View Full Version : U.S. military and civilians are increasingly divided
SouthernDZ
05-24-2015, 11:15
....."Some 49% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the U.S. are concentrated in just five states — California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia."
Interesting article that talks about a separate "warrior class" - http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-warrior-main-20150524-story.html#page=1
Divemaster
05-24-2015, 18:21
I haven't read the article yet, but I'm cool with a warrior class. That will be the nucleus to train the masses when the balloon really goes up.
Yet a 2011 Pew Research Center study titled "The Military-Civilian Gap" found that only a quarter of civilians who had no family ties to the military followed war news closely. Half said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made little difference in their lives, and half said they were not worth fighting.
How quickly they forget.
But do not forget, there are tons of us regular civilians that luv our Warriors, and will support them no matter what!
Its what we Can do. ;)
Holly :munchin
There are many people who support our troops, but do not believe we should have invaded Iraq. Some are Veterans.
SouthernDZ
05-25-2015, 11:29
I haven't read the article yet, but I'm cool with a warrior class. That will be the nucleus to train the masses when the balloon really goes up.
Divemaster, like you I hear the term "warrior class" and feel pride.
Somehow though, I fear some hear the term and think "underclass" - less that 1% of Americans went to war, the rest went shopping.
...I fear some hear the term and think "underclass" - less that 1% of Americans went to war, the rest went shopping.
I don't think that will ever change. I recently had a conversation with some extended family that still thinks that we go into the military because we can't get real jobs to support ourselves and/or our families.
The stupid remains and is strong....
I will gladly stay among the Warrior class and leave the sheep to fill the others.
The stupid remains and is strong....
I will gladly stay among the Warrior class and leave the sheep to fill the others.
IMO, the above underscores the following quote from the OP. It's like the Roman legions.... It's like we're being told to kneel down and worship our heroes.
IMO, the above underscores the following quote from the OP.
I have no desire to be worshiped by anyone. I was speaking to the statement whereby those serving in the military are considered by many to be the "underclass."
IMO, the above underscores the following quote from the OP.
re: being told to kneel down and worship our heros.
As Agoge2 said, it's not about hero worship. But there is a gulf between those who have served and those who haven't.
I have been retired for almost 20 years so I have been out of the military almost as long as I was in the military. There has been nothing in my second career that can hold a candle to what I did during my 20 years on active duty. Not even close.
I joked with a co-worker once about his sports injuries (he had screwed up his back playing rugby). I broke a leg on a jump and ruptured a tendon on a rappelling tower. It kind of closes down the conversation. And I was fortunate enough to serve through a period of relative peace (75 - 95). Again, it's not about hero worship or that my experiences are any better than his. But they are vastly different.
I've got a motivational poster that says "Bloomburg says that when he was in college he wasn't responsible enough for a gun and doesn't know anyone who is. I know a lot of guys who remember 19 differently". There's a lot of truth in there. When I was 19 I sat on a hill overlooking the Korea DMZ and watched a battalion of the 2d ID march in to cut down a tree. There are precious few things in civilian life that parallel those kinds of experiences.
I'm not positing rightness or wrongness, just the recognition that the gulf exists.
I'm pretty sure most veterans are not looking for hero worship. Speaking for myself, I would be happy if our country would just fulfill their side of my (re)enlistment contracts.
Eric Harmeling is obviously wise beyond his years. At the ripe old age of 21 he has seen so much that he is able to opine that Memorial Day is akin to Emperor Caesar forcing him to worship the legion on bended knee.
I am indeed curious to hear some examples of how poor Eric has been oppressed and forced to worship the warrior class...
...on second thought, hey Eric, sit down and shut the fuck up.
-Or you could just say thank you and go about your business.
Its been my observation over the last ten years that people like Eric Harmeling can't wait to force me to celebrate the flaming homosexual lifestyle in the spirit of inclusiveness. (but lord forbid you honor the legion)
-People like Eric can't wait to accuse me of being a racist because I am critical of the black president. (just dont ask that you honor the legion)
-People like Eric demand that I celebrate women's equality by submitting to gender norming and feigned equality. (just dont ask that you honor the legion)
-People like Eric tend to brush off the sacrifice of service members through snide remarks that he is being "being told to kneel down and worship."
On the other end of the spectrum is 90 year old George Baroff.
Mr. Baroff is a psychology professor in Chapel Hill.
Mr Baroff is a member of academia, a smart guy, a man with an education, a man that is obviously above the peasants because he is a professor and is clearly smarter that the unwashed, uneducated masses...
...but wait:
Mr Baroff also served in WW2.
Mr Baroff remembers a time when EVERYBODY served.
Mr. Baroff seems to understand things like respect, sacrifice, and commitment.
...I wonder how snot nosed little punks like Eric would have looked at the world back in the early 1940's?
Mr Baroff seems to think that there is no sense of shared sacrifice anymore.
Mr Baroff thinks there is no shared sense of national purpose.
Mr Baroff has a war record and probably thinks he is entitled to some worship as well.
Mr Baroff is 90 years old... what the fuck does he know. He's just an old man.
...maybe the psychology professor should listen to the wise words of Eric Harmeling and maybe he can expand his horizons.
I respect Mt Baroff.
I don't worship him.
I RESPECT the office of the President of the United States
...others worship him as though he has brought the country back from the brink
I RESPECT the men and women, past and present, that have chosen to serve in the United States Military...
...I don't worship them either. To worship them would be disrespectful. It would imply that they serve with the expectation that they will be worshiped.
There is a vast chasm between worship and that old nuisance that some of us know as respect...
...a VAST fucking chasm.
Some people confuse the two. It's funny, you'd think that people who are SOOO educated and SOOO enlightened that they need to offer us their whimsical insight to the human condition would be able to tell the differenve between "worship" and "respect"
...but they can't
Some people are just too smart for their own good.
...and their condescending tone gives me the shits.
Some of us use memorial day to remember and respect men and women that have forgotten more about respect than people like Eric Harmeling will ever know.
Those men and women gave their last measure so that little shitheads like Eric can have his opinion.
It is with a confused heart that I admit, if the day ever comes, I hope I would be man enough to willingly make that same sacrifice for the benefit of young Eric.
Thank you for you service Mr. Baroff.
Go fuck yourself Eric Harmeling.
...your friends and apologists can go with you.
..........you little hippy fag
Javadrinker
05-25-2015, 19:40
Entire Post
So succinctly said, thank you Billy.
Everyone is not cut out to be a warrior and there has never been a time when "everybody" served...although IMO there seems to have come a time in our social history in which the "myth" of such a time ever having existed is a presupposition to any arguments to the contrary.
Here is an interesting essay which summarizes the arguments of the book "The Best War Ever: America and World War II".
Gutes lesen.
Richard
Richard
Just a question for you and the other SF and career AD guys who were drafted during the Vietnam war, would you have joined anyway? Or did you end up in a career that you had never seriously considered?
Pat
there has never been a time when "everybody" served
Concur 100%
...like I said, George is just a grouchy, 90 year old guy that probably just wants to be worshiped
Mr Baroff is just another guy guilty of perpetuating that whole "greatest generation" myth.
Eric, from Carrboro, has already set everyone straight.
...hell, even our senate behaves like they did during the era of the Roman legions.
"The more things change'........................................... ....
...and all that jazz
Trapper John
05-26-2015, 06:34
Concur 100%
...like I said, George is just a grouchy, 90 year old guy that probably just wants to be worshiped
Mr Baroff is just anpther guy guilty of perpetuating that whole "greatest generation" myth.
Eric, from Carrboro, has already set everyone straight.
...hell, even our senate behaves like they did during the era of the roman legions.
"The more things change'........................................... ....
...and all that jazz
Billy, I love reading your posts! :lifter
I just read another email from a Brother: "The late 17th Century philosopher Hegel said that if there is one thing history teaches us it is that history teaches us nothing. :D
entire original post
So very well said. Thank you Billy. :lifter
I am uncertain where I discovered this letter, but I download and saved the letter for obvious reason.
I remember the day I found out I got into West Point.
My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. She was bawling her eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn’t crying because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. I was going to get that opportunity.
That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following: “Nick, you’re a smart guy. You don’t have to join the military. You should go to college, instead.”
I could easily write a tome defending West Pont and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite institution, that separate from that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons, but I won’t.
What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our military is bearing.
In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four years. In Vietnam, 4.3% served in 12 years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of our population has served in the Global War on Terror. These are unbelievable statistics.
Over time, fewer and fewer people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is only getting worse. Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of 10% veterans with only one person having a child in the military. Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their families. The volunteers. The people who swore an oath to defend this nation. You.
You stand there, deployment after deployment and fight on. You’ve lost relationships, spent years of your lives in extreme conditions, years apart from kids you’ll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even professional athletes don’t understand. And you come home to a nation that doesn’t understand. They don’t understand suffering. They don’t understand sacrifice. They don’t understand that bad people exist. They look at you like you’re a machine – like something is wrong with you. You are the misguided one – not them. When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms with political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can’t understand the “macro” issues they gathered from books with your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the violent strain at that. Your Congress is debating your benefits, your retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to do more.
But the amazing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your country will never pay back what you’ve given up. You know that the populace at large will never truly understand or appreciate what you have done for them. Hell, you know that in some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having worn the uniform. But you do it anyway. You do what the greatest men and women of this country have done since 1775 – YOU SERVED. Just that decision alone makes you part of an elite group.
Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.
You are the 0.45%.
Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts.
...yet, according to the rank and file shitbrick like Eric Harmeling days like memorial day bring about images of the roman empire forcing the subjects of the empire to worship the legion on bent knee.
I hope Eric and his friends went to work on memorial day. I wouldn't want him to feel oppressed by being forced to take the day off to worship me.
The teachers in the above story are clearly so much smarter than everyone else that they failed to realize that the United States Military ACADEMY at West Point is in fact "college"....
...there is nothing quite so endearing as an educator that has learned how to use the bully pulpit when pouring their own foul brand of mush into a young mind.
I'm sure community college would have given "Nick" a much better education than West Point.
...and as far as the smug response from "Nicks" two teachers in the above story and the disdain they hold for the military: "you're welcome"
Penn, the author of the article is Nick Palmisciano, founder and CEO of Ranger Up apparel, former infantry officer and an arguably witty writer: https://www.military1.com/columnists/nick-palmisciano
Razor, thanks for the heads up; checking out his site RU, pointed and very funny. I was searching for the the time line of that article, I saved the piece, according to my computer file in 10/12, which surprised me, it seems more recent as I have that .45% thought often, or I'm just more conscience of the fact.
Pericles
05-28-2015, 13:58
Penn, the author of the article is Nick Palmisciano, founder and CEO of Ranger Up apparel, former infantry officer and an arguably witty writer: https://www.military1.com/columnists/nick-palmisciano
While it pleases me that Mick was able to complete the Point and serve in the infantry branch, I am distressed that such people are not staying for careers.
Peregrino
05-28-2015, 18:48
While it pleases me that Mick was able to complete the Point and serve in the infantry branch, I am distressed that such people are not staying for careers.
Don't get too wrapped up about it. Given current trends many more top performers currently in will "do their duty" (as they see it) and leave the service for places where "self-actualization" is still possible while fewer "top 10" potentials will accept the inherent sacrifice of a military career. Draw down periods always leave a hollow force - the best and brightest self-starters tend to self eliminate (have a high percentage of turnover) and the Army does a fair job of eliminating the dirtbags. That leaves the middle - describe them how you will. Until the culture changes, don't expect to attract the warriors again, at least not until they hear the bugles and feel the urge to answer the call.
blacksmoke
05-28-2015, 19:15
Da'ash will pull off some small scale attacks on the U.S. and the average Joe will wear camo jackets and have support the troops stickers for a couple months, and the whole thing will start over again.
Peregrino
05-29-2015, 08:10
Da'ash will pull off some small scale attacks on the U.S. and the average Joe will wear camo jackets and have support the troops stickers for a couple months, and the whole thing will start over again.
Or (more likely) Da'ash will pull off some small scale attacks on the U.S. and camo jackets will disappear for a couple months for fear of being mistaken as a Soldier (and target), until the whole thing starts over again. That and the same people who have been saying thank you for your service (so I don't have to) will be screaming "why didn't you do more to protect us?"
blacksmoke
05-30-2015, 08:00
Idk. On one hand after Sep.11 even people in the hood were wearing NYPD shirts, on the other, people removed military stickers from their cars after online ISIS threats.