An email from a US Army officer who shares his perceptions of an organization in decline after completing Officer Candidate School:
I’ll just say that my experience is very fresh. I think it’s important to give a bit of backstory to how I’ve become so disillusioned, because in military culture disillusionment is automatically regarded as a defense mechanism for underperformers. I come from a military family with a line of high US officers. I used to believe in all the neo-con talking points that my peers endlessly spout. I even tried out for special forces, I believed in the whole US military thing so much….
“Equal” Opportunity:
I believe you and your fans will already know of the low standards women are held to, so I’ll just share a risible story of the worst example here. The first Friday of the course OCS always has a “Class Up Run,” of 3 miles at about a 9-minute pace. We were sternly warned that falling out of formation would result in a day-one reset, which carries with it the sentence of being a holdover at the Company HQ barracks. This is the worst thing candidates fear being done to them short of dismissal. Well, wouldn’t you know it but four brown females decided to walk the last mile. Nothing happened to them. All of the First Sergeant & Company Commander’s aggressive warnings (and these guys are infantrymen with the latter having the vaunted Ranger tab) were subsequently memory-holed.
Second Generation Modern Warfare Training:
All the training we’ve received here is precisely in line with what Mr. Lind would call “Second Generation.” It is procedure obsessed and crushes innovation. Oh, they talk constantly about the awesome talent of the Imperial German Army (Stormtrooper tactics) and the later Wehrmacht innovations and pretend that their manuals and whatnot are derived from them, but in practice that’s a lie. If you tried to innovate outside the holy law of the field manuals, you would provoke a mighty REE the likes of which a gamma would give when his perceived ruleset is broken. The training tries to pound you into a box and then stay in that box.
The F-Word and A Culture of Gullible Murderers:
“Freedom.” That’s all you gotta say to get the otherwise decent men that comprise my peers to want to murder people en masse minding their own business in their own countries. It’s a variant strain of NPC “orange man bad,” except it takes the form of “Taliban/Iranian/Russian/Chinese bad, me kill.” They love talking about killing people without regard to why, who, or the consequences so long as the act is justified by authority figures, whom they – most of them anyway – believe without reservation. This leads me to my next point…
What I Call the “NuBoomer” Sub-Generation:
Boomer mentality has been successfully transmitted to a subset of millennials who are making up most of the high-spirited white officers. They are boomers except that they were born in the 90’s or very early 2000’s. What is boomer about them? The previously-mentioned automatic, sacrosanct trust in authority. If the media and gubmint tell them Iran blew up the ships, they believe it. Fake belief in the Bible; they will either be ‘cultural’ Christians who read Thomas Jefferson’s heretical tract as a substitute for the real Bible, or blithely ignore the politically incorrect passages of scripture. They furthermore embrace civnattery wholeheartedly, talking about how awesome it is to have fifth columns and grifters representatives from all colors and creeds in the ranks. Not to mention women and LGBT+ (soon to add P). Questioning mainstream narratives is beyond the pale to them, and they love to consume mainstream ‘culture,’ i.e. movies, Netflix & pay-to-win games. These are the young men that the neo-cons are dependent on keeping sated and nationally/religiously unconscious for it is they who fight the imperial wars with high morale.
Part II to follow on Monday.