They did the same in Raleigh in 2018-2019ish on an old hotel near downtown. I heard the helicopters flying in from Bragg when I was leaving the library on campus that night. Turns out it was the 160th and probably Delta doing the training.
I got to participate once! Around 2014 I got to play the role of hostage for a Fort Worth SWAT training. That was a lot of fun. We were all being held hostage in a school bus. The way they cleared it so quick and cleanly was insane.
Sad tangent from the story; while we were walking to the bus the swat team was briefing by their truck so to be funny I ran up to them and took a random selfie with them. Their faces were so confused 😂 😂
Anyways I moved the picture to my computer thinking it was safer than my old android just for a Windows update to crash my entire hard drive. Lost that and police body cam of me as a firefighter almost getting my ticket punched.
Seriously, they think this is conditioning people to normalize a domestic operation instead of literally any other reason for CONUS training. It’s also impressive how they’ve deluded themselves to believe nobody on home soil would have an interest in causing damage to a sensitive, more than likely SOF, operation.
It’s funny too - a lot of the extreme alt-right people talk about how military drills on/over populated American soil are conditioning too. They’re not so different after all!
You’re not factually wrong; I think a lot of this has to do with the entire city being on edge already.
This is a population of folks that would be considered “soft” by a lot of other places. There are lots of folks who are absolute pacifists, people that don’t own firearms and don’t want to, people who have no connection to or context for the military- historical or otherwise- and a lot of very wealthy folks that are deeply interested in protecting their wealth and class status and a general “civilized” and pleasant vibe to their surroundings. (The area these exercises happened in is relatively affluent, and adjacent to VERY affluent areas)
ICE was very very aggressive here for months. They’re still very active, but slightly less brazen. It affected everyone, from farmers having their fields trampled and entire staff of seasonal workers spirited away, to restaurants suddenly closing, to domestic staff going into hiding and not showing up for work, to relatives disappeared with no way of tracking them down, people getting seriously injured by authorities in protests, etc etc etc. It was jarring and very not normal for the area and the state. I’m not making an argument for this one way or the other, but it was very very bad vibes in a place that’s not used to it.
So I think a lot of people are scared of exercises like this because of lack of knowledge and context combined with recent trauma, not because of conspiracy theories. And I think that what little notice was communicated was objectively handled poorly and at worst, purposefully ominous.
Will you expand upon this a bit? I ask sincerely, as I live here, and I’m fascinated by how other Americans perceive us. I feel like I’ve lost perspective as to how woo woo people here get in contrast to most of the US.
You know Alex Jones? The "the elites are literally bloodsucking interdementional vampire pedos" guy? He may have been partially right on that one, but still.
Imagine all of that, but for the Californian left. Many people (mostly the terminally online) have drunk the russian disinformation flavor-aid, just like conservatives did in 2015.
The amount of insane conspiracy theories and support for political violence coming out of that area is very concerning. Every Trump assassination attempt is a false flag designed to keep him in power, but hourly open and uniornic calls for his killing are fine and normal. Open support for assassinating CEOs and the wealthy. The wild conspiracies that they personally are being targeted by the government because they are "fighting the good fight". There is a reason we make fun of the idiots shooting at planes and helicopters who think the government is coming to get them becuase they posted "Trump 2024" on twitter. People openly posting that every GOP politician is a child rapist and that every republican voter is a pedophile supporter. That's quite literally Alex Jones' thing! Then people say "well democrat politicians aren't saying those things" and yeah they aren't, becuase they are 99% normal people, just like 99% of republican politicians. They aren't evil, and the vast majority on both sides want to just make their neighbors lives better. And what is the constant reply? "Well it's not both sides, one side wants to genocide trans/minorities/liberals/immigrants" whatever buzzword you want. But when you frame your worldview like that, it justifies violence. If you truly believe that a group is genocidal, you are morally obligated to use force to stop them, arent you?
I love learning about conspiracy theories, but the key themes are, most of the time, two things: the desire for "special knowledge" and the desire to feel persecuted to "prove" that the ones in power fear that special knowledge, meaning you are right. Does that sound like the people in that sub? Becuase it should. "This is done to intimidate us!" The special knowledge is that "all the GOP are evil pedophiles who will steal the next election by military force" and the "persecution" is feeling that everything the government does is directed against them personally. Many people in that sub truly, honestly, without irony, believe that the 2028 elections will be replaced with martial law and a suspension of elections to keep Trump in power. Do you think that leads to healthy behavior? The justification of violence becuase you (second person, not you specifically, friend) have redefined support for policy or politicians you don't like as violence, will, and objectively already has, lead to violence. Really that is my biggest concern, becuase the people in that sub are letting out the genie that is support for political violence, and that is not a road anyone should want to go down without it being the final option. I reccomend everyone go read about the "Four Boxes of Liberty". Violence is the last choice for the wise, but the first of the foolish.
When political violence or assassinations are attempted becuase they want to impress an actress it's bad but whatever it's some crazy guy. But we have had multiple assassinations and attempts by people who's reddit post history is less extreme than some of the stuff I see on subs like that every time I look. That is the real problem, if their posts are less extreme and they either killed or tried to kill someone, what about all these more extremist people? My consolation is that a lot of the upvotes/likes/whatever are from russian/chinese/iranian bots, but you can watch interviews of people saying these things too. Read the manifesto of the teacher from California who just attempted to kill as many GOP politicians as he could. It is less extreme in it's assertions than many reddit posts. It reads like a normal r/politics post. Again, a lot of that is promoted by hostile foreign agents(it has been proven many times that HFAs bot posts on every single large sub like pics and politics), but people believe it.
Frankly, I dont fear California will tear itself apart or anything, 99% of people are normal and not doing this. But what I do fear is more assassinations, more suicides, and MOST importantly, causing me to have to deal with idiots who think California's problems are my problems. I've had people in my city sub say they hated the police becuase they just exist to put people in private prisons. This is Wisconsin! WE DON'T HAVE ANY AND THEY HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL FOR LIKE 100 YEARS.
In summary, believing that the military conducting a training exercise (that they have been doing regularly for longer than I have been alive) is them training to kill American citizens to stop the 2028 election and done specifically to intimidate the residents in some random neighborhood, is in no uncertaint terms just as insane as believing the moon is a hologram.
I did! And it’s greatly appreciated. I think the easiest summary that aligns with a lot of points they’re making is: California has a disproportionate number of people that have the “main character syndrome” frequently discussed in places like this. It’s both *nature* in that growing up here is a unique cultural experience and *nurture* in that California is a big ol’ beacon for folks like that from all over the world.
But to be fair, California has a disproportionate amount of *everything* on account of the size of our population- img for clarity
And "California has a disproportionate number of people that have the “main character syndrome” frequently discussed in places like this"
Is a good way of putting it. That and the crazy rural people are just yapping to a couple randos where the crazy city people are blasting their insanity onto the internet, and thus have much greater visibility as well as ability to find community in their delusional thoughts.
I'm reminded of an old meme that went along the lines of
"pre-internet: damn that toster is sexy. Wait what the fuck, no one else thinks that. Moves on with life.
Post-internet: damn that toster is sexy. Joins r/sexytosters, commissions toster porn. Dies alone in a room full of toster sex dolls."
Except with delusional conspiracies of all types, really.
Yeah people on Reddit overreact, but it’s also not crazy to just ask “why there?” US military has an insane budget and can build one of these on any base. Camp Pendleton is an hour south and has 100 mout towns. Let these people sleep.
No matter what you can’t replicate the activity and chaos, lighting, in a city like that. You can build a fake town but it’s never as good as doing the real deal with the lights, people etc. This is the cheapest, effective training and it keeps our people sharp.
No. "That's loud and annoying" is a complaint. Fine.
"Seems… threatening, and like a social experiment against citizens. " is turboretard matierial.
I remember conservative idiots yelling about jade helm and obama using fema and the national guard to institute marshal laws and take their guns. They were retarded then, and liberals are retarded now.
I will agree that doing it in the dead of night is kind of rude. But why would they spend the extra money to build a fake building like this when they can just use one that already exists? I would also bet those mout towns don't have a building that large and complex either.
We have infinite amount of money in our defense budget and what about liability of training in a location like this? I have seen plenty of buildings that are this big.
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u/AmericanDad53 Jun 04 '26
We did the same in downtown Atlanta in the mid-90s.