@mekkaokereke oh heck it's not the military prowess that they're obsessed with, it's the child abuse. They're super in to that.

@mekkaokereke just cuz I haven't seen it mentioned yet: It bears reminding that everything they think they know about Spartans comes from Frank Miller's 300 graphic novel (upon which the films were based) which was intentionally historical fiction. Miller was not intending to make it historically accurate. It was fiction. The fact that the Bros cannot tell fact from fiction is a little too on the nose.

@mekkaokereke I wonder why the new right are enthused by a polity that had slavery, eugenic infanticide, and state mandated pederasty as it's founding principles. It's a mystery.

@mekkaokereke This has always baffled me about the whole Spartan thing. They're some of the worst losers in history. The only reason they weren't just casually swept aside by their betters around them is nobody CARED.

They got to jack around in their little corner of the Greek world pretending they were great warriors because they could beat up on unarmed, underfed, and terrified slaves, but when they went up against people wearing cultural big boy pants they tended to get their asses kicked.

@mekkaokereke And in the end they have been defeated like all the other greek cities. Plus, Sparta is gone white Athens is still there

@mekkaokereke Yep. For more detail the historian Bret Devereaux has an excellent series of articles on the Spartans and how lame they were, as well as being an utterly horrible society, even by the standards of the time. He also has another calling out the modern cherry picking of history by the ignorant to satisfy their own prejudices.

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/

https://acoup.blog/2026/07/10/friday-friday-july-10-2026-on-the-chud-vision-of-roman-history/

@mekkaokereke also: the guys that won were the ones with the very good commerce network. That's all I remember from my high school sophomore Introduction to Philosophy class.

@mekkaokereke
Tbh, the Spartans pretty much sucked at life. Which is probably why they played at war so they didn't appear so pathetic.

Oh wait. I just described Republicans. To your point. :)

Spartans were the ancient equivalent of bringing an aircraft carrier to a drone fight.

It would've taken any of these homoerotic homophobes a few minutes to learn what I just said. But they won't.

Because they don't study the line between classical myths and real history like Emily Wilson does.

Homoerotic homophobes. I said what I said.

They yell "I hate gay people!🤡" but then spend 6 hours a month rewatching the same movies where the pretty men are all naked, and the women are clothed.

It's weird.

Being gay is not weird. This is weird.