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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14525 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.

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