We're now apparently supposed to be all aghast that the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military thinks that people who get killed wearing a uniform are "suckers" and "losers".
Here's the thing.
If you are a GI, or someone who loves or cares for a GI, or just someone who “supports the troops”...at the very least be honest.
Those of us who wear the tree suit are tokens in the Game of Thrones. I'm not whining about that. That's the nature of the business. We knew that when we took the re-up bonus. When it comes right down to it our job is, at the final throw, to be used - and spent, if need be - gaining or trying to gain some geopolitical thing.
We can hope that those spending our health and lives and futures are doing that wisely, judiciously, frugally, and for only the best and gravest of reasons.
All the while knowing that the opposite is very often the case; we will be thrown away for ignorance, pride, hubris, and foolishness. Our lives, or some portion of them, will often be wasted.
That's what we get paid for. That's our bottom line. That's the bargain we've made.
And if you don’t like that, or that saddens or appalls, or horrifies you?
You need to be better citizens. Learn the issues. Question authority. Support people and policies...or protest against them! Vote...and vote with your head, not with FOX or Facebook or your old high school buddy’s latest email attachment.
Voting
for some trashbag or fool or madman, or not even bothering to vote when
there's a chance that trashbag of a human being might be elected, means
that you lose the privilege to be shocked, shocked, when that trashbag
trashes your precious "troops".
We are
your responsibility. We the People are supposed to be sovereign in this
republic. So We the People are the ones who ultimately decide whether our futures are hoarded, or wasted.
If someone you helped vote into power - or someone you're not fighting with all your might to keep from power - is disparaging, or mocking, or wasting your soldiers’ lives?
It’s not their problem.
It’s yours.
Trump makes outrageous and unconventional statement.
ReplyDeleteMedia freaks out.
Nothing changes and nothing is learned.
again.
First, that's not "outrageous and unconventional", Ael. Calling other people's dead fathers and brothers and lovers "suckers" and "losers" is just being a regular garden-variety flaming asshole.
DeleteSecond, I think it's not "the media". I mean...who SHOULDN'T be pissed off that our notional Chief Executive is a flaming asshole? We've had some pretty shitty human beings in the Oval Office, but, c'mon, seriously? How hard is it to fake a little political piety? Apparently too hard for this fucking idiot.
But, shockingly, this post isn't about Trump. Americans since 1945 - and before, as often as not - have been ridiculously cynical about how willing they are to get other people killed for idiotic reasons or no reasons at all. Everyone involved in the various interventions in places like Lebanon, the DomRep, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democrats, Republicans, liberals with "Right to Protect", conservatives with the Ledeen Doctrine...all just as cynical and foolish and cocky as the Trumpster, just with a lot less stupidity and out-front racism and fascist-curious-bluster.
I do agree, though. This won't change anything. We the People have been worthless as a tampon in a typhoon about our empire. I do not believe this will change anything.
If you want people to actually think about empire and the quality of decision making that leads to dead American troops and other people, then political piety needs to go out the window.
DeleteIf you start the discussion with "Our glorious dead" then you can't finish with "whose lives were thrown away by avaricious, short sighted and incompetent leadership who will do it again at the drop of a hat"
You need a press willing to question the patriotic smokescreen that always hides imperial doin's. At least in theory you can do that without actually slagging off on the legionaries. In practice it's difficult, tho, and that's why most journos avoid it; the American Right has made an art of shrieking "SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!!" every time someone questions why we're sending GIs to some outpost in West Buttfuckistan, and the public has been trained to be both credulous and stupid, so it works 99 times out of 100.
DeleteIt isn't just the press. When I drive around the countryside, just about every small town has a war memorial typically dating to the 1920s with a score or two of names listing the Glorious Dead from the Great War on one side, and WWII on another. When you rip the heart out of a town by killing most of its young men, it just *has* to have been for the noblest of reasons, doesn't it?
Deletehttps://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/12/kriegerdenkmal-gross-knigsdorf.html
DeleteNice post. You probably won't post it as a comment at Stars&Stripes or MilTimes or VFW magazine; so would you object if I did?
ReplyDeleteTrump has the Reverse-Midas-Touch. Everything he touches or says or tweets about turns into turds. But it won't change the mind of his base. They hate too much about us godless 'libruls'. Too late for them to change horses now. As long as he gives them judges and tax cuts they could care less about his being a trashbag and fool and madman.
Feel free, mike.
DeleteFunny thing about the whole Stars & Stripes uproar - I never read the thing when I was a GI. Never, even when I was in Panama. Shit, we could get the NY Times in the Alvord BX if we wanted a newspaper. Now? With every possible news item no further than you phone? I mean...I love tradition, too, but...
I put it as a comment from an anonymous friend at the MilTimes article re the same subject. Not a lot of response, although one commenter replied calling it "profound".
Deletehttps://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/09/05/respect-for-troops-military-sacrifice-becomes-an-election-friction-point/
I'll put these into my October link drop:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.duffelblog.com/2020/09/private-contempt/
https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/09/army-navy-game-to-be-renamed-suckers-vs-losers-bowl/
Personally, I suppose the public reaction got it wrong (as far as I could tell).
It wasn't really about troops and veterans in particular.
Krugman contrasted the "losers" thing with the lying moron's preference for certainly defeated Confederate generals, for example. He got the meaning of the word entirely wrong.
The lying moron thinks that life is about ripping others off in a competition for money, power, fame and pussy. Those who achieve this are "winners", whose who find themselves being exploited are "suckers", and thus "losers".
The lying moron's only economic policy idea was to rip other nations off (more). As if that could help much given the relative size of the U.S. economy.
The lying moron kind of admired (and envied) generals for their power (over people's lives) and authority. They're "winners" not because of battlefield success, but because of power. Later on, he insulted and denigrated them once he was in direct contact and thus compared himself to them, feeling the urge to feel superior - which required pushing them down on the achievement ladder.
And Confederate generals? Those were men who had money, fame, power, presumably access to pussy - and their power was ultimate. They OWNED people (and could rape female pussies at will), how much more power could you possibly have? His kind of guys. "Winners".
FDChief - I keep hearing on the news about evacuations from Portland suburbs. Are you and your family safe?
ReplyDeletePlus there are fires south of Portland. I hope his work doesn't take him anywhere close. In Califas a bunch who didn't want to be evacuated from a vacation lake by the National guard choppers soon found the fire totally surrounding the Lake. One of those fuckwads told of going in the water up to his neck and dunking his gourd and resurfacing to breathe. They finally got out by helos. They deserved to become Krispy Kritters. K oh double L, Oh double good, Killoggs good for you. Hey Mike, you're familiar with that right.
DeleteWe're fine up here in NoPo. It's the communities near the woods that are getting crisped, places down in Clackistan, or in the Valley. We did have a nasty little blaze down in suburban SW Portland, but that, too, was in a burb built on a wooded hillside.
ReplyDeleteI'll write a long post about this over at GFT, but the bottom line is that the bill is coming due for:
- heating and drying caused by climate change,
- reckless expansion of development (and especially powerlines) into the forests,
- decades of fire suppression combined with corporate logging (i.e. overcutting and "reforestation") that produced thick stands of dense second-growth highly susceptible to bark beetle infestation and fire, and
- public indifference to all the above.
Like a crap-ton of other American problems, we've pretty much fucked ourselves into this. It's not the Wrath of Nature; it's the Dumbfuck of The American Dream
Did you all see what happened in Rhode Island?
ReplyDeleteA bunch of progressives running together high jacked much of the democratic state machinery in the local primaries. A bunch of old time DINO politicos are going down.
The question is, is a similar populist insurgency possible in the Republican segments of the country? I see a rising energy among young Republicans. And Trump is actually getting more support from Latinos and young black men than the last kick at the can.
I have no idea where this "the sane Republicans will arise!" meme comes from. Maybe wishful thinking?
DeleteThe "rising energy" largely comes from hating in the libs, the browns, the gays, the ragheads, and heathen Chinee, efforts to reain in climate change and restrict completely nutty gun ownership. It's rising alright, like bile from a bad meal. But I'm not sure we want to be there when it spews.
And the notion of hispanics and African-Americans voting Trump is like a Hamburg Jew voting NSDAP in 1932; utterly nuts.
If the GOP can be saved, it must be utterly destroyed. Then, perhaps, a sane thing can be built from pieces of the wreckage. But not until then.
OK, so no sane GOP for the near future.
DeleteStill I think that unseating a bunch of corporate democrats
in such an organized fashion is worthy of study.
Anyone know of prior experiences with setting up slates of candidates while staying within the confines of established parties? Is this repeatable, or a one-time shot?
The teahadis did this. There's no reason that the non-corporate Left can't.
DeleteFWIW, there's NO example of a successful third party in American history. The physical constraints of FPTP voting make anything other then two large parties impractical. I may wish that wasn't true, but it doesn't change anything.
Adoration is a two way street
ReplyDeletethe adored must play it's part...
silent, stoic, and presentable soaking up the praise and with patient grandeur sagely acknowledge the praise bestowing legitimacy to the worshiper
the adoring will continue it's distant isolation of the adored so that both recognize that this is an empty symbiosis that costs the adoring crowds nothing
and the adored...
everything
sheerahkahn
My threatened take on the Oregon fires:
ReplyDeletehttp://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-fire-this-time.html