Wow. So many posts in one thread in one day. Took me more than a quarter of an hour to read them all.
Fellas, lets try to reduce the acrimony a little eh? Lets all try to take a step back and a deep breath before we reply to posts that we take personally. And yes, I accept that I may sound like a hypocrite saying that because yes, in the past I have over-reacted to posts that were not necessarily aimed at me. Do as I say not as I do
For the record:
1) I regard teaching as being one of the most important careers in western societies. I have nothing but respect and admiration for good teachers. I think public school systems in every western society could probably do with more funding.
2) I always have some level of respect for those who have served or are serving as commissioned officers. I can't speak for other militaries but you don't get to be an officer in a Commonwealth military service if you are an idiot. I got into a long and interesting conversation recently with my fiance's great uncle and he mentioned that he had been a senior commissioned officer in the Australian Army. At first I thought he had retired as a lt colonel or colonel, then on further questioning I discovered he had been a brigadier general! A really interesting chap he is, very, very intelligent.
3) I was following the development (on the 93 Games forum) of T:2013 before it was published and I bought a hard copy at the first opportunity once my local gaming store shipped copies in. I love the system (char gen and combat especially) but didn't like the back story. I still regard it as an amazing body of work however and admire and respect the effort and talent that went into it.
4) It is an unfortunate fact (in my opinion) that I have learned to keep many of my opinions to myself on this forum as a direct result of what I consider to have been extreme over-reactions to my and others' posts in the past. I think it is natural for people to defend their own countries from perceived criticism. I think that as a result of the great majority of members of this forum being Americans, non-Americans who dare to make statements even remotely derogatory about the USA on this forum are risking long and loud reprisal posts. I think many of us (myself included) sometimes have a hard time in stepping back and reading critical posts objectively.
5) We are all gamers, and even more pertinently we are all fans of Twilight:2000 in its various iterations. Maybe we should spend more time focusing on the things we have in common than the things we do not?