The disconnect between the military and civilians
Language warning – because I hate hippies so fucking much.
TSO sent us this article from Frank Schaeffer in the Huffington Post entitled “McChrystal’s Disdain: Symptom of a Mercenary Force With Few Ties to Civilian Leaders”. Apparently Schaeffer’s claim to fame is that he wrote two books about how hippies don’t get military service. The first was in response to his son joining the Marines;
As a typical member of the white upper middle classes, as a writer living in Boston and as someone who never served, I was shocked by his choice.
My son John and I wrote a book describing our journey together to a place where I came to value the military and he came to understand my post-Vietnam parental anxiety….
Yeah, there’s the disconnect, dipshit – some of us are called to the profession while others write idiot books about fucking “journeys”. I don’t know what this clown thought being white had to do with military service when the majority of people in the military are white – like the rest of America. But I digress….
In 1976, most of the military identified as Independent, while 33 percent identified as Republican (still a larger proportion than the general public). But the armed services have abandoned this neutrality. Now 60 percent considered themselves Republican, and only seventeen percent considered themselves Independent.
What happened after 1976, numbnuts? Well, the first thing that happened the following year was your idiot hippie President gave amnesty to all of the other hippies that dodged the draft and fled to Canada and just generally and flagrantly thumbed their noses at honorable service to the country. Your idiot hippie president demeaned service in the military – and then he let the members of the military slide into poverty with paltry pay raises and barracks conditions that made us long for conditions like Walter Reed’s outpatient barracks. Oh, but he did give us a huge pay raise – a month before the 1980 election.
Ronald Reagan gave us pay raises, improved our living conditions, gave us new equipment, defined our mission, gave us the resources to train to a standard related to the mission…all the while, Democrats in Congress complained that he was spending the country into debt while their useless welfare programs poured money into the streets. How would you expect us to act?
When we finally got a chance to rebuild the image of the country in Honduras, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and we toppled the Soviet Empire, all we heard was whining from Democrats while they continued to pour money into the streets of a welfare nation.
Schaeffer ends his little treatise with this;
We now have a civilian leadership with no military experience in charge of a mercenary professional force with few personal (let alone empathetic) ties to our leaders.
And that force is no longer protecting America only but rather projecting imperial overreach that will lead to more and more loss of American lives for no reason. Expect more trouble.
You hippie fucks didn’t want to be bothered with military service so you protested the draft – the only thing that disrupted your perfect little impetuous lives and now you tremble in fear when one general expresses regret that the president doesn’t take his advice? I don’t see Schaeffer running down to the recruiting office to help avoid this problem. Just like when he was a younger hippie, he’s punting the problem off to someone else to rectify…all the while taking cheap shots at the military which he now warns is an “imperial” power (how far back in his hippie vocabulary was that word?) Would he hesitate before calling his son an imperialist? Those generals he fears are someone else’s sons, no different from his own.
These fucking hippies with kids in the military should shut their fucking traps.
Category: General Whackos, I hate hippies
Amen.
I can give this a hearty double thumbs up (especially cuz of all the f-bombs. Ha!)
Jonn, it sounds like you rode with me in the cruiser. That’s what we called the long-haired pieces of shit back when they were more prevalent. They stank to high heaven, their hair was dirty and so were their clothes. But, the long hair and beards did make for such great handles when it came to arresting them for whatever they did. We just had to wash thoroughly afterwards.
Stupid is as stupid does, they never figured that out. Must have been the pot and LSD.
“As a typical member of the white upper middle classes, as a writer living in Boston and as someone who never served, I was shocked by his choice.”
How many character flaws can you point out in this man in rthis one that are his, BY CHOICE:
Writer
Boston
Never served
Shocked by someone else’s choice to do an honorable thing, serve in the military.
“I wrote a book describing our journey together to a place where I came to value the military”
Sounds like he STILL hasn’t arrived.
I’d like to engage in this little thought experiment: hearken back a mere 6 years ago, and imagine if you will, what the mainstream media and the liberal intelligentsia would have done if then-President Bush had removed a commander who had been “quoted” similarly as McChrystal had. Is there any doubt that instead of these endless wiener stroking circle jerk sessions we’re seeing from the left, there would have been a hue and cry like none we’ve witnessed of late. The Olbermans and Maddows of the world would have been all over the dismissal/forced resignation like Rosie O’Donnell at Golden Corral. The usual suspects would have been lining up for face time to breathlessly report that this type of admonishment was a clear indication that the Middle East conflict is wrong/failing/killing the planet/causing poor boxoffice in Hollywood/etc. and that their long-held opposition to the war was proved correct by the comments of one brave commander who dared speak his mind….and oh, the fact he voted for his CinC and still spoke out only proves his bonafides. Anyone having difficulty imagining this? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
What about the disconnect between fucking hippies and logic and common sense….(they are forever more dubbed “fucking hippies”)
I second your thoughts. Problem is, the fucking hippies are running the country right now. We need to rectify that situation ASAP.
You know how a hippie takes a bubble bath?
He sits in a pool of mud and farts…….
Fucking hippies.
My dad is white, from upper-middle class roots, never served in the military (got a high draft #) and never questioned, nay encouraged, my decision to join the Corps.
I guess we’ll never get to write that book, Dad…
This is the best entry I have ever read.
On any blog.
Or any paper.
Or anywhere in the entire universe.
Period.
Someone voices their reluctance at their child entering service and you all flip. Guess he’s not allowed the freedom of personal choices since his choice wasn’t to blindly go into the military. Typical closed minded war mongers
Fortunately I was able to talk my son out of a dead end career in psychology…
Mike,
Seems you are the close-minded one. I guess all of us “have” to “blindly go” into the military due to not being “as lucky as” you are. Of course, we are all “less fortunate” than you which must be why we are all “pushing for more people to go risk their lives for nothing” while “safe at home behind a computer”.
But hey, I’m not a snot-nosed college student, so what do I know? I mean, besides the fact that I make a positive difference in people’s lives…
That’s right Mikey. We’re all blind because we don’t believe having a son in the Marines and a career as a “writer/director” makes one an expert on all things military.
Yeah, Mike, you’re right; we’re warmongers and you’re a pussy simply for thinking you’re smart enough not to have to go into the military. Funny thing is, the label you choose to put on us isn’t really fitting and I’m surprised someone with such an extensive educational background and superior intellect to us knuckle draggers, such as you have, wouldn’t have figured that part out, yet. Since when does military service constitute being a warmonger? Do you even know what that term means? I doubt it, but I’m sure it gets recited to you constantly on campus, so you think you know what it means.
During World War II, nearly all young men served. And when I say “young”, I mean under forty, or even fifty years old. Military service wasn’t for one demographic group or another. It wasn’t for white or blacks, Democrats or Republicans, liberals, conservatives, leftists, monarchists, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists. It wasn’t for people from the Northeast or the Midwest, people from Boston or people from Paducah, Kentcuky. It was just an American thing.
Within a generation, that attitude began to change. In Vietnam, all of scoiety was certainly not bearing the brunt together. In the time since Vietnam, that trend had no reversed itself.
Personally, I think so many of the problems that we have in our country and in our military have to do with the fact that military service is performed by an increasingly small subsection of society.
Also, I am not for a draft.
I’m not for a draft either, but everyone, sick, lame or lazy should get four weeks of basic training just so when they whine about how tough their lives are, they’ll have a uniform frame of reference.
60’s draft dodgers get automatically recycled.
And another thing–I have found that people who grew up during the Vietnam War and chose to protest it are generally pretty open about their contempt for the armed forces. Okay, I doubt a politician would say it on national television but that’s because they have to run for election every few years just to keep their jobs. I’m talking about every day people, not politicians.
I was listening to NPR the other day when a man called in, identifying himself as an “old hippie” with no military service. He wanted to comment on the McChrystal situation. Within the space of a few breaths, he mentioned that he was “anti-military” (he actually used that word), but that he “respected what those folks do.”
In their minds, they see absolutely no contradiction in those two statements.
He was probably related to Elaine Brower.
Mikey..
Yeah, sure.
Whatever.
John, I think you need to check out Schaeffer’s book AWOL. It’s highly critical of the elite classes and ex-hippie Ivory Tower jerkoffs that ban recruiters and criticize the military. It also rips into members of the “cultural elite” (read: hippies) that don’t want their kids serving in “this war.” I gave it to the ROTC commander at my local university and he loved it and passed it out to his staff.
Oh, and for the record, Schaeffer never served because he never had the option to serve. He had polio when he was 2 and his legs are seriously atrophied.
Hey, Mike, because you’re whining freely and doing so in English, thank a soldier!
Mikey–does it make you sad that your betters are doing your heavy lifting for ya, sonny?
War hath no fury like a non combatant. – Charles Edward Montague
One of my “marxist” friends was talking in support of McChrystal, which totally weirded me out. So while I was trying to explain why I serve and how I barely consider al queda or the taliban as human he says that they are human and just because they have a different culture than ours they were human.
After going back and forth for a while one of his friend’s who knows nothing about me comes on and explains the difference between human and humanity. He doesn’t see the connection of human to humanity. I define being human as not only the biological but also judged by their actions. I have no problem sending people who voided their humanity to their afterlife. For some reason he couldn’t understand that.
He used perhaps the stupidest word that all hippies and lefties always love to use, “jingoist”. At that point I didn’t bother writing anymore. He was just another sheep that couldn’t tell the difference between a sheep and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but thinks that the sheepdog is a wolf.
Hey Mikey…
I love being a war monger…especially one who served. I have a mother who was none too happy about my or my offspring’s choice to serve.
It took the 9/11 for her to pipe up about the negative feelings she had about those who serve because her generation came back to the spitters and screamers extraordinaire. We never had a clue that she didn’t think it was a good idea to serve but to her credit all she did was support us.
And after 9/11, both my brother and I wanted to get back in. It was too late by the time the age waivers were lifted for me, but how nice it was for her to say she understood the calling. Too bad hippies will never get it. Or you, Mikey.
Good post. What did the left expect? After years of a constant drum-beat 24/7/365 of shoving their leftist “post-modern” relativistic multi-culti “post-colonial” PC “progressive” cultural agenda down the throats of the armed services–homosexuality, women in combat units, racial quotas to meet “diversity” goals, you name it–did they think that the personnel who had to suffer this shit wouldn’t react? The left has only themselves to blame. Just visit any lefty site–Daily KOS, DU, Huffington Post, etc.,–nothing but wall-to-wall vituperation and derogatory sliming of all things military. And there has never been a weapons system the Donks in Congress didn’t want to eliminate or a program reduced or cut to ribbons. General “Betrayus?” PULEEEZE.
And remember how the left has always portrayed service members in
movies and in testimony like Cary and the “Winter Soldier” project. Either as drug-crazed baby-killers and homicidal “Imperialist” racists, or as dumb, drug-addled tools of “war-profiteer” industrialists/capitalists (dirty words, both) and societies loosers who are too dumb to end up anywhere but in the military or as PTSD potential killers if discharged. All
of this–ALL of it–coursing thru the culture like a caustic liquid corroding everything it touches–for YEARS! And they have the unmitigated gall to wonder WHY the military has turned conservative? Been radicalized? Don’t EVEN get me started. The left needs LOTS of mirrors..
PS: Oh, and while I warm to the subject, let us not forget little niggling details like one CinC/POTUS like Clinton being on the written record as saying he “loathed” the military, or his ane our current Sec of States’ use of WH military aids–commissioned officers–as hors d’oeuvres servers at WH parties–like glorified lawn jockeys. Or of snippy young female WH staffers breezily telling General officers to their face that “I don’t talk to people in the military!” Or of Ted Kennedy conspiring in secret with the Soviet Union to influence US elections and foreign policy over arms control. Or the sale with the blessing of the Clinton administration of TS missile software–or of letting Toshiba sell hi-tech milling machines to make super-silent non-cavitating sub screws to the Soviets. Or going back further to George McGovern saying he’d crawl on his hands and knees to the N.Vietnamese to end the war? (although the old WWII B-24 bomber pilot seems to have seen the light at last in his declining years) I could rant on at length, but the crew here knows what time it is–they don’t need me to take the watch apart.
Dayum Virgil…..that’s gonna leave a BIG ASS mark!!! And I can’t wait to see it 🙂
They should reinstitute the draft. Although, old hippies and Obama supporters 21 to 65, should get drafted first. Old hippies and leftist pricks can stop bullets just as well as Americans that want to serve their country. In fact elt them lead from the front for their Chosen One.
Mike your an idiot. Most leftists/progressives in this country are not anti-war. They spend most their time supporting the violent overthrow of free countries and the brutal dictators of anti-American countries. So Foxtrot Oscar, warmonger.
Schaeffer should’ve served during ‘Nam. Although having a son in the service brings him out of being oblivious, having served a couple of years would’ve made him more sensible and not given to the “mercenary” whining.
Adirondack Patriot Said it:
Best damn post, anywhere, anytime….
Thanks for saying so well what so many of us think, and read and wish we had the talent to do…….
“Yeah, there’s the disconnect, dipshit – some of us are called to the profession while others write idiot books about fucking “journeys”…… shit eating grin making material right there, Bud !! Thank you
Amen, Jonn. I’m really getting a belly full of the sniveling.
Are you familiar with the parasitic animals called lamprey eels and hag fish? The civilians identified in this article are like these parasites: they deliberately attach themselves to their chosen prey (the military) and suck their life blood for their food. They write books, tell stories second- and third- hand about people in the military (particularly the ones in their family), stand in front of cameras with them, etc. They don’t care about the people in the military; they are using them, the way a lamprey will use a fish.
They despise the military, because people in the military are the mirror that clearly shows them what they will never be.
“Mike your an idiot. Most leftists/progressives in this country are not anti-war. They spend most their time supporting the violent overthrow of free countries and the brutal dictators of anti-American countries. So Foxtrot Oscar, warmonger”. The money quote, as far as the left, in this country, is concerned. Nice job, Yat Yas.
So, Mikey, how does it feel looking in that mirror, Blue Falcon? I know you don’t know what that means, yet, so go look it up.
Not pimping the blog here, but I thought some of you old-timers might remember this tune:
http://beatandrelease.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-more-oldie-but-goodie-from-bob.html
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