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Presented with apologies to the expected level of discourse in this salon, which is higher than I may achieve.
Donald John Trump, peace be upon him, is blatantly attempting to buy my loyalty, and it’s working. Am I a cheap whore at the price of $1,776 and some badass rhetoric? That’s for the reader to decide, but it feels good to be wanted, y’know?
I’m a military serviceman, and have been for dickety-two years, since shortly before we started fighting the Kaiser in Iraq. I joined up right out of high school, in a peak Red Tribe era for the military. I mention these things because I think that I, personally, am at the confluence of a number of recent discussions, e.g., the warrior/soldier dichotomy, the importance/unimportance of normies, the Long March through the institutions, progressives using NGO networks to funnel government money to their clients, making it easier for their clients to be activists, etc. In many cases, I was the problem I hate to see in the world, as my journey from hicklib prog to ethnonationalist reactionary was, well, quite a journey.
But I digress.
Let’s talk about Bob Dylan. My personal favorite of his is Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts, but for my money, his song that will continue to describe the human condition for as long as there are humans is Gotta Serve Somebody. It’s not really a good song, like most of his gospel era, but it succinctly names and describes a phenomena that every human will experience, whether they want to admit it or not. Patron/client relations run from the top to the bottom of all human societies. He could have written a song called “Gotta Breathe Sometimes” and it would have been identifying the same kind of truth about the human condition, although granted, a much more palatable truth.
So, I’m not a patron, which leaves the question, of whom am I a client? Well, for the last fifteen years of my mumbldy years-long career, I’ve been the client of progressives. For the first mumbldy years, I was the client of slow progressives. The military has only become gayer and faker over my entire career. The paperwork has become worse, the training has become stupider and ever more blatantly hateful of whites and men who “do things.” It has become softer, gentler, more risk-averse in every way. It is a profoundly progressive organization, run by people who are either fast or slow progressives. I regularly see capable men passed over in awards and promotions for blatantly less capable women. There was a long stretch where the military’s number one goal was to have fewer white people. I personally experienced multiple mandatory struggle sessions doing Floydmas, and was expected by commanders and senior personnel to talk at some length about my own personal racism and how it had held back the blacks and browns of the world. At this stage, one begins to ask oneself, “Why should I care about Communist China making me do struggle sessions, if I get to do homegrown ones right here, y’know?”
And of course, with vanishingly few exceptions, all of us military folk went right along with this. The normies were not yet radicalized, but the seeds were sown in some of us. Slowly, we began to notice. Transgender servicemembers that I met were mostly a bunch of disgruntled problem-makers who appeared to actually hate their jobs, but every story coming out of the military about them was a hagiography. Women genuinely struggle to lead men, and are more indecisive, more prone to command by committee, crack more easily under stress, and blatantly favor their sisters in every situation. Standards were dropping across the department. Whites, my people, and especially white males, were staying away from the military. I personally think this is a bad thing, as I think one of the core functions of a reactionary movement is to fight to the knife for every institution, rolling things back as fast and hard as you can the instant you have power. In the military, that would of course entail being mean and destroying careers or closing recruitment to certain demographics, but after all the destroyed careers and discussions about discouraging certain demographics I have personally experienced, I can’t say that I care. Better to act and be prepared to act again as necessary, forever.
Ecce! Upon the horizon, a Fox News host. He rides a white horse and in his hands are a tape measure and a sword. Lifting his tape measure he says “You don’t look like a military, fat people think fat thoughts, and a military should think lean, hungry thoughts. Let there be no more fat generals or admirals in my sight.” Lifting his sword he says “War crimes are fake and gay. In all cases it is better to win than it is to lose with dignity. Why does the larger nation not simply missile strike the smaller drug boats?”
And all of a sudden, people like me started to feel wanted again. I like being in a military that doesn’t feel the need to run every operation through four levels of lawyers. Civilization spent centuries working to get warriors to become soldiers by making them follow orders unquestioningly, only to then turn around and decide some orders should be disobeyed and that the responsibility for making that determination in the moment lies at the…private/airman/seaman level.
So yeah, give me money Donnie. I’m happy to be your client, and in exchange for supporting you, I’ll take more money anytime you feel like handing it out. Your patronage is genuinely better for me, and the best patronage I’ll ever have, because I won’t be around in the military for King James the First. I find it very unlikely that this will happen, as in less than 0.001% chance, but if Donnie ordered the troops to move on Congress and the Supreme Court, I wouldn’t care. Those organizations have been against me since before I was born. They have proven that they have nothing to give me as a client, and in fact take from me and from my children. Better by far that a new patron/client relationship begins to develop, so that change can be made.
P.S. For those who are perturbed or disgusted by this insight into the mind of someone who gave the best years of his life to his country, first, I don’t tell you how to be an accountant, and second, you may rest assured that I will be retiring soon. I even plan to share the travails of the retirement process, which is shaping up to be exciting in the bad way. You can derive your schadenfreude from my frustrations at that point.
P.P.S. I forgot to mention that while this change of leadership in the Pentagon is leading to potentially exciting changes, I am also very confident that the military will prevent any real change from happening. It is a thoroughly progressive organization in the leadership echelons, and they can weather a storm for 4 or possibly even 8 years.
I believe the only way to prevent the standards dropping and deluge of paperwork is to have a more severe conflict or war. Peacetime militaries are concerned with peacetime issues, mainly not getting fired. So the people who excel at that are profoundly middling, the shut up and color types. The dirt bags get forced out and the superstars move on to bigger and better things. So, after a decade or two of incrementally adding extra rules and handicaps to pad a FITREP saying I made this 5% safer and saved the Govt $10 or whatever, we have filled the GOFO ranks with politicians smart enough to do nothing.
To address your larger point, you mentioned the Patron/Client relationship, presumably a reference to Ancient Rome. At what point was the Roman Republic salvageable? The descent (or perhaps ascent in some points of view) into autocracy seems almost inevitable, the only people who could prevent it would require the cooperation of those who stood to lose the most from maintaining a stable, more democratic government. Anyway if the republic is destined to fall, you might as well get yours; even if it's only $1776.
P.S. fwiw I really haven't seen any struggle sessions about being an evil yt. Perhaps it's different cultures in different branches. I haven't been in as long as you but I'm not brand new either.
P.P.S. I agree I think there will be a lot of resistance to change from SECDEF's changes.
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