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Yeah this is fair.
I guess what grinds my gears is that (as many people in the pro-Devereaux camp have pointed out) the military isn't just comprised of "bearded SOF soldiers" even though the bearded SOF soldiers are an important part of winning the war. I think the correct response (if you're a skinny nerd facing Hard Times) isn't to tear down the bearded SOF guys, it's to go "hey how can I chip in?" That might look like becoming a bearded SOF dude, but it might look very different, and that's okay.
Not everyone can be a 6-foot-2 god of war, but in truly desperate times pretty much everyone can do something. During World War Two they even put teens and seniors in Civil Air Patrol aircraft to spot submarines. This might not be as glamorous as being a fighter pilot, but it is fundamentally an honorable thing to do.
Granted, Devereaux doesn't live in Hard Times. At least not yet. (Admittedly, I am interacting with the Devereaux in Gog's imagination, who might be different from the real deal.) But just because you're a comparatively soft guy living in comparatively easy times doesn't mean you must inevitably tear down hard guys. In fact, if anything, you ought to want them to be harder and tougher to protect your comfort. Which is in fact the way that prosperous nations often go, shifting away from citizen-soldiers to professionalized armed forces, which I think has a lot of practical benefits but potentially also some drawbacks.
Sure, but just as you wouldn’t start quoting cholesterol studies to a woman claiming that skinny girls are akshually unattractive, because you’d grok what she was actually talking about, all this drone-Rome-Ireadhistory debating is missing the point entirely. That’s not what any of this is about. It’s nerds-vs-jocks all the way down.
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