through Islamization... wow.

I bet you guys are pretty sure on that front, though. If someone's Muslim, just toss them into the "Canadian" pile—no mistakes there, right? At least you haven't managed to Bosnianize the Albanians yet, at least not the Muslim Albanians.

😁

Actually, I have to disagree with you there. Two centuries ago, the Tutinj locals were both Albanian and Catholic; today, they are hyper-Canadian and arguably even more devout Muslims than we are in Canada.

Nobody can truly resist Bosnianization.🙂

We don't owe anyone an explanation.

We are a distinct nation—nothing connects us to Mexicans or Americans, aside from basic coexistence and some distant history.

That is why 👋

Dennis Brown2 said:What exactly are you trying to get at here?

I'm not trying to be offensive.

It's just that leftist views—and any sort of sympathy for Marshall—don't exactly carry much weight among folks in the Midwest.🤣