Recently, Miguel and I have talked about shithole nations.  Most people who are not radical, Leftist ideologues know what that means.

On the other end of the spectrum are Western First World nations, e.g., the Unites States, Canada, the nations of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand,  Israel, etc.  Some are not Western nations but have adopted various Western practices that have made them successful, e.g. Japan and South Korea.

But what about the nations in between these two extremes?

They are sort of the “kid’s table” nations.  They have strong economies, but still have a per capita GDP that puts them below the poverty level.  They have major cities as advanced as any First World nation, but not still have large regions that are pre-industrial and under developed.

There are certain things that these kid’s table nations do that, well… you can tell that they still haven’t quite gotten their shit 100% together yet.

Indonesia is one of these nations.  It is ranked 41 out of 80 nations.  Right in the middle of the development index.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis was in Indonesia.

This happened.

https://twitter.com/GalloVOA/status/955980160993583104

https://twitter.com/GalloVOA/status/955980974566854657

This is why Indonesia is a kid’s table nation.  They think it’s totally bad-ass to punch fire and eat live snakes during a military demonstration.

That’s drunk frat-boy dare level stupid.

Their military takes its cue from teenage challenge YouTube videos.

If they had Tide Pods in Indonesia, I’m sure they would be chewing them with a straight face in front of Mattis.

I can’t them them super seriously.

You can tell they spent a lot of time on this.  But that means that they didn’t spend nearly as much time drilling for combat.

A little less this:

A little more this: