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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   24735 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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Saving Private Lump, Or Why Military Doesn’t Work Anymore

On the wild fields of xitter, the newest masterpiece of the oldest genre in history "why the youff suck so much these days?" dropped.

This time not from usual moral/religious POV, but from tough military guy one.

Why Military School Doesn’t Work Anymore

What's wrunff with the yuff? Are they drunkards, druggies, young deliquents, incorrigible violent thugs?

Nope, it is worse. They are lumps.

"And that brings us to the final group composing the plurality of students at Marathon Academy: “lumps.”

Lump is not a diagnostic category, but rather my own term for something I often saw but that resisted definition, a sort of combination of democratic man, last man, and mass man, the larval stage of the bugman that never quite sprouts wings. A lump is neither especially good nor bad, but rather a defined mass of inert matter. It lacks energy, focus, and will. Lumps, like plants, passively sustain themselves from their environment, but while flowers grow towards the sun, lumps gravitate towards vapes, porn, and electronic stimulation.

...

In particular, my school, like most military schools, absorbed a large number of young men simply impervious to motivation and lacking all drive. This is an increasingly common problem across the world of education and for society as a whole, and dealing with it requires rethinking a number of assumptions about the ends of modern life.

And what is the solution of lump problem? Beating.

In another age, in the same place, the student in question would have been punished for his lackluster academics with a trip to what was then known as the “bull ring,” where he would have received motivation of a physical nature. Failing that, once he’d caused enough of a headache for the student leadership, he would be run around the campus and introduced to a holly hedge at full speed, a practice known as “bushing.” By my time, bushing had long since been proscribed by the ever-growing Blue Book of rules and regulations, along with glass bottles, PT in excess of ten push-ups, and harsh language.

Notice that author does not say that the student is violent, undisciplined or disobeying orders, the offence deserving punishment is "lackluster academics". Private Lump cannot memorize his multiplication tables. Solution is beat him until he manages. Or he is beaten to death.

See parts of the world that believe in beating, for example Eastern Europe. Under tsars, communists and democracy, brutality was and is the rule at home, in schools, army and prisons, and the result is hundreds of millions of well adjusted and highly accomplished people who make their countries the shining light of the world.

Still, according to author's long experience, the lump problem is new one, the lumps were unheard of just few decades ago.

So where they came from?

It is possible that neoliberalism did it.

The lump is the end-stage refined product of neoliberalism, the perfect managerial object. He is the sort of lifelong boy a committee of women might design for maximum lack of systemic threat.

It is also possible that lumps were always there, but not in military academies.

Lumps, as people with no "energy, focus, and will" went with their life as laborers working enought to provide basic food and shelter, or, if from rich and connected families, were given some no effort sinecure where they could doze in the office all day.

In old times, military profession was highly prestigious and military schools had choice of the best students. Now, aspiring elite human capital goes elsewhere, and military is increasingly seen as dumping ground for losers and rejects.

What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

In old times, military profession was highly prestigious and military schools had choice of the best students.

In old times there were spoils of war. You could raid and pillage, conquer some land and get it given to you by your general. You could ransom wealthy enemies. If things go well you could end up in the new ruling class of a conquered realm.

The US army rifleman gets about $50K per year on campaign. Hourly that's about $13-15. Food and shelter comes with it but is likely to be pretty awful, call it another 10-18K per year. So $60-68K annually, mostly tax free? No asymmetric upside, no war brides, no prospect of looting a treasury or a temple (or even making money on a prediction market, apparently). Huge asymmetric downsides - death, watching friends die, being maimed, being prosecuted as a war criminal years later by your own govt... UK and France soldiers make a little less, Australians make a little more.

Furthermore, there is no convincing ideology behind US/Western wars. There is no good reason to be there, no grand mission. Spreading democracy by force doesn't make sense, you can't make people vote by blowing them up. Soldiers seem to be deployed to guard the reputations of politicians, to avoid old men losing face. And there's also a gigantic military bureaucracy that creates a suffocating environment, constant micromanagement and deployments running troops ragged.

No wonder it's not prestigious, what kind of idiot would want to be a soldier under these conditions?

If you want to motivate lumps, start with motivating normal people. You motivate normal people by paying them well, giving them real prospects of great success and provide a mission: a clear explanation of why the war is worth fighting.

Needless to say, lumps had no interest in non-digital women, and one of the saddest spectacles was always the annual school dances, where unfortunate girls were bused in to stand idly for a few hours amid loud teenslop music while the boys sat eagerly by the exits, waiting for the hour when their minders would allow them to return to their rooms and their customary online goonsimping."

Are the boys really to blame here? What girl thinks 'wow I've been bused in to some military school, I'm entering with an open mind that these are potential mates and I may be impressed if they do a good job dancing?' Theory of mind suggests no. Women are highly unlikely to pair up with random low-status men they've never met before in a place where they didn't choose to be.

What an astonishingly boomer way of looking at the world, as if this drill sergeant wannabe thinks he's doing kids a huge favour with these long-dead social rituals.

We should pay them better in legitimate ways, but right now you can lie and say you’re disabled and get a 40 year pension of 50k a year while you work other jobs.

But military service needs to be about more than pay. It’s protecting your tribe and ideology. And honestly fuck the pay. People didn’t sign up after 9/11 because they looked at a pay chart. Pat Tillman didn’t give up NFL money because the army paid well. It was a call to service. Same as being a Priest or so many other jobs people use to do to improve America. The Civic pride America once had seems gone now. Lost in the culture war. I am not risking my life to promote Pride.

And that’s the problem with America being an “economic zone”. If you’re fighting for America it’s now for a paycheck. I am not defending my tribe. I am not defending my way of life. I am not defending my religion - Civic or theological. I’m not defending an ideology.

People will lay their life down protecting their children and their nephews and their brother. There is a strong evolutionary biological desire to do this. It’s a good trade for one in the family to die to protect the rest.

I think it's less about the economic zone thing and more about all those things you listed not actually being "defended" by aggressive adventures across the globe.

Aggressive is a loaded term. I guess Iraq can fall under that category.

But all the things I listed were things worth defending in the past to the warrior class with foreign actions.

Culture wars destroyed a unified ideology worth defending. Mass migration destroyed a semblance of being one tribe.

The warrior class in the past seems to have been a lot more at ease with naked conquest. It wasn't until mass citizen-conscript armies were a thing that "defending things" became the go-to casus belli.

The warrior class is still there but you can't conscript those en masse, there aren't enough of them. Hence the frustration that young men are being "lumps".

For the warrior class naked conquest was just land for your family. If you killed the rival tribe next door you could now install your sons and daughters as the farmers on the new land. Or as the ruling class with sexual slave tributes like the Mongols did a lot of.

For the most part all adult men are the warrior class.

My question is what kind of insane parent would bus their teenage daughter to an all-boys military school serving primarily dead-end delinquents to attend a dance. I knew girls who were literally sent away to live with relatives in another state in order to avoid those sorts of boys.

The school for delinquent girls arranges dances with the school for delinquent boys? They awkwardly stand around not dancing while a boomer (or gen x) teacher writes "kids these days..." articles blaming the "lumps" for not being highly motivated at delinquent boy containment school

That would make sense. Though there can't possibly be enough girls to round out the numbers. That's gotta be the world's most awkward high school dance.

So boys-only schools are cooperating with girls-only schools to organize this sort of crap? How does this actually work?

I guess the schools do it? There's nothing sexier than a mandatory school activity, after all.

I had the same question here.

What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

This is a horrible solution and the countries that tried it lost even when they won. This is the ethos of 1914 that led to millions of young men to die at the Somme in pursuit of glorious victory. And you also of course assume that you will win. The genie of war is easily unleashed but hard to put back in the bottle. As Germany and Japan found out after a string of victories and conquests that bred fervor but ultimately ended with their cities destroyed and their societies reorderded by their less martial opponents, the record of martial fervor versus boring industrial and logistical bean counters in modern warfare is not very good. And even so do you really think Russian and Ukrainian young men are better off because they get to die "gloriously" in the mud wearing the uniform to try to be part of the winning team. I would say no. and I hazard you whatever you argue here would say no too. Both Russia and Ukraine accept foreign volunteers and you could go join and show your “motivation and drive。” No? I thought so. You might object based on the idea "It's not my fight!" but isn't this whole post just an argument for war for wars sake?

You might object based on the idea of "I'm not a lump!" but the US already tried that in Vietnam. The US kept it's crack troops ready for the Soviets and drafted lumps to send to a jungle sideshow to face an easy opponent that they almost always beat in pitched battles. This based on your theory should have been ideal for the formation of the young men and America, but instead incredibly damaged the fabric of American society and trust in the military. Because war is a genie that effects everything. Vietnam may have started as a sideshow for the military planners but for society it soon became a fulcrum because people are going to demand a reason when you start taking their sons and send them to die in the jungle. And even if the draft mainly targeted "lumps" the fear of the draft and reaction to it irrevocably changed US society by mobilizing middle class youth against it. Because war makes real stakes and you don't know where that will lead.

In World War I this post could have been published in any major powers newspaper. By the end of the War the Austrian, German, Ottoman and Russian Empires had all collapsed and significantly changed their state ideology. Russia despite being on the winning side. You cannot know where war will lead and it is a horror. It should be a last resort and not something done to "toughen up" young men before you feed them into the meat grinder.

But I've put the cart before the horse because I think this entire post is based on two misunderstanding's that first military schools are not military academies and secondly modern armies have always been composed of of "lumps." So first military schools have nothing to do with the military they are places parents send troubled kids or failsons they are closer to fat camp and the troubled teen industry then anything to do with the actual military. Military academies where the branches train their officers are competitive and have no issue attracting talent. And both the academies and boot camp have tough standards.

As for the enlisted well since modern armies have existed I'm using the historical definition of modern here soldiers have a had a bad reputation and been rather low status. Warriors, nobles and gentleman even citizen militia have a rather good standing usually but since modern mass armies or even before see mercenaries reputations. Soldiering is basically seen as one step above banditry. If anything modern armies have higher standards so you at least need to pass and a test and be literate to join.

So that seems to solve your problem the lumps aren't in military academies they can still join but as enlisted and be a cook or something. But even if not starting a war to "fix lumps" would be utterly insane and the 20th century is littered with great powers who were utterly destroyed or seriously wounded by treating war cavalierly.

Honest question: what do people even mean by "troubled kid" or "troubled teen"?

Kid with some combination of personal and domestic issues.

Inadequate food or shelter, abusive or absent parents, fetal alcohol syndrome, that kind of thing. Includes a bunch of stuff which really can’t be the kid’s fault but will probably turn into a bunch of bad choices by age 18.

The archetype of the troubled teen is a 16 year old getting into drugs, falling in with a bad crowd and maybe having sex, the last one especially for girls. Troubled teen is kind of a euphemism to describe this but it's also used when the parents want to imply a situation without saying what it is. Maybe junior is shooting up heroin or maybe he won't go to Mass, troubled teen covers all of it. And all someone needs to send a kid to a "troubled teen camp" is cash.

Usually, a kid who doesn't care about schoolwork, steals, uses drugs/alcohol, and doesn't obey their parents (especially if they curse their parents out).

Half a century ago, "listening to rock&roll" would have been part of the picture too, especially those bands who used Satanic imagery.

That sounds like 'troublesome' rather than 'troubled'. What's troubling them?

In case you are not a native English speaker, the words are synonymous in this case.

They are, but should they be? It lumps the traumatized into the same box with the shitstains doing the abusing.

It's a euphemism. Calling them "bad kids" or "juvenile delinquents" is seen as too harsh, and "troubled" puts a slightly medical spin on it. It's an attempt to acknowledge there's something wrong with them while also saying it's not necessarily their fault .

What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

This, unironically, is just basic sense. If you aren't willing to engage in conflicts that will result in mass casualties, at least to the other side, the evidence shows you do not have the requisite willpower to win that war in any meaningful way.

It's not really though. Because most of these peacekeeping and police actions are to prop up some sort of puppet government which lacks legitimacy and is hopelessly corrupt. The Soviets killed a few million Afghans they didn't have any better results then America. A strong enough local government that can provide stability, economic development and most importantly has base of support is what you need. It's not a problem you can kill your way out of because if the government isn't stable enough it will collapse the moment your soldiers aren't killing the locals.

Necessary did not always need sufficient. To subjugate Afghanistan also requires understanding that its not really a country. So your governor or proconsul or magistrate will need to be highly skilled in assembling a state from whole cloth.

I don’t think Lumps are a new problem. It’s just that in the modern era most places to dump them no longer exist at sufficient scale to absorb the lumps. Most people, for most of human history didn’t need to go through decades of schooling to train for a skilled career. Up until the 1990s is was perfectly okay to not be motivated in school because most people were destined for one of several jobs with low expectations for the workers: farmers, skilled tradesmen, factory workers, maybe low level office drones.

I tend to see the problem from the other side. The problem isn’t the Lumps. They’ve always been around, and probably always will be. The problem is that average isn’t good enough anymore. It’s no longer even good enough to graduate college, you need to have good grades, internships, the right extracurricular activities, the right work experience. You can’t just slide. And so if you’re not elite human capital, whether because you are not motivated enough to scrum hard enough, or you don’t have the intellect or the ability to win, there’s no real place for you.

Point of clarification- are these actual military academies(which in the USA are not going to have ‘lumps’ in them- they’re difficult enough to get into to weed them out), or ‘military’ schools that are actually ultra-disciplined private schools serving the elites to warehouse their failsons through the teen years? The latter is very believable, I have trouble believing the former.

Notice that author does not say that the student is violent, undisciplined or disobeying orders....

I think that corporal punishment has a role to play, when it's restricted to willful misbehavior and ordered to the well-being of the one who receives it. But a passing awareness of nineteenth-century education should be enough to make it clear that no school modeling itself on Spartan methods should be trusted with that authority, whether it's a military school or a British public school.

See parts of the world that believe in beating, for example Eastern Europe. Under tsars, communists and democracy, brutality was and is the rule at home, in schools, army and prisons, and the result is hundreds of millions of well adjusted and highly accomplished people who make their countries the shining light of the world.

Just FYI, Elon Musk is going to be sending you a bill in the next few days for the damage caused to his Starlink satellites by the unauthorized launching of my sides into orbit.

but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

Here are some videos I have seen from the current war in Ukraine:

  • A Ukranian squad marches for several hours to a contested location. They get pinned for an hour inside a barn by what turns out to be friendly fire, spending most of the time on their stomachs behind hay bales. They fire their weapons towards other buildings occasionally, accomplishing nothing or worse. Most of the footage is just dust floating around, accompanied by the sound of bullets impacting wood.
  • During a trench raid, the pointman mis-communicates with his squad about the location of a machine gun ("To the left?" "Right!") and gets killed instantly as a result. Nobody attempts to retrieve his body because it's stuck in the gun's line of sight.
  • A BMP notices movement in a nearby treeline, and rakes the entire area with its autocannon. For good measure, it also blows up a nearby shed with a high explosive shell. Then it drives away.
  • A conscript moving down his trench with his weapon drawn is shot point blank in the head by a soldier hiding in a small depression in the wall.
  • A small group of Russians attempt to carry a soldier in a stretcher to a safer location. They keep close together, which allows a drone to drop a grenade on the entire group. A few of them survive, with horrific injuries. They feebly attempt to move but can't do anything except lie on the ground and spasmodically kick their legs or paw at their body armor. The video ends.
  • A soldier stuck in a shell hole during an artillery bombardment frantically crosses himself. (I don't remember if he survived, but I do remember that people jeered at him on Twitter because he was probably a Russian and therefore they were allowed to do so).

The assistant general of the army resides on the left. The supreme general of the army resides on the right. This was known thousands of years ago, and it is more known than ever today. In the period of time between The Iliad and GoPro drone footage, those who would wage war have constantly attempted to deceive their slaves, soldiers, and citizens about what fighting actually entails, or to pressure them into accepting it, or in rarer and typically more successful cases, to compensate them for it. (During the high points of the Roman Empire, for example, a soldier really did eat well, and could expect a good deal of material wealth and career advancement upon retirement). Anyone who tells you that it is sweet and noble to die for your country is lying to you or very stupid.

Are you being sarcastic or serious? How about the original xitter? Speak plainly.

And a history teacher stuck dragging lumps through the pages is not, in a sense, a lump himself?

It's hard for men of delusional ego to reach those who have been demoralized or are at the very least exposed to representations, real or fake, of what 'winning' at life is actually like. Which looks less like a middleaged, underpaid academy teacher who views the world through a lens of struggle, duty and sacrifice whilst growing ever fatter in his chair every day with a sexually disinterested ugly wife who believes she settled for him, and more like the frictionless luxury advertised on social media by hot people in Miami.

We're just watching the Gervais Principle on a societal scale where lumps are losers. Tied together through classroom/media established hierarchy rather than an office one.

No one has really managed to piece together the exact chain of causality that molds some of our young folk into lumps. But it's obviously there. Most likely not defined by a single link but a thousand. And if ones younger self spent enough time scrolling on the phone alongside a lump one would probably get there as well.

Tyler Ziegel is one such link. A young man permanently disfigured in a pointless war fighting for interests completely alien to him. That no one to this day can positively articulate. He then suffers through the indignity of begging the failing state he represented in uniform for his pay. Before succumbing to alcohol, drugs and complete despondence. You might only see Tyler once in your scrolling career, but he will stay in your brain forever. His weight impacting every decision you make regarding useless wars in the middle east and some peoples willingness to send you there.

No one except the sociopaths can look Tyler in the eye and tell him he made a good choice for himself, that it was worth it. But only because that's good for the sociopath. If anyone who actually cared for Tyler could send him a message before he deployed it would be to tell him not to. He would have been better off "goonsimping" on his phone.

The clueless might argue that sacrifices are necessary for society, which is undoubtedly true in some sense. But the clueless genuinely cannot fathom why a lump would refuse to sacrifice for a system that doesn't meet his requirements. Pontificating on why is futile. Such is simply the nature of the clueless. He can only balk in indignance at the very premise that the sacrifice has to be worth it for the individual lump. 'That's not how sacrifice works', the clueless says. 'You're not allowed to question the cause. That defeats the purpose of it!'

But modern America is not built on the premise of sacrifice, but luxurious individuality. That's the American dream. The sociopaths get this, the lumps get this, the clueless don't.

Tyler Ziegel is one such link.

No battlefield. No explosion. Just a man worn down by years of pain—visible and invisible.

I'm fucking disgusted. Because instead of putting in a modicum of human effort to write a eulogy for this tragedy, the creator of that page opened his chatgpt and pressed a button.

FUCK YOU. Seriously FUCK YOU (directed at the creator of this slop). This is spitting on someone's grave. FUCK YOU

Edit: This entire website is just a fake ai slop site with zero content. You should know better than to link it here.

Maybe your "AI Sensitivity" is higher than mine because while I did not immediately tag the linked site as AI, my first impulse upon reading the linked article was to investigate the rest of the site at which point I was like "What the fuck is this?". My first impression was to compare it to one of those weird "compassion porn" bits my grandma used to forward me. Except none of the the posted stories seem to close the loop. It's all suffering, suffering, suffering, "posted by Admin" in "Uncategorized" with none of the "...and that's why you should trust in God/Karma" that I would expect at the end. As a result, the whole thing wreaks to me of nihilism and insincerity. Maybe that's the tell tale sign of AI or maybe that's just who @hanikrummihundursvin is, but in either case I don't like it.

I can not speak for Tyler, I never met him, but I know men who live in similar circumstances, and I know that they would not appreciate being used as a prop by someone who holds them in contempt. If anything that may be one of the bitterest of all contentions.

So while my response may be a bit more measured than yours, "FUCK YOU" does accurately capture the sentiment.

I read the entire thing and felt it captured the sentiment around the famous photo better than elsewhere I looked. Where the focus is usually on how 'sad', 'scary' or 'ominous' the photo is, when in reality it wasn't necessarily like that. To me it was defiant.

Tyler is only twenty-four. Rene is twenty-one. Ages when most people are still figuring out who they are, let alone how to survive a lifetime together. Yet here they are, bound by something stronger than romance alone—shared trauma, shared loyalty, shared survival.

It circulates online, often without context. Some see only shock. Others see inspiration. But if you look closely, you see something deeper: a moment where two people stood together in honesty. No pretending. No filters. Just truth.

I didn't clock it as AI, even though it sounded generic at times. But even if it is I like this specific post and don't see the fact that it was written by AI as being disrespectful at all. And I stand by wanting people to read it. (Not to comment on the practice of maintaining a website that writes AI eulogies.)

The entire site is made by a nameless grifter, likely pakistani, who pressed a button to make the entire thing. The entire site exists to fleece rubes (many more like it exist) and it looks like it's working.

These scammers buy and sell turnkey starter kits for tis kind of thing. All you need is an idea, a domain, and some gpt credits

I still like it and it didn't cost me anything.

Ever hear the phrase "you get what you pay for"?

I guess I could take that into consideration when I read your posts.

Tyler gambled and lost. Countless young men went to Iraq. Very few of them died or were disfigured. Of those who returned, many benefited from a luxury welfare state most Americans could only dream of - mortgages at rock bottom rates guaranteed by the federal government, free premium medical care for life in a place the middle class often have to spend thousands per year on premiums and deductibles, free college tuition, a lifetime of freebies and benefits afforded to veterans in modern America even though most of them spent a few years on comfortable Iraqi and Afghan bases with Taco Bells and movie theaters. Those who stayed in the military got to (or get to) retire after as little as 20 years of active duty, which means they could be out by what - 40? - on a full pension, when most Americans have 25-30 years of hard work ahead of them.

It would be inhuman not to feel immense sympathy for Tyler. But most who chose to enlist for the GWOT got a good deal. Or at least a decent one. And they did choose.

I'm partial to that line of argumentation. That within a modern western society the standards of living are so high and what's being asked for sacrifice is generally so little that it's basically a no brainer to earnestly participate. I think most people recognize this and earnestly participate. But on the flipside you are still getting lumps. So what's the deal there?

The following explanation, that a society with such high standards of living carries with it a variety of easily accessible vices that can demoralize people into lumps, effectively contradicts the premise of the first argument; that the standard of living in western societies is 'high'. This is compounded by the short timespan you have to succeed. Fall to the vices or miss certain milestones and suddenly homeownership and a family are a real challenge to attain.

From the perspective of a rational lump, either the vices in society are so good that being a gambling goonsimping lump is just the maximally beneficial state of being and working to rise above such an existence or sacrifice anything for it is either contradictory or simply a waste. Or, society is filled with pitfalls and vices that are functionally psychological landmines that trap you and/or rape your brain and prevent you from attaining real happiness. In which case the standard of living in a western society for people susceptible to such things is low and not worth sacrificing for.

So either the lumps are playing out a winning strategy by being maximally individualistic and hedonistic to their preference, or the game is rigged, society is garbage and the lumps are correctly opting out of earnest participation and are instead doing the minimal amount of sacrifice possible.

Or the worst case scenario is correct. Society is working as intended, trying to mind rape you into being incapacitated or enslaved for incomprehensible reasons, no one is fighting against this and the only act of self determination left is to choose which slave socket you jack yourself into or how you are going to kill yourself.

mortgages at rock bottom rates guaranteed by the federal government, free premium medical care for life in a place the middle class often have to spend thousands per year on premiums and deductibles, free college tuition, a lifetime of freebies and benefits afforded to veterans in modern America

Of all these benefits you list, only the college tuition is financially meaningful. VA loans are often worse than regular loans (interest rates are typically <0.5% lower, but you also need to pay an additional $10k processing fee). The only "lifetime freebie" I'm aware of is free admittance into national parks... a $35 value once a year when the family goes camping.

VA is also a great benefit; it can save vets thousands per year, or even more than that if they develop health problems.

The veterans I've known have not had such great experiences with the VA.

VA pension struggles with the standard public healthcare thing where people who know the right combination of buttons to press/right case workers to use can quite easily get luxury communism for difficult to dispute conditions. People with actual conditions that don't slide neatly into the classification buckets and/or don't have a case worker with an interest in bolstering them can quite easily get fucked.

Whenever attempts are made at curtailing spending on the first bucket, there's sufficient of the second bucket to walk out and argue.

IMO all those benefits were not known WHEN they went to Iraq. The everyone gets disability benefits was not a thing until a few years ago.

I think when many of them went they were serving their country and probably at negative expected value to themselves.

It’s probably tough for people to remember now but post 9/11 there were people willing to sacrifice their life for this country and it wasn’t just a grift. The leading brand was Pat Tillman. If the towers went down today I’m not sure who is showing up now.

Maybe it’s better today people care more about what’s in it for them. I don’t see many people today myself included rallying because someone bombed NYC now. I don’t view them as my people anymore. Why would I bleed for Mamdani who’s been here 10 minutes. When the Towers went down those were my people.

I think it’s really necessary to look at the MoS when evaluating soldiers. I personally know guys in the military who would only face physical danger in a black swan scenario. I also know special forces soldiers who face double digit percent risks of death and/or disfigurement. I think we need to look more at MoS than just “is he a veteran” to determine both the danger the soldier was in and the esteem we should give his service.

Does the VA medical pension system even meaningfully look at what role the applicant had? Admittedly my views are probably overly colored by Caleb Hammer participants and Twitter rage bait but there did seem to be a lot of PTSD/Tinnitus/Sore Back/never left the country 100%ers

Tyler gambled and lost.

With that you essentially concede the argument. If he just gambled and lost, you can't blame kids these days for running the numbers and deciding the game isn't worth playing.

He gambled and lost which men do all the time. How many young men get drawn into bodybuilding circles and end up turning into bloated, bald, acne-ridden losers who get heart attacks by their early 30s? Not a huge number, but then again, not a huge proportion of soldiers died in the GWOT.

I think it's pretty explicit in the rest of his post that most people who make that gamble are big winners.

Kids aren't 'running the numbers', they're sitting on their phones waiting to be given stuff.

I think it's pretty explicit in the rest of his post that most people who make that gamble are big winners.

The starting point has to be considered, though. I lead a pretty comfortable life. Getting a billion dollar would still be life-changing - but I value my current life enough that I wouldn't play Russian roulette for a 5/6 chance at a billion. If you're already doing fine, how big a win does it have to be to justify taking even a small chance of ending up like Tyler? I don't think free college tuition cuts it.

True. These days the lifestyle value of money hits massive marginal diminishing returns quite quickly. Even those who are fortunate enough to secure enough money to secure a good life in perpetuity tend to hedonistic treadmill themselves to death

These days the lifestyle value of money hits massive marginal diminishing returns quite quickly. Even those who are fortunate enough to secure enough money to secure a good life in perpetuity tend to hedonistic treadmill themselves to death

These statements are contradictory. If you can run the hedonistic treadmill high enough to exhaust arbitrarily high amounts of money, either running it higher is actually getting you significantly more (so returns aren't diminishing quickly), or there's something wrong with human nature such that we chase ever-smaller pleasures -- and human nature isn't new, so it's not a matter of "these days".

Those are separate issues. I believe the gap between the lifestyles of the middle class and the top echelons in Western society are closer than they essentially have been at any point since feudalism. Most billionaires spend just as much time as you do scrolling their phone, etcetera.

Kitty stared at Lyle bitterly. "I see," she said at last. "So that's what you get, when you drain all the sex out of one of them… You get a strange malodorous creature that spends all its time working in the garage." - Bruce Sterling, "The Bicycle Repairman"

Any explanation invoking "neoliberalism" unironically should be treated with extreme skepticism. I have a suspicion the explanation is a more pedestrian (though not less concern) factor than the deep-seated moral rot in society that forbids us from torturing children: low-friction hyperstimuli. It used to be that if you wanted to see naked ladies or go gambling, for example, it entailed a certain amount of effort and exposure. You had to leave the house and go to a strip club or casino and be seen doing it. Now you can do all that without getting out of bed, and without the attendant risk of humiliation for being seen by the wrong person. That's going to have a certain... anesthetizing effect on people who are susceptible to those vices or otherwise agentically challenged.

(Aside specifically re: ineffectual school dances. I've seen this subject come up before, and all I can say is that this is elders cargo culting rituals of their own youth without any of the attendant actual institutions needed to make them work. Yeah, it turns out a bunch of adolescent boys who don't dance recreationally and aren't allowed to talk to girls 99.9% of the time aren't going to do so hot when you throw them in a room with a bunch of girls they don't know.)

In old times, military profession was highly prestigious and military schools had choice of the best students. Now, aspiring elite human capital goes elsewhere, and military is increasingly seen as dumping ground for losers and rejects.

"Military school" is not the same thing as the military academies. The service academies, while they are not necessarily academically elite in the way an Ivy is, are still prestigious and competitive institutions with far more applicants than spots. Their graduates are, on the whole, "elite human capital."

Military schools are not that. While I'm sure there are many perfectly respectable institutions for martially inclined children of Good Families, the overall connotation of a military school was and is a disciplinary institution for delinquents. The kind of place a judge offers you as an alternative to juvie. The author invokes elite international students, but to cast a critical/uncharitable eye on the examples he presents, it looks a lot like foreign elites looking for a place to dump their underachieving sons because better institutions wouldn't take them.

As to the status of military service, I have to ask what the point of comparison is. I think it's fair to say that the prestige associated with military service has declined since the 2000s, but that is primarily a recession of the post-9/11 war fever. From a broader perspective, it is more or less as respectable as it has ever been to be a common soldier.

this is elders cargo culting rituals of their own youth without any of the attendant actual institutions needed to make them work

Are you referring to the bygone tradition of barn dances?

Isn’t military school literally for delinquents, degenerates, and other wastrels whose parents have enough money to attempt it as a last-ditch solution?

And yes, I agree with your point. The levels of even modern day violence and abuse (physical, sexual, psychological) in eg Russian jails, the Russian military etc are astonishing, and their country hardly seems a better place for it.

‘Military’ school is mostly private(not service affiliated) for secondary schools for the sons of wealthy families who are too into drugs to maintain a passing GPA, yes- and if the quality of admit has legitimately declined, then this is still news.

I suppose educational cost disease and more efficient social sorting have crippled the private disciplinary institution industry. I had completely forgotten about the existence of “military school” since the time my parents jokingly threatened to send me to one. I assumed OP was talking about the service academies.

No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

Against whom are these great wars to be fought? China is the obvious and most potentially glorious target, but nukes. You could maybe sell a war of conquest against Cuba, but the racial dimension of any other expeditions in the Americas/Africa would be too uncomfortable to garner support among the relevant demographics of young men. South/Southeast Asia is China’s backyard, and good luck trying to sell yet another war in the Middle East. That leaves you with…IDK, New Zealand?

Canada is quickly becoming a geopolitical nuisance.

Zero argument there (the current government campaigned on intentionally being that nuisance), but you really wouldn't need much of a military to deal with that outside of that which is required to occupy Quebec as to shut down any possible French/European intervention (the French have their own Falklands off the coast of Newfoundland), for a land border with a semi-hostile EU nation on the North American continent would be real bad news for the US.

One could point at the eventual submarines to address the threat of getting 1812'd, but Canadian industry is trivially in range of US artillery where the reverse isn't true, and the parts that would be getting shelled aren't particularly friendly to the Canadian government at the moment anyway.

No racial dimension, either, outside of maybe the immigrants.

but you really wouldn't need much of a military to deal with that outside of that which is required to occupy Quebec as to shut down any possible French/European intervention

No need to bother. Just make a separate peace with Quebec, allow them nominal independence.

It is not just the nukes. Around WW1, large scale warfare between top tier nations simply became maladaptive. It used to be that being good at -- and eager for -- war made a nation thrive. These days, it is very much the opposite, at lot of countries would have a better quality of life if they overcame their willingness to spill blood.

Though to be fair, from what I read, the author does not bemoan the lack of large scale conflicts, and this is just commentary by the poster.

What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

Well idk about that.

But as to the rest, anecdotally, as a business owner I have myself experienced the lumpenwave. At this point I almost can't imagine hiring anyone younger than about 30, and even most of those in their mid-30s are nearly lost causes. No, it's not a compensation issue. I pay a lot of money to my people. Thing is, the zoomers who get that money will work two or three months and then take the rest of the year off instead of getting ahead. And we're already talking about the tiny margin of those who are even capable of working reliably in the first place.

These kids have zero ambition, awful in-person social skills, no apparent sense that all of life isn't just like school where you show up and slack off and get passed.

And, yeah, the constant slipping into device-touching.

These kids have zero ambition, awful in-person social skills, no apparent sense that all of life isn't just like school where you show up and slack off and get passed.

IN my line of work lack of ambition does not seem to be an issue with the youth, but a genuine lack of skills is. Writing and reading comprehension (two things youd expect from aspiring or new lawyers) are at 10th grade levels for student in their last year of law school. But by golly are these people ambitious, although perhaps delusionally so.

This is interesting, because the big news in my office is how much better the legal interns have gotten recently (though our internships are very competitive and we benefit from selection effects where our work attracts particularly ambitious and passionate people). The current consensus is that the students have finally figured out how to use AI to make their actual work better, using it to streamline preliminary tasks and leave more time for thougtful drafting rather than just using it as a substitute for their own thinking.

Which makes me wonder if this lump epidemic is yet another example of polarization. The overall level may be falling, but the top students are doing better than ever.

I think this is just equivocation of the word ambition. It is not only "I want things", it also means possessing relevant character traits like: goal and result orientation, task ownership, ability to face adversity with grit etc. Ambition does not mean a porn addict lump who wants to have lambo in a year with this new system to win in blackjack or trading.

But maybe I am wrong and you actually have ambitious people in your office who bust their asses, ask for tasks, chase their goals like crazy etc. Only they are bad at it because they are stupid and unqualified.

We have some of each. There was one of those useless go getters last summer. I once trusted him to take notes at a minor meeting I didn't have time to attend. The notes were useless, and long. As if he was some sort of court reporter dedicated to the art of censoring useful information.

We also have had the slackers that expect to be partners at Jones Day in 4 years despite a total lack of work ethic.

I am of the opinion that violence for the sake of teaching should be reserved for very rare moments, and that making it illegal has largely been good for the education system, as other methods generally get you there without risk of traumatizing the student.

As an occasional lump myself, I have an alternative suggestion: Confiscate anything with access to the internet. Easy, no friction access to mental stimulation really is the culprit here. It doesn't even have to be completely effective. Just making it significantly harder to access the internet should prove effective.

there is nothing worse for an adult man than to be a liability

Beating your daughter eleven times is worse.

Tying burning rags to cats' tails is worse.

I never considered military schools as "places to train future officers" but rather "last-ditch solution for rich parents to dump slacking-off/expelled from everywhere else kids" until they were old enough to either try to get them into some university for another four years out of the parents' hair or do the traditional "pay them an allowance to stay away from home" (the remittance man).

So yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that the students are mostly 'lumps' - they don't want to be there, they failed out of/got kicked out of everywhere else, they aren't quite delinquent enough for jail/their parents paid off court cases by getting them into military school, and they're just passing the time till they can leave and get on with being lumps.

Yes I'm pretty sure this entire post is based off a misunderstanding of what military schools are. @Eetan can you confirm you understand that military schools are not service academies and have nothing to do with the military? They are closer to the troubled teen industry though likely trying to be a bit more respectable. Though there ARE no shortage of camps in Utah that will use corporal punishment on your children if that's what you want.

Though speaking of neoliberalism I can't think of anything more neoliberal then upper middle class parents who have failed trying to outsource the discipline of your children to paid goons doing god knows what. It's just throwing money at the problem to hire "services" for an issue that should be solved by family and community and is likely cause by a lack of character formation and the parents throwing money to "fix" everything is likely what led to their kids being a spoiled brat in the first place.

What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.

If you increase the danger, wouldn’t that just make the private sector more attractive for potential recruits? If you want better recruits, it seems you either have to make the private sector worse, increase actual/social compensation for the military, or use coercion/the draft.

There is also the issue that “better” is different for different jobs. Most PMC would make terrible door kickers.

Ctrl-F Testosterone. Zero results found.

Reading the title i assumed that this was going to be a story about Hegseth requiring Service-members over the age of 30 to get tested for testosterone deficiency

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