215 thoughts on “Mercenary Rule”

1. I’ve actually read the book a few times, and it sounds like most here haven’t, or haven’t recently.
   The political system in Starship Troopers is about volunteering for service as the only way to earning franchise. That service does NOT have to be military. In fact, in the book, one of Johnny’s friends who signs up with him becomes a scientist working on Pluto. The government has to take you, if you don’t quit (and they try very hard to get people to quit), but eventually, if you persist, they will find something for you to do that matches your qualifications. The book even says something about a blind person counting the hairs on caterpillar.
   It is about limiting franchise to to those who volunteered to serve, and therefore people who have personally invested in maintaining the system.
   This system would not work today, because the culture has been debased too far from that which existed during the era of the founding stock. The military is a reflection of the culture it recruits from, and take it from someone who retired from the Navy in 2014, the military of today is just as fucked, culturally, as society at large is. I saw it massively degrade from when I joined in 1994, and I couldn’t wait to bail at 20.
   I personally think that anyone receiving cash disbursements from government at any level must be barred from voting, because such people have a conflict of interest. That includes me. I also like the idea of service as a legislator requiring divestment of all monies and property before entering such service, and for a nominal period after. Want to serve? You get to live in government housing, on a small stipend, with food provided, cafeteria style.

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2. The real reason to restrict the franchise to veterans is that it would be de facto segregation. White males would suddenly hold a disproportionate amount of power, and the entire political establishment would shift hard to the Right. Restrict it to those who have actually been shot at, and the voting pool becomes even less diverse.

   While the military is becoming less White, it’s still overwhelmingly male. That alone would do wonders for our political system.

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3. I hate to point out the blindingly obvious but anybody who willingly enlisted in the US military since the 50’s is unfit for any position of authority higher than dog catcher.
   They clearly had no grasp of reality. The first utterance of “serve my country” or “patriotism” dooms them.

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4. ” It also brings to my Spartan society, ”

   Brings to mind, surely?

   • Why would Shirley come to mind?

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     • That’s Z’s real name.

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5. Best comment section in the web!

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6. “The military does not restrict itself to citizens, as military service is one way to win citizenship. Due to the lack of white men joining the ranks, the military is now looking to recruit foreigners”

   When I saw that line the thing (and I mean thing since he can’t be human) that came to mind was Markos Moulitsas. He’s the Greek horse-fucker who started the Daily Kos. He used to have a sort of mini-bio of himself in the “about” section of that cesspool. Reading it gave me the distinct impression that everything about the man (including his military service) was a carefully crafted, and apparently successful, attempt to start a political cult around exactly the kind of vulgar democratic idolatry that later fueled the rise of people like Obama. Kos actually got started in the late 90s so I think his inspiration was Bill Clinton though. I bet he curses Obama to this day for stealing what he must have imagined was his rightful crown.

   Whatever the military might have meant in the past I think it increasingly just advances the careers of people fueled by almost completely naked ambition. There are too many well know examples like Kos, McStain, and Graham.

   Heinlein’s idea is just another of the many political gimmicks people throw out there when they want to dodge the fact that there’s a well known solution to the democracy problem that was actually used quite well in the past. Allowing only property owning males to vote was, and remains, the only solution – and yes, I know it didn’t last but the fact that what we have now is worse doesn’t really constitute an argument against it.

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   • I believe Heinlein’s main point in Starship Troopers was that there had to be some way of limiting the franchise to people who actually had skin in the game. Military service (in a hard environment, not an alternate form of welfare) was his solution, at least for purposes of the novel. Limiting the franchise to property owning males is another (and perfectly reasonable) means to the same end. The main take away, at least initially, is that “one person, one vote” just doesn’t work — as the news makes clear every single day.

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     • Combat, children, land- it all keeps coming back to blood and soil, doesn’t it?

       And for whites- honor.

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7. You will not find a lazier more self entitled bunch of spoiled welfare queens outside of Baltimore than your average military family. My wife is a private physician and the Tricare people are as bad or worse as Medicaid.

   I served for 10 years, and there are many decent hardworking honorable military personnel. But they are the minority. Everyone in that system lives in a purely socialist world. Promotions at the senior ranks are 100% political.

   I get Heinlein’s point but you can’t build citizenship around takers.

   For a long time I’ve felt that citizenship – and hence voting rights – should be based on whether you are a net recipient or a net payer of income taxes. It’s similar to Heinlein in the sense that having a position in governance should be about sacrifice. And once you’re in office, we freeze your assets, give you a nice house to reside it and a car and pay your meals, but your net worth leaving office should be what it was when you started plus some rate of growth.

   Anyway, it would be hard to implement like is my wife a citizen as a private sector doctor is sue accepts Medicaid patients. (but we’re talking ideal case, so who cares?)

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8. American democracy is only about positioning yourself as the moral candidate in appealing to Whites. Everyone else votes on tribal, financial and immigration (as in getting their family to the US).

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9. I am closely related to some military academy grads, and while they would bristle at being called mercenaries, that’s what they are. They joined because they were Type A people who enjoy physical fitness, the challenge that the military offers, and the fact that they get to do cool shit like fly the government’s airplanes, shoot the government’s rifles in foreign countries, travel, learn foreign languages, get educated, and get paid — quite well — for it. They are followers and “organization men” because they have been rewarded with excitement, status, honor and money for being so.

   As for the enlisted, they have been mercenaries also for as long as I can remember, I am old enough to remember the recruiting slogans “Join the Navy, See the World” and “Sailors Have More Fun.” Recruiting emphasizes learning a job skill, getting free money for college, travel and adventure.

   Of course in the post-9/11 environment there were a lot of people who joined for patriotic reasons, but I think many became disillusioned towards the end of the 20-year debacle in “the graveyard of empires.” By the end of the Obama administration the military became much more ideological, it was evident that the left had successfully co-opted the last conservative institution with a not insignificant number of tattooed lesbians fighting for LGBTQ and women’s rights.

   The idea of military service as a prerequisite for admission to the ruling class made more sense after the Revolution and during the early19th century when the professional corps was very small and we had an actual state militia system to fill the ranks in times of national danger. The idea was that the people who actually built and defended the country should have a say in running it.

   Of course this changed in the 20th century with universal conscription and the federalization of the state militias; the U.S. military became an imperial force and a career grift rather than a true national defense force. After the Boomers rejected getting conscripted to die in Vietnam so that Lyndon Johnson could look tough, it became a mercenary corps.

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10. A minor point (which earlier commenters might have brought up): In Heinlein’s novel, non-veterans weren’t just barred from office — they were barred from voting altogether.

    People who’ve served in the military might be quicker to recognize someone like John McCain as an annoying blowhard (there are no shortage of such people in the service), and would probably be less impressed by his military record — especially since any theoretical opponent he might have would ALSO be a veteran. Then again, maybe not; it would be interesting to compare the views of military veterans with the general public on a range of issues.

    Heinlein was pretty clear-eyed about the flaws of democracy; the system he described in Starship Troopers was one idea for how to deal with them. If military service is a poor filter for bestowing voting privileges — well, there are others. 😉

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    • Veterans are more convinced than the rest of us that soldiers should die and veterans should kill themselves.

      Who’d know better?

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    • I agree. Heinlein’s fictional society recognizes the most fundamental trait necessary for a functioning democracy: limiting the voting franchise.

      Strip away the military requirement and that’s the essence of his idea: Too many people voting is a bad idea. So only five voting rights to citizens, and make the citizenship threshold higher than “you were born”.

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11. “Mercenary Rule”

    The more I think about it, the poorer this essay seems. It was not carefully thought out.

    A mercenary fights ONLY for profit. These people throughout history are famous for leaving as soon as the pay stops or the danger passes an unacceptable level. And that bar is set low.

    The soldiers in the novel were taking huge risks with their lives, and no level of pay is high enough to make up for that risk.

    Oh and possibly here is a real-life example. At least, it’s one that has always impressed me. That young football star who signed up for Afghanistan despite having a lucrative contract lined up with the Cardinals. I forget his name. But I’m Canadian and I don’t follow the NFL.

    Are you going to tell me he was mercenary? He was the exact opposite. More like a modern Cinncinatus. And he died over there. And later I heard the “friendly fire” wasn’t accidental. Something about him having a date with a reporter to air some pertinent observsations about the Afghan disaster.

    Oh yeah. Who wants a guy like this in charge of the country? Hell, we’ll take Managerialism and Kakotocracy any old day of the week.

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    • Pat Tillman wasn’t a mercenary. He was just a foolish, young man that got caught up the patriotic hysteria (sometimes idiocy) after 9/11. He went to Iraq and saw it for the waste that it was and probably had the same observations about Affie when he was killed by his fellow soldiers.

      He appeared to be straight up guy but that doesn’t mean I would want him as a political leader.

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      • I heard he was diddling a (female) soldier of higher rank. He apparently retained his celebrity jock personality as well. Couldn’t find any confirmation of this.

        He probably was a straight up guy, and had good intentions, but military service wasn’t the best fit for him.

12. I was a career enlisted soldier and retired in 2018, so I’ve got some strong opinions here.  Some of what our gracious host wrote here ruffled my feathers, but that’s ok; I become highly suspicious of my own mind if I agree with someone 100% of the time.  My goal here is to add some insight to Zman’s “mercenary” characterization applied to Heinlein’s ideas.
    I’ll completely agree with Zman’s assessment of elected veterans, and also add Bob Dole, Bush The Elder, and Senators John Murtha and Daniel Inouye to the list of grifters.  I will disagree though that the military is the common factor that made them despicable.  Instead, I posit that they translated their military service into enormous political capital, and therein lies the problem.  The noble virtues ascribed to wartime service are correct, but have become grossly distended in America for two reasons.
    First, the experience of returning Vietnam Veterans was the final insult of a shameful war.  As a response in the 1980’s, Republicans chose veterans to be their own “favored people”.  Then, immediately after 9/11, the Democrats ALSO adopted veterans into their pantheon of the unassailable.  What we call “cancel culture” actually started after 9/11 with destroying anyone who so much as cut off a vet in traffic.  Republicans held us up as holy crusaders for democracy, and Democrats held us up as hapless victims of Bush The Younger.  The result is that veterans are now considered beyond all public reproach or criticism (except to the bold, like Zman).  This translates to enormous power for an elected official, and so the uniparty seeks them out to be candidates.  This sacred cow treatment is also damaging to veterans for the exact same reason it is to other favored groups, and that is why it does not exist in Heinlein’s books; his veterans do not account for 50% of the bumper sticker industry.
    Second, the all volunteer force is necessary for a Professional Standing Military (PSM).  This created an insular, family business, warrior caste that is much different than Heinlein’s solder-then-citizen model.  GWOT deepened this divide when returning troops saw America with fresh eyes; the 250lb woman with pink hair in a mobility scooter is not a representation of how people live in the real world outside the GAE.  This caused the warrior caste to become even more insular because (hard truth here) we lost respect for the American public. This gulf resulted in populace ignorant of what the military was doing.  So, the final results of GWOT in Iraq and Afghanistan were known years in advance by every single guy who fought there, but were received at home as a surprise.  Heinlein’s model supposes citizen-veterans would see through such bullshit more readily than a voting bloc that is pampered and comfortable.
    My point is that the worship of veterans and the creation of an insular warrior caste are what make the U.S. military a poor comparison to Heinlein’s model, not because the PSM created a “mercenary” outfit.  We veterans almost universally disdained the guys who went to Blackwater (et al.) to make literally four times more money to do a safer job.  
    Our uniforms and the flag on the shoulder had greater value than money, and THIS is the virtue that Heinlein espoused should be proven to earn  citizenship.  I eagerly agree in principle to earned citizenship, but posit that there are ways to demonstrate this virtue outside the military.
    Final Point: Recruiting numbers today are worse than 2007 (the height of GWOT).  There are lots of published reasons, but the biggest one is veterans closing the family business. We sacrificed our brothers for the GAE, but we won’t sacrifice our sons.

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    • Brilliant comment and largely agree outside of a generalized concept of earned citizenship. Nations belong to their blood, not to those who “earned” citizenship (maybe an ethnostate would permit earned citizenship, which would be akin to knighthood, but that also would somewhat undermine the concept of blood and soil).

      As for “(Heilen’s) veterans do not account for 50% of the bumper sticker industry,” that, sir, ranks as one of the best lines I’ve ever read.

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      • Thank you for the compliment!

        My own concept of earned citizenship is along the lines of a house where adults make the big decisions. Kids don’t get to vote on if the family invests in a 401k or goes to six flags.

        Service may not equal responsibility, but eliminates the lazy and some of the irresponsible

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    • Wait until all the weirdos being recruited by the military today are vets. Shanika and the tranny crew are going to soil the institution even more than it already is. They’re going to have to make their symbol the rainbow dildo with the brown stripe to represent Shanika.

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      • First, gays weren’t allowed in the Army.

        Then it was “don’t ask, don’t tell”

        Then it was “be as gay as you like”

        I quit before it became mandatory

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      • We’re maybe a quarter century out from the first tranny veteran president, if the “republic” still exists by then. There won’t be any boomers, and not as many Xers, left to vote against it.

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    • Yawn.

      Get your own blog if you want to write a career history.

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13. As a retired officer in the reserves, I quickly realized that those who played “the political game” moved up the chain to flag rank and those who were good at their jobs but didn’t play these games hit a ceiling. Even those like me that didn’t publicly object to various idiotic policies and bureaucratic maneuvers were penalized by our silence.

    I joined because I want to fly, something I still do today. I hated all of the other BS that went with it and that was why it was easy for me to retire without any regrets. When I joined, I had not crossed the great divide and still was a CivNat who voted GOP predictably, but by the end, I became embittered and cynical.

    Flying a C-130 full of caskets of dead white boys who died for absolutely nothing other than the bloodlust of our ruling class against Muslims and the desire of some GOP folks to pad their wealth with war contracts tends to make one that way.

    That said, the real warriors who do the fighting seldom rise to the top anymore. The military system selects for the most compliant, play-it-safe officer who is a good peacetime administrator. They’re followers, not leaders, by nature. That’s why the rank and file flags are going along with all of the social engineering such as trannies, anti-white pogroms and other gobbledygook that has nothing to do with fighting wars.

    Even before WWII, peacetime administrators ruled the roost and had to be sent packing when we got our butts kicked in Pearl Harbor and the Kasserine Pass.
    Admiral Ernest King didn’t say “When they get in trouble, they send for the sons of bitches,” but he later said he wished he would have. It’s very true. If we get in a real war, the real leaders will rise up and the keyboard warrior bureaucrats will be sidelined.

    I was never a kiss ass, but what was worse was the near Stalinesque purges that most people didn’t realize went on during the Obama years. One learned to keep your head down and say nothing, maybe mouth the slogans and nothing more.

    Having a veteran in office is no guarantee of good statesmanship because anyone who rises to O-6 and beyond is not a boat rocker, but a compliant creature who follows orders without question. They’re also not original thinkers.

    As for the SEALS, while I admire the physical hardship and training they endure, I don’t consider them to be intellectual warriors. They’re not knuckle-dragging man apes either, but I wouldn’t vote for one running for Congress.

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    • Excellent point about the O-6 ceiling; the generals need actual performers at that level and below.

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    • “ The military system selects for the most compliant, play-it-safe officer who is a good peacetime administrator.”

      The same managerialism and careerism is now in the NCO ranks. The Warrior SGM (Sergeant Majors) are creatures in hiding or of the past.

      The system excels also at the garrison support the warfighters careerists pushing out the combat veterans- even the Junior enlisted. I mean E4 and below.

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      • 100% correct about the NCO corps. I can’t count how many excellent guys I saw go to the Sergeants Major Academy and re-emerge as boot-licking yes-men.

        It is a full on purge of quality at this point. However, this is to our benefit if the military gets pointed internally.

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    • “If we get in a real war, the real leaders will rise up and the keyboard warrior bureaucrats will be sidelined. ”

      I would not count on that. Any institution can reach a point of rot so deep that it cannot recover. This is one of the reasons why empire and a large standing military are not good ideas.

      Like how are you going to rollback all the terrible equality ideas? Equality is so thoroughly ingrained in the population at large that they literally will turn their head away to avoid seeing it. When looking at a place like Detroit or Baltimore, virtually everyone just makes excuses. Even nobodies. Not one person will publicly stand up and say “magic dirt fail” or “equality fail” People will look at video of a crime and just make believe that they cannot see what they see. Just look at George Floyd. Everything you needed to know was on the “tapes.” Even the most “redpilled” observer will begin a sentence about the Floyd incident with bromides about how racism is bad and we should condemn it wherever it reveals itself.

      When we get involved in a war where the other side doesn’t just have small arms and IEDs, we are screwed. Even if the military wasn’t already as bad as the general public, it wouldn’t matter because the civilians will never allow the needed reform. I just pray the White kids don’t volunteer. This ain’t their country anymore. The country HATES them and talks about “eliminating” them wherever possible. The AINO ain’t worth getting a hangnail for, let alone dying for.

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      • I would tell those White boys that “you won’t be fighting for your country, you’ll be fighting for your government.” And let that thought sink in.

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      • If one ever has a chance to watch the ENTIRE St Floyd incident, beginning to end, they will see him turn to Chavin, and tell him that he suitcased a lethal dose of Fentynal up his ass. (But he says it in ghetto speak, so you might miss it).
        Dude knew he was gonna croak. You can see it all over his face.

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        • I’m hoopin man! I’m hoopin!

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    • dr_mantis_toboggan_MD: “That said, the real warriors who do the fighting seldom rise to the top anymore. The military system selects for the most compliant, play-it-safe officer who is a good peacetime administrator. They’re followers, not leaders, by nature. That’s why the rank and file flags are going along with all of the social engineering such as trannies, anti-white pogroms and other gobbledygook that has nothing to do with fighting wars.”

      You’re describing the Passive Aggressive Industrial Complex.

      The Passive Aggressives are ruthlessly [arguably perfectly] efficient in identifying & promoting “Team Player” personalities whilst simultaneously destroying the careers of the “Loose Cannon” personalities.

      And as folks are indicating elsewhere on this thread, it requires something existential, akin to a Stalingrad, before the Passive Aggressives will slither back under the rocks and [and at least temporarily] allow the Loose Cannons to carry the baton and take care of bidness.

      But just as soon as victory is achieved at Stalingrad, the Passive Aggressives will slither back out from beneath their rocks and begin poisoning society yet again.

      [Cf (((Dwight David Eisenhower))), the so-called “j00 of West Point”, and the assassination of St George S. Patton, just as soon as Patton had exhausted his usefulness & started to become a thorn in the side of the nascent Mossad which had seized control of U.S. Military Intelligence & the Office of Strategic Services during the three & a half presidential administrations of U.S. President Henry Morgenthau Jr.]

      AFAICT, there’s nothing that can be done about Passive Aggression unless you’re willing to go full-on St Joseph Djugashvili, send them all to the Lubyanka, sh00t them all in the back of their heads, and send bills to their famblies for the price of the bu11ets.

      And even then, the Passive Aggressives will eventually re-group & re-build & re-create their precious little Passive Aggressive fiefdoms.

      There’s not a dadgum thang you can do about it.

      Passive Aggression is an ironclad force of nature, a psycho-sociological meta-cancer, which will be cursing us from now until The End Times and beyond.

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      • I differ on some of your points, but “Passive Aggressive Industrial Complex” just became part of my lexicon.

        Bravo!

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    • Not just the military (although what you’ve said is what I observe from the outside: top brass are political schmoozers, many if not most are time servers looking to maximize their bennies/retirement – even if it means lying or exaggerating PTSD/disability) but society as a whole lacks true leadership and competence. It’s been a downward spiral the last 20-odd years. I don’t know that the country is capable of producing a McArthur or Patton anymore.

      “If we get in a real war, the real leaders will rise up and the keyboard warrior bureaucrats will be sidelined.”

      That’s the hope, but as fast-moving as wars are these days, will we have the time? Lincoln had to sift through a bunch of crap generals before finally settling on Grant. Would we have the similar luxury in terms of resources, manpower, armaments, time?

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14. Been a while since I read that book, but it struck me as essentially the right idea.

    And it’s totally unfair to compare today’s US military to the one in the novel.

    Today’s US military is more like a welfare program. Lots of lower-income people signing up for free education, room and board and a regular paycheque, and etc. I have heard of many of the same freaking out when a deployment to a war zone is announced. Suddenly women get pregnant, men develop back injuries, etc.

    How many of these people would volunteer in the middle of a hot war?

    In the novel, it was a damn hot and nasty war. And everyone was a volunteer. So morally, these were the right people to select the government. Becasue they had demonstrated the highest possible commitment to earth society.

    Heinlein was a smart guy.

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    • “Today’s US military is more like a welfare program. ”

      THIS.

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      • In my experience, growing up in a majority black community and schools, the ones who didn’t quite cut it for HBCUs went military. So, not the complete dregs, more of the 90-95 IQ types.
        Of course, this anecdote is aged 20+ years so that window should probably be adjusted downwards a bit…

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    • “Heinlein was a smart guy”

      USNA 1929.

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15. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
    Gee Z Who should rule?
    Blogger philosopher Kings?
    But who will defend the Blogospheric Empire?
    Conscripts?
    But who will conscript them?
    The Slaves?
    But…
    🤣🤣🤣
    “ This idea of earning citizenship through military service has always had some popularity‘ YES, since Athens. Until the 19th century citizenship was always in exchange for military service. It would have been ludicrous- until the 20th century- to give power to those who assume no risk and have no idea what power does (force).
    >” this is an argument against Democracy. “
    > very well, you realize all Kings were just hereditary military Commanders, the word Emperor (Imperator) means Commander, the Aristocracy were subordinate military leaders, etc.
    There’s no government without force. At present we have a government of priests and shrieking freaks, this is the result of yes too widely a spread franchise and an uncontrolled state, as well as the religion of the Puritan Ascendancy, but of few veterans. Certainly most veterans would not vote for this… which brings us to the next point;
    Your view of the military is completely fabulist.
    In no way are we mercenary in motives or composition (or the Mercenaries WOULD be in charge, which would be an improvement that may indeed happen).
    The military is 80% generational service, from the same families. They are old fashioned, traditional, and match exactly your average Cop or Fire Fighter family. That’s because they are the same families, the same people. They are no more mercenary than the cops or firefighters (who are again the same families). I am describing my own family and many I know.
    As to the benefits 🤣 well yes.
    As to this floor you mentioned, no. Active Duty is put out if they miss 2-3 promotions (its own madness, but another story). Nor are non compliance non work types retained.
    The Floor , the real floor is quite possibly a Grave, as many have discovered, or a floor at the VA.

    If you know any cop or firefighter families, you know military families. The motive is FAMILY Traditions and patriotism, and protecting our own.

    I was going to ask what bought this raving on, but of course it must be the Gaza war scare.
    So cheer up; we are not going to war with Israel, we are betraying Israel to court Iran.
    The carriers are there to check Israel.
    Not help.
    So rejoice oh Z blog!
    We’re destroying another bunch of fools who trusted DC! Yay!
    ====
    Now in the End if you are alive you WILL be ruled by soldiers, it’s a question of WHO is doing what to ye the WHOM.
    Normal human history is rule by soldiers.
    Bad human history is rule by priests.
    =======

    PS; In the book Starship Troopers its government service, not just military to have full citizenship. The protagonist chooses the military because his grades don’t merit civilian Federal service.

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    • Until the 20th Century a perk of being in the military during wartime was being able to loot all you could carry from rich neighborhoods and bend the daughter of the house over a chair and have your way with her on the way out. Our military did that in Havana during the Spanish American War. At least I could respect a military that did that, not one that became overpaid garbage collectors for Haitians a few years ago. Let me tell you something son. The modern military and police are the “thin green and blue lines” that protect the trash of society, in many cases. by employing them.

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      • Son? I’m probably older than you.

        Say hello to the trash lol.

        The envy… the Bile… the bitterness…

        The Z blog.

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    • I deliberately skipped over some points in my comment because I hoped someone else would make them…and you delivered.

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      • I deliberately skipped over the entire post because the orthography suggested its author is an escapee from an asylum.

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16. As a veteran I can’t really disagree with the Z-man’s thesis.

    I always laugh being in the private sector, when military vets (usually ex-officers) tout their “leadership skills”. LoL, sure, you’re a leader when disobeying your orders can result in jail time or even discharge (the end of your career.) Doesn’t work that way in the real world.

    As for that POS wearing his IDF uniform to his job in Congress… in a better time he would have already been summarily executed.

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    • One more time. Just for the record.

      I clearly remember getting my first passport in the 60’s. In order to do such I and to swear I had *no allegiance to*, *nor citizenship in* any other country. I was questioned about my birth and my parents birth. I specifically had to denounce my father’s country and birth place. Only then we’re they satisfied.

      I could never wear an IDF uniform, or if so probably not hold a Congressional office. I had no problems with these requirements. I held a draft card (for US army, not Israel). This I had to attest to as well (draft dodgers not welcome).

      So the question is, “What the hell happened?”

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      • Compsci: So the question is, “What the hell happened?”

        ANSWER:

        https://tinyurl.com/2p8upmyb

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    • I get a kick out of retired (often failed) sportsball coaches being routinely trotted out as motivational speakers for corporate sales people

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17. I’ve met 30+ year old men that still act like high schoolers because someone has been telling them what to do, where to go, and when to do it since they enlisted at 18. The modern military isn’t comparable to warrior societies of the past. For most it is just an office job where the boss manages your life for you.

    In my experience as a right-wing activist, we eventually came to be wary of anyone with a military or police background. They were almost always incapable of operating independently and floundered about without explicit structure. They were usually the first to panic at the possibility of being doxxed or harassed and cracked immediately under social pressure. It turns out being naturally obedient and group-oriented runs counter to the qualities required to be a dissident.

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    • Your observations may be true, can’t disagree from lack of experience. However, perhaps it’s a product of the modern volunteer army as we’ve produced in the last 50 years?

      I keep thinking to the interviews I’ve seen of old WWII vets and now Korean War vet’s. One that struck me was of a vet from the Pacific theater who’s platoon had all officers—commissioned and non-commissioned killed, even their replacements. Yet, the platoon continued to fight the entire engagement for days on end with only the rank and file making the decisions for the group.

      When asked how they knew what to do and where to go, he replied “We knew we had to go from one end of the island to the other—and to do that we had to kill all the Jap’s in front of us!”

      How we have changed….

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    • Combined, yours and CompSci’s posts sum it all up perfectly.

      The old military (the Old Breed, to steal from a great US Marine author) were warriors. That was another era, another world. Since then the US has fought many wars and lost ALL of them. Because the nation itself is no longer serious. And it’s men are indeed infantilized. The entire culture is. So today instead of warriors, your military is a high school football team, all testerone and tought talk and posturing. And ready to faint at the sight of blood.

      (I know this does not go for everyone. There is still an elite caste dispersed in that mass, but they are being thinned out and their brothers and cousins are no longer signing up–they know the score.)

      13

      • We lose war’s because we are betrayed at the peace table.

        Because morons and women sell their votes.

        5

        5

    • As a 20yr vet, I can tell you that it takes a deliberate effort to not become institutionalized like Brooks in “The Shawshank Redemption”.

      4

18. Military intelligence is an oxymoron.

    9

    1

    • Wow I haven’t heard that brilliant witticism since … the dining hall at uni. Always spoken by some neurotic, pencil-necked bookworm.

      Oh and Alan Alda probably spat out a few variations of that on the old MASH TV show before the political winds changed and he suddenly decided to drop the Hawaiian shirt and put on fatigues.

      I know, it’s really a double-entendre: “intelligence” in this usage simply means information. But in war, having up to date info is a matter of lite and death. And so is the ability to use that information. So soldier-intelligence is very real thing. Go join a war if you don’t believe this.

      Or ask some survivors from the Ukraine army. Provided you can find any who are able to make themselves comprehended.

      8

      8

      • Aside. One thing about the Uke’s, could/would any modern Americans match them? Say what you will, but they race to the slaughter—and still they keep coming.

        Russians win, Ukrainians win…it doesn’t matter, Whites lose.

        7

19. The following are not real veterans:
    Graham – JAG lawyer.
    DeSantis – JAG lawyer.
    Ernst – woman.
    Blumenthal – deferments until the war almost was over, then cushy job.

    As to McCain, he was the idiot scion of an admiral and grandson of another admiral. Military nepotism at his worse. Then the NVA brainwashed him, while he sold out his fellow POWs. See Schanberg’s expose: https://www.nationalalliance.org/hot-topics/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up

    36

    • I met a fellow who struck me as a very solid joe, so I trust him.

      He said he was part of McCain’s extraction team.

      They hadn’t laid a finger on such a high-value prisoner as “Songbird” McCain.

      He said McCain wore a brace to make himself look injured.

      10

    • Slight correction…

      Graham – JAG lawyer, woman

      18

      1

    • Remember McCain’s tour of Baghdad in 2007? Yeah, I was there for that. It was akin to putting on a Broadway musical. An entire infantry battalion for security with 6 Apaches circling overhead. He went on the news that night to tell everyone how safe Baghdad was.

      11

    • There’s a reason They erected a statue of McCain in Hanoi. No Vietnamese had more confirmed kills of Americans.

      Forrastal anybody?

      1

20. Heinlein and his concept of military rule (citizenship) might be something of a straw man. It’s a good commentary jump off point for discussion, but does anyone in this group who has read Heinlein’s books believe that military service equals fitness to rule? Or that such would be sufficient to end our current troubles?

    Rather, from reading comments over the years, I’d say this group would rather tend to believe that universal suffrage (citizenship) is the problem and Heinlein simply took a stab (proposal) at *one* possible solution to the defect of universal suffrage (unstated) in a democratic society.

    Indeed, military only suffrage only would increase military expansion and doom us to endless wars as such would be the only path to power in society. Clearly we want a system where the struggle to power necessarily coincides with the best interests of the society (those who contribute/produce) in general. Those interests need to be identified/defined before all else.

    27

    1

    • Jeebus. 10 stars. A thousand.

      4

    • Yes… do keep at identifying those interests.

      Someone watch the sky though.

      LMAO

      1

      1

    • Military suffrage only would mean that not many of our young Southern white men, the last hope for this country, would ever be voting. They have wised up and not signed up So the corporate titans are having to turn to foreigners, which was probably the plan all along, to – if nothing else – dilute the military with Third Worlders who would have no trouble shooting white Americans.

      13

    • “ Rather, from reading comments over the years, I’d say this group would rather tend to believe that universal suffrage (citizenship) is the problem and Heinlein simply took a stab (proposal) at *one* possible solution to the defect of universal suffrage (unstated) in a democratic society.”

      In one of his essays in “Expanded Universe,” he as much as said that as one of the reasons why he wrote “Starship Troopers.” He also in that essay offered alternate proposals (e.g. solve a quadratic equation or the voting booth becomes a disintegration chamber).

      4

    • But military service in exchange for the vote was the rule from Athens until the 19th Amendment.

      It’s ludicrous to ask people to fight and deny them the vote.

      BTW we must have read another Starship Troopers, because in Heinlen’s version the protagonist chooses military service as his grades don’t qualify him for other service.

      The operative quote; Civilians have rights, Citizens take responsibility.

      4

      1

      • I was not denying citizenship to the military per se, only that such needs to be tempered with other avenues to citizenship. I expressed myself poorly in this regard.

        3

    • I would not say military service equals fitness to rule.

      But, I believe it would eliminate many of the unfit and all of the purely self-interested.

      3

21. Reminds me of a personal anecdote from when my employer purchased a business a few years ago. I took one look at the work done by their “computer guy” and my first question was “He was in the military, right?”. This was because, and, sorry vets, decades of seeing work done in specifically bad ways by former military guys had made an…impression*. I was initially told “no” but when his resume (poorly written, natch) turned up after we told him his services were no longer required it of course showed that he leaned heavily on his past military service to score a future job.

    *(If I had to summarize the issue, it would be “work harder not smarter”, but punctuated by weird compromises that a civilian wouldn’t regularly do, like implementing products and/or practices that might check all the boxes, but with zero regard from long term viability. The fact that it sounds like I’m describing a really hardworking mid-level government bureaucrat that’s always in over their head is…just a coincidence I’m sure.)

    20

22. If we want to talk skin in the game, in ancient Greece, every man was expected to pick up a sword and fight for his polis when the time came. Those who survived doing that for a decade or two became the leaders of the polis. Those who didn’t, well… So what skin in the game do Americans serving in the military since maybe 1978 have? Lindsey Graham served was in Germany as a member of the JAG during the Reagan years. Was his day-to-day life there that different from a private lawyer working in New York in the 1980’s? I know many military veterans and they run the gamut from guys who did door-to-door sweeps in Iraq to those who sat in an office in Korea. There’s just no way of knowing, and there are no universals (except for the fact that most came to hate the military bureaucracy). Of course, Dan Crewnshaw had skin in the game and lost some of it. Yet, as he proves every time he opens his mouth, it doesn’t make him qualified to speak on geopolitics.

    22

    • I’m rather loath to reveal my veteran status because of the mindless adulation a lot of normies have for us. I was a tech in an air conditioned office most of the time and while I was in I knew some good people and also some total dirtbags.

      I’m gonna.have to agree regarding the argument against democracy. While many vets may see through the BS of dirtbags like Crenshaw and others, the retarded masses just assume veterans are automatically good choices to vote for.

      15

      • I’m glad we share the same opinion on veteran worship. It’s not good for anyone, veterans most of all.

        6

        • I stopped wit the “tank you fer yer service “years ago just seems gay

          3

      • What would happen to an honest vet that ran for office?

        The same thing that happens to any honest man who runs for office.

        And I remind the audience that a majority of whites elected and re-elected Obama, and because of the welfare and other statist goodies.

        8

23. Welp, now that illegal foreign military age males outnumber our military 6 to 1, the new admin after Joe’s assassination by Hamas will have plenty of recruits- many of them already trained!

    And with a new war to fight, since New York* radio tells me China is backing Iran.

    (*Largest juden nation outside of Israel.)

    5

24. If a person is a peacetime vet or a desk jockey, where is the virtue in that?

    On the other hand, if all it takes is to be eligible for combat duty to be virtuous then we already had that when only men could vote.

    12

25. So weird I was just watching the classroom scene of st this morning and musing that I don’t k ow the novels real message cause I’ve never read it. Great movie, loads of fun. Love ironside

    2

    • The best part of Troopers is that it’s a 1940’s Bing Crosby-style recruiting movie!

      5

      • Yep. The over the top promotion of benefits of “service” was great! Main problem with the movie was that the writers/director turned it into a “B” grade sci-fi, kill the *bugs* movie and played down the Heinlein philosophy part. A sort of homage to the reduced level audience intellect of the time. I can only assume they believed the audience had little contact with Heinlein books and aimed for the pre-teen, cartoon crowd.

        Contrast this movie rendition with say, the new “Dune” movie. Like night and day.

        3

      • Don’t confuse the film with the novel. The former maliciously went out of its way to misrepresent Heinlein’s arguments.

        8

        • It really did.

          The one operative quote

          “Civilians have rights. Citizens take responsibility.”

          3

26. Dear God, I had no idea that that pathetic twerp Aunt Lindsay had actually served! I’m sure the veterans here will understand the term “Instant asshole, just add bars/stripes” and this applies here.
    I’ve met people during my time in the army who were good leaders and who the guys had a great deal of confidence in. Unfortunately, they were few and far between. Most of the guys who got promoted wanted to throw their weight around, indeed, a few of them really got off on it. Almost every one of them ended up in jail.
    Prior to him ending up in congress, I knew little of Crenshaw, other than he was a disabled veteran. Since he got elected, I’m not impressed by what I’ve seen, particularly with regards to foreign policy. I remember watching him get put on the spot by Nick Fuentes, being asked a question that was obviously not pre-approved and then watching Crenshaw fumble around for an answer.
    Something closer to home would be my sons old hockey coach, who was a captain in the army during GW II. Nice guy and a decent coach, but his being an officer became apparent when dealing with parents in that officers DO NOT like having to explain themselves! Once they’ve spoken, that’s it, you do not question any of their orders and this does not lend itself to elected office. When I attended PLDC – you need the school to make E-5 in the army – my chief instructor, an E-7 who had just come off a stint with the 75th Ranger Regiment, told me one of the most important things vis-a-vis leadership anywhere: “A true leader persuades, they don’t compel.” And that always stuck with me. I really cannot think of anyone today in any level of politics who exhibits that trait.

    19

    • Unfortunately she was unable to fill a combat role.

      3

      1

27. Anybody remember when Wesley Clark ran for president (‘04 iirc), and he talked about reorganizing society to be more socialist like the military? He didn’t use the S-word, of course, but that was the gist.

    Weird how egalitarianism, meritocracy, totalitarianism, and war machines go together. Hard pill to swallow as an American, but look at our record. We’re a very conflicted people!

    11

    • The military since at least WW2 has been a leftist social engineering project. When you consider how many commies were in the FDR admin it makes sense. The GAE’s primary purpose today is to spread gay anal and BLM across the globe and uses the military to do it.

      18

28. Miss Lindsey represents South Carolina, which aside from having the most “christians” per capita, also has, from what I’ve read, the most veterans per capita. Given this situation, the dumbest of the dumb bumpkins live in that state. That’s saying something because several states can give them a run for their money.

    Instead of the word veteran, I should say “gold-bricker” or “teet sucker.” One of my most vivid childhood memories is having private sector parents (worked for a living) near a large military base. Every military customer they had wanted something for free. They were disdainful of the people who fed and clothed them with their tax dollars. These were people who wouldn’t have the intelligence for janitorial work in any other role. I hated them when I was a kid and I hate them today.

    My blood pressure goes up 20 points every time they get to board first on a plane. Excuse me? Maybe you should be boarding last, and seated in the baggage compartment, hopefully an unpressurized one. Yes, I intentionally park in the veterans spot when I need something at Lowes.I hope they all lose their pensions like the Soviet Union in 1991 when this sh-t show gets blown up by endless Fed credit.

    The reason their suicide rate is so high is the gnawing pain of knowing that they’re frauds, not so much the people they blew up in mud huts 10 times zones away. If you think I’m being harsh just remember that they would kill you and your entire family to keep their “benefits.”

    30

    7

    • “Thank you for your service” is such a stupid thing to say. They did not serve to benefit anyone except themselves.

      Most people who join the military are poor and desperate. The military is there “last chance” option to get it together, try to get respect, and get a paycheck. The veterans I’ve met have been pretty mediocre. I mean, they’re ok, but nothing special. It’s mostly Mexican-Americans from what I can tell!

      15

      7

      • “Most people who join the military are poor and desperate. The military is there “last chance” option to get it together, try to get respect, and get a paycheck.”

        Sorry, but that is just an amazingly stupid thing to say.

        9

        9

        • I tend to agree. Those I’ve met, and recently too, were a cut above most any civilian I can name. Albeit, they were White and members of elite units and I was considered in a position of authority (long story for another posting), but they were exceptional.

          Never have I been addressed with such respect, courtesy, and demeanor. The interaction I had was not simply a handshake and introduction. We spent a couple of days together interacting in training and competition. I was not alone in this view and confirmed it with others.

          8

          3

      • I never understood why there were so many “homeless” veterans when they should all have made such good use of those veteran benefits like money for college and job ready training so they can walk right into a job after they serve their time. And the VA home loan department. So, could it be they were addled to begin with and were more addled when they came out and that’s why they were homeless? Splain it?

        6

        • Maybe many of them were barely veterans, or not at all veterans. Like guys who were in the military for a few months and were discharged for mental illness or committing some crime. I distinctly remember one publicized case of a “homeless vet” who made a big stink about something, in an activist kind of way, whose military service consisted of being kicked out of boot camp after a week or two. Name escapes me. Although I’m sure that homeless vets do exist, I think it’s somewhat a mythical phenomenon. Kind of like the drug addled burnt out shabby biker chic Vietnam vet popularized by Hollywood. Vast majority of Vietnam vets were highly functional people.

          6

          • I don’t have stat’s or firm info on homeless vet’s and such, but I see many begging from the roadway with cardboard signs using “homeless vet” as an enticement to give. Are they really vet’s or clever beggars? I tend to suspect the latter. In MX, I most often found beggars with their “hungry” children in tow. Again, real or fake?

            2

      • Wrong.
        80% are generational, it runs in families like cops and firefighters.
        In fact the same families.

        3

    • > Every military customer they had wanted something for free.

      Lol. I seem to recall every civilian vendor near a military base offering “special” pricing to active duty: Like 30% interest on a used car loan!

      7

      • Yep, every dumb slicksleeve fresh out of highschool and basic is just itching to spend his money as soon as he sees it in the bank account. They want a car and want it now, and the slimebag used car dealers know it.

        4

    • That “50% off for veterans” coffee and special veteran parking spots at Home Despot are just a virtue signal by the businesses to appeal to their retard customers who actually think the military are heroes. They clearly noticed that the guy coming in to buy planks all the time also was driving a Ford Phallus 150 with a little American flag on it and the virtue signal would be easily offset by charging extra for those planks.

      8

      • Yep. Support for the military is the only acceptable form of “rightism” in AINO. All these Leftist corporations and outfits toss the fly of supporting the military as boob bait for Bubba, and I’m sure it works. I suppose it never occurs to the Grillers and rubes that AINO’s military is simply the spearhead for every form of depravity, dysfunction and anti-white racism under the sun.

        13

        • The boobs have been sedulously guarded from the current degradation of the military and its having been shanghaied to spread the depravities.

          2

    • That’s one good thing Obama did – fired Stan McChrystal’s insubordinate ass. He forgot who signed his checks.

      But Obama did listen to the generals on the dumb and costly “surge” idea for Afghanistan, when he had other & better options to end the war.

      1

29. If only “veterans” voted, it wouldn’t be a cure-all but it would be an improvement. (Does commanding a desk for 4 years in peacetime make one a veteran?) Or at least it would have been an improvement, up until about 20 years ago. Today’s GAE military is as pozzed as everything else, and I’m not sure if it any longer can be expected to select for or produce a better class of human.

    Something I’ve noticed, beginning with the 1990s when everybody started thanking the “veterans,” was a growing sense of entitlement among the newer members. “I’m special because I’m in the military and you should treat me special.” Reinforced by every veteran cheering flag waving sportsball pregame show. By about 2010 or so this was in full flower. There are guys now hitting their 20 year retirement who have known no other era than this. Whereas their forebearers had a reasonable expectation of being looked down on for their military service, yet served anyway. So you’ve got at least 2 different classes of veterans in that sense, and the older one is fading out. Why shouldn’t you get these guys like Mast and Crenshaw who wear it on their sleeve, since that’s what you selected for?

    Our sense, and Heinlein’s sense, that veterans would vote better people into office is probably rooted more in WW2 veterans, whose civically admirable characteristics may not really have been so much their military service, as their status as white, christian, working class, dirt people, conservative, mostly rural, who incidentally were veterans. But since they were all wearing uniforms Heinlein, and others, couldn’t see the forest for the trees and mistakenly thought it was military service that made them better voters.

    29

    1

    • Jeffrey Zoar: My son absolutely hates anyone who thanks him for his ‘service.’ My late father-in-law (airborne, ranger tab, silver star, etc.) had nothing to do with the military once he retired – no VFW hat, no special license plate, etc. Just a quiet and confident yet humble man. Advertising it isn’t patriotism, it’s personal pride and boasting.

      15

      • When I see a vehicle with the military decals/retired vet license plate, I automatically distrust. Not because I have known someone who displayed such fraudulently (although I have known someone who did), but because it suggests other things about their character.

        5

        • I know people like that and they do so because it is the most important thing they ever did in their lives (visions of Al Bundy talking about his high school football career come to mind).

          5

30. I remember when that dirty, rotten carpetbagger “maverick” mcstain showed up to win the AZ senate seat formerly occupied by Barry Goldwater. Despite ditching his first wife, military vets were still held in fairly high esteem back in those days. I still don’t know how he dodged the Keating five scandal as he was guilty as sin – it was a major detriment to the country over the next several decades. Mark kelley is cut out of the same mold, though nowhere near as high profile.

    33

    • The problem with McCain and other vet’s we’ve had running for office is that by law, they can claim State citizenship upon cutting out of the military in *any* State they were once stationed in. McCain was notorious at that time for looking for a State that had a favorable “open” seat. He’d have just as easily run in CA or elsewhere. He was *not* and Arizonan in the slightest and had no roots here initially.

      Carpetbagger is of course the correct term for him, the above is just an elaboration why.

      15

    • The “maverick” was no such think. He simply a run of the mill liberal who ran as a Republican because AZ had lots of retired vets who voted Republican. He would always pander during the campaign, then once safely elected, would go back to whatever liberal stuff he thought was so wonderful.

      McCain survived the Keating Five scandal by being very contrite about it when publicly confronted by the reporters. The other four acted relatively aloof and arrogant about it. McCain was very good at being contrite when he wanted to be.

      BTW, McCain like having lots of blonde women working in his congressional office back home. He didn’t care if they were a little chubby, just as long as they were blonde.

      4

31. It’s hard for me to imagine any working system of government for the GAE. America, if it ever was a country is certainly not one now. It’s a multi-ethnic empire where all the foreign groups see it as a bank to be robbed in any way possible and where few have any loyalty to the empire. Plus we are a corrupt and immoral society. It may even be a stretch to call the population a “society”

    46

    • Excellent description. Mirrors my thoughts exactly.

      11

32. I’ve wondered about military policy over the years and I’m thinking there’s no real optimal choices when we’ve been governed by feckless a-holes for the last 60+ years.

    Is some kind of universal conscription the best choice? If it is, you still have useless pud-pullers like JFK and LBJ sending essentially everybody to die in some war of choice and the country almost tears itself apart. What about a volunteer force? With a volunteer force, some mincing moron like Shrub feels fine with sending the military literally anywhere because “They signed up for it.”.

    Neither choice works when American leadership is worthless as it currently is.

    26

    1

33. Vietnam was the last war where existential combat was frequently up-close and personal. And even then, it was rare that you might have to shove a K-bar in between someone’s ribs and continue twisting it until the struggling stopped. McCain was a lousy pilot who dropped bombs from 15,000 feet and never had to get personal until he got himself shot down and thrown into pit cell. And then later cried about how he broke, as if it was a virtue. And most heroism is accidental and reactionary. You do what must be done despite the insanity and not because your balls grew three sizes. The only thing any of this has to do with politics is that we’re not going to talk our way out of the mess we’re in. It’s going to get messy, and the smartest/strongest are going to prevail. All as God intended.

    36

    • No, there’s been plenty of very up close and personal since Vietnam.

      Good grief you can find it on youtube.

      4

      3

      • On a very small scale there has been up close combat, however look at the numbers – VN (a low intensity conflict compared to priors) 1965 – 1971 for US combat participation – 55,000 dead US military.

        Iraq 2003 -2011, a little over 5,000 dead US .

        Many of the 5000 dead in Iraq were from IEDs also.

        3

        • GWOT US casualties were relatively much lower because of improved body armor and faster than ever medical evacuation. Without those advantages a lot more would have been dead.

          3

          1

          • That’s why you see a lot of vets missing limbs from the GWOT. The body armor is protecting a lot of people who would have died in Vietnam. But their limbs are not protected. Hence, a lot of limb loss.

            2

34. As everybody who has been around the military in any capacity should know, the average soldier is not a man of any particular scruples or intelligence, so the fact that Heinlein engaged in just that sort of Spartanesque teabagging of military men throughout his literary oeuvre would seem rather curious until you realize what kind of person he was. His very progressive GI generation was filled with whacky ideas about how to improve the world, and it’s not hard to see why the Warren Court and all the Civil Rights legislation was established by men who were themselves his contemporaries.

    I really don’t care for Robert Heinlein. He is considered a minor luminary by some of the Civ-Nattery corners of the right, which is symptomatic of what is wrong with them. I don’t want to live in the kind of country that produces Heinlein, a flaming liberal who knew only the fun side of The Drunkard’s Progress and had no awareness of the horrors that awaited on the downward slope.

    19

    4

    • Contrast with Frank Herbert lol.

      8

    • Robert Heinlein, in his later books at least, showed himself to be a total sexual degenerate. Unfortunately the whole Science Fiction genre is filled with commies, leftists, degenerates and just plain assholes.

      There is a really great book called The Last Fanatics by JD Cowan that does a great job of showing how left wing degenerates have undermined SF and used it to further their cause for generations. Anyone on the Dissident Right who also enjoys SF should check it out.

      13

    • Heinlein’s stuff was so tongue-in-cheek it was often hard to tell where he was playing it straight and where he was poking fun, which from what I’ve seen was his intent. A true golden age sci-fi troll.

      6

      • Now see I thought the movie did a good job with that feel.

        1

    • Post-stroke Heinlein was a creep who fantasized about being pegged by his twin female clones in his later novels, but even his first (published posthumously) novel was a sexualized ripoff of Bellamy’s “Looking Backward.”

      His writing after the mid-60s was poo. Sometimes interesting poo, but poo nonetheless. I can’t believe I used to like that guy.

      3

35. When I think of a good, functioning, cohesive societies, mandatory military training and some time in the guard or reserves probably helps. The Swiss model makes the country next to impossible to conquer at and acceptable cost, while making internal coups dangerous too.

    Of course to make it work, you’d need a homogeneous pool of men, which our cloud people are desperately against.

    19

    • I tend to agree and have always called for mandatory service for all. Obviously, we can’t support a multimillion man army on duty, but a period of training for a few months would do a lot to wean our children from their mom’s teat. Shock treatment if you want to call it that.

      One benefit is that as one got over the initial psychological hurtle, they may actually like the service and opt to enlist for a longer term of service. The service as well might benefit as they could evaluate these new “recruits” an select the best of the lot for long term employment.

      However, I admit this “dream” is a long shot. A poz’d government as we have is sure to screw it up.

      4

36. I’ve written this here before, and I will again. Lindsey Graham drinks Bailey’s on the rocks. Served him several times years and years ago. That is all you need to know about him and his loafers 🙂

    27

    • Wow. The favorite of high school girls everywhere.

      3

      • Whoa, a girl I dated in late ‘86 immediately sprang to mind!

        2

    • Strange, I would think a coconut liqueur would be a closer approximation to semen, at least in appearance.

      4

      • Bloody hell….

        4

    • but was he a good tipper?

      1

      • Only inasmuch as he tried to get Eloi to fondle his tip.

        4

        • He did not actually do the paying. His 35 year old (my guess) masculine but sharp dressed and good looking assistant filled out the slip (room charge). 20 plus percent tip. Amiable. But he reminded me of a southern gal getting her drink refreshed, hehe. That vague but polite insouciance.

          2

          • Doesnt matter at all, but I correct myself, and I remember more vividly when I thought about it. He didn’t have the assitant fill it out. So he showed his paper to the assistant who read the amount, and Graham then filled it out. Clearly farsighted. And as to the Baileys- look, one time, sure, you may be hungover or want something light. But I served him on at least three distinct occasions (I think more), and it was the same every time.

            3

    • The only place Baileys belongs, if at all, is in morning coffee

      3

37. I appreciate the black sergeants who kept the blacks and whites from opening fire on each other.

    Vietnam? Where’s that?

    7

38. Political systems are only as good as the people making up those systems. Witness the attempts by Latin Americans to import institutions from the “Norte Americanos” as they the USA. In every case the wonderful constitutions were undermined by Latin American culture.

    If a society selects for self reliant people willing to cooperate for the common good, you can have an American style “democracy”. Otherwise, people will gravitate to a patron/client system with abundant corruption

    20

    • Someone once said: “The problem with Mexico is that it is full of Mexicans.”

      15

      • The problem with Niger…

        5

39. “Real life does not come with a floor.”

    Yet every paid female job (government, teacher, nurse, librarian) comes with a government guaranteed pension and annual raises and inflation increases.

    None of that is available in the private sector. After 30 years in the private sector so far, after multiple lay-offs (so far) and after another 15-20 years of working and saving, I hope to have a retirement fund sufficient for my wife and I.

    “Sustainability” is the buzz word the kids use these days, but I have no ability to fund anyone elses pension. Maybe Ukraine or Our Greatest Ally will come through in my golden years with a big pile of cash and investment earnings.

    31

    • FNC1A1: “…people will gravitate to a patron/client system with abundant corruption.”

      Government Husband for the girls;
      Military government for the boys raised by those single moms;
      Patron government for the Nu-Americans;
      Paid mercenaries as the Elected class (the political industry.)

      3

40. I thought nobody could be worse than eye-patch Dan. Then I looked up Brian Mast and saw him wearing his IDF uniform to Congress.

    This thing is a dumpster fire. We have Congressmen who wear the military uniform of foreign countries to Congress? We have a Sec. State who announces he is flying to a war zone, not as an American, but as a member of one of the two tribes involved in the ethnic conflict. That is bad enough. It is that nobody blinks an eye at any of it is the tell.

    Does anybody represent the nation that created the superpower that is supposed to be cracking skulls and bringing the overly ambitious and squabbling vassals to heal? Perhaps the superpower has become the vassal.

    I think one issue related to the post is the nature of a pre-industrial, pre-nation-state Warrior vs. a conscription army cannon fodder enlistee. Modern warfare may not even select for the same attributes and virtues that the Iron Age did.

    My favorite eye-patch Dan moment was when he ranted about how the MAGA folk are all buffoonish showmen as he prepared to jump out of the airplane in his highly produced Marvel comic-esque political campaign ads.

    These people are so absurd you almost wonder if they could really could come from obscurity or if they are all assets. The entire thing is absurd. Real people made real decisions to get us to this point. Who are they and when will they be brought to light and held to account?

    This is a dumpster fire rolling full speed down a skate ramp that goes over a cliff. It almost seems appropriate to nominate and run Johnny O for President. We are living through a JackAss episode are we not?

    40

    • “These people are so absurd you almost wonder if they could really could come from obscurity or if they are all assets.”

      It is the latter, obviously. Most “elected” leaders are part of the Fifth Column.

      10

    • The USA started as a fairly loose league, a Republic, of the States in which the Presidential electors were chosen exclusively by the legislature, and the only voters were White men who owned property…The result was that serious men of stature ruled the country, giants of intellect and integrity…After Lincoln’s brutal war, the US gradually descended to the current multi-ethnic maelstrom with women holding the trump cards…Heinlein, while mixing quite a bit of satire in Starship Troopers, was projecting what he thought was the inevitable future resolution of this mess…rule by strong men and the military…

      11

    • Speaking of a vassal state.

      https://www.arthursido.com/2023/10/paying-tribute.html

      2

    • The idiots of AINO have the rulers they deserve.

      One of my income streams comes from reporting on college sports. Whenever I attend these sporting events–football is worse than basketball–my flickering faith in humanity comes ever closer to being extinguished. Most “Americans,” including whites, are worthless degenerates and clowns. I don’t know how bad it is in other white nations–although I’ve got a pretty good idea the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand are just as bad or worse–but in AINO there is only a remnant of the population worthy of salvation. I put the percentage at 25.

      8

41. As a vet, I will specifically not vote (if I still voted…) for a veteran who puts his/her veteran status front and center in their campaign. I know far too many veterans I would never vote for. To me, they all remind me of John Kerry’s acceptance speech when he got the party nomination.

    As for that floor Mr. Z-man mentions, it comes and goes. Right now, the Army and Navy (don’t know about the other branches) are pretty desperate to get and retain people. Just a few years ago though, they were finding all sorts of reasons to get rid of folks who didn’t perform or otherwise demonstrated lack of character.

    In the Navy, the use of security clearances was very effective. A DUI, domestic violence, etc. could very easily cost your clearance. As one is now required for nearly every job/position, if you don’t have it, you can’t do your job. Bummer. We have no need for you now, so off you go.

    As for whether a veteran should hold office… I’d avoid any flag level officer these days. They are the perfect examples of political/industrial tools. Senior enlisted (I’m a bit biased here) *can* be more trustworthy, and certainly have superior BS detectors, but I’ve also known a ton of them who are simple yes-men for whoever is in charge.

    I guess my best, completely unrequested, advice on voting for veterans is to avoid the ones who run on their veteran status. If their positions and policies are priority, with veteran status as footnote, that might be a good one.

    27

    • The Air Force is going to punish people who report minor offenses. Looks like the Black Veterans Project is influencing this decision:

      https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/09/marine-corps-starts-tracking-demographics-victims-of-low-level-offenses-part-of-justice-overhaul.html

      Soros style approach to increasing retention and eliminating, “disparities.”

      The tattered fabric of society has people grabbing ends and sprinting in opposite directions at this point.

      14

      • So, the armed services will now keep track of ethnic demographics of the millions of smaller military infractions?
        I feel like I can save everyone a lot of time: 90% of the write-ups will be given to “diverse or historically underrepresented persyns” = the military is rayciss.

        5

      • Ugghh, yet another predictable, eye-rolling reason why the end is nigh. When I was in thirty years ago, I cannot recall one incident where the platoon got jammed up that wasn’t caused by a groid behaving like, well, a groid.
        I’m so glad I’m out!

        7

    • Yes! If simply having a job for a while in the military is the focus of your campaign, I’m not interested. I don’t introduce myself to people as a Veteran of a war 30 years ago. I’ve done other things since that mean more to present-day me (marriage, church, career…).

      11

    • I will specifically not vote for a veteran who puts his/her veteran status front and center in their campaign
      —
      See also: religion (“the more he spoke of his virtue…”)

      7

    • There’s no floor in the military .
      Never was.

      Mind you there’s many many more PC trap doors.

      Whenever I heard someone raving about alcohol and DUIs you knew it was an alcoholic.

42. Starship a troopers was published in 1959, a very different America.

    Most males had also fought in either World War — or both, in the case of Eisenhower.

    I can see why Heinlein thought it would work….even tho many of his troopers were Third World.

    14

    • Exactly. In Heinlein’s day, we basically had a Citizen army with a very limited regular Army. Even the Washington Post admits that 80% of retired generals work in the MIC. The Navy has more admirals than it does ships.

      12

43. > The military does not restrict itself to citizens, as military service is one way to win citizenship. Due to the lack of white men joining the ranks, the military is now looking to recruit foreigners.

    Despite this, the majority of military personnel (and the *overwhelming* super-majority of living veterans) are white males.

    > They have many other representatives in the imperial congress, but only Brian Mast wears the uniform of the Israeli military to work every day.

    And only Brian Mast wore the American uniform as well. In fact, the same tribe that is over-represented in the Ivey League and as members of Congress is surprisingly under-represented among the ranks of U.S. veterans…

    Bottom line: You can harp on the McCains and Crenshaws all you like, but in terms of actual numbers American veterans are far superior as leaders, workers, and voters than the broader public as a whole.

    5

    16

    • Mr. Generic: ” . . . the majority of military personnel (and the *overwhelming* super-majority of living veterans) are white males.”

      Not so.

      The racial demographics of the US military in 2023 are as follows123:
      White: 52.4% – 53.6%
      Hispanic or Latino: 17.6% – 19.6%
      Black or African American: 15.3% – 20.3%
      Asian: 5.8% – 7.0%
      American Indian and Alaska Native: 0.6% – 0.9%
      Unknown/Other: 0.6% – 6.3%

      9

      1

      • If you are a white male and are seeking to join the U.S. Military today, you must have an IQ as small as you shoe size.

        17

      • Both comments miss the mark. We have, as other modern militaries, a long “tooth to tail”. I once read it took about 9 in the rear to support one at the front. You can have the appearance of “predominantly White” if you look only at the “ground pounders and door kickers”.

        Also the “White” category contains both males and females. I immediately exclude females as being worthless in combat, thus the front line (all I care about) is exceedingly weakened.

        Finally, the stat’s on numbers of Blacks reminds me of the Korean conflict where Blacks were (initially) segregated. Those units—entire divisions even—were found to be deficient in performance. Indeed a liability. It was this report that caused Truman to order integration with White units. The optimal percentage was no more than 10% Blacks in any White unit, otherwise the entire unit performance declined.

        Seems this proportion is a recurring number in any mixture of Blacks and Whites in many civilian areas as well. Who’d have thought… 😉

        7

    • “American veterans are far superior as leaders, workers, and voters than the broader public as a whole”

      I 100% disagree.

      This is what they want us to believe to keep us voting for the McStains of the world. Morally bankrupt conmen and grifters.

      14

      1

44. Retired Inside-the-Beltway O-6 here. And … I don’t think Z is entirely wrong. Actually, the longer I’m out, the more I’m inclined to think he’s correct. The modern military environment is, as one analyst at a think-thank observed, the world’s most successful socialist exercise. DoD is the department of government, in that everything government does is replicated in miniature in DoD: schools, retail, infrastructure, HHS, etc etc. – all externally funded and supported, of course. Now, that’s not to say I think that’s inherently bad, but … it does produce a type of servant mentality, which largely explains the reported trouble veterans often have finding post-service employment. And I’ll concede – I thought being in the military was at time kind of easy. My general view on military service is that when it’s good, it’s great, but when it sucks, it can suck in a way the average person cannot comprehend – though that suckage is largely a result of internal processes, and at least for me, not a function of operational stresses (ie, combat). My worst times in the (service) almost all involved silly inspections and my year in Iraq really wasn’t too bad. But I traded freedom for stability, which was fine as long as I enjoyed what I was doing. But it made making personal choices after I retired kind of difficult – I was used to being told what to do.

    All of this is to say that the top-down hierarchical nature of the military is inherently Leftist – the temptation to use that authority towards achieving some perfect condition is hard to overcome, and the military’s recent connection to republican politics (as late as 2004, military officers were identified as a core constituency of the GWB campaign) is mostly a function of culture – the military officer corps consisted of Dirt People white males. But that’s certainly not the case anymore, and the instinct to tell other people what to do – that systems can be perfected by order/discipline/inspection/regulation … these ideas when applied to our system of government reduces voters to the role of privates – that’s a very managerial/leftist mindset. But for now, waving the bloody rag like cyclops or John McCain did will prove useful, at least with the Boomers, so we should expect it for a few more election cycles.

    26

    • “But it made making personal choices after I retired kind of difficult – I was used to being told what to do.”

      I’ve seen this with perhaps the majority of ex-military I’ve known: they need to be given orders. And some guys really are better off in that situation. It doesn’t seem good for independent, innovative thinking (outside the box), self-motivation and self-(rather than imposed from above)discipline, however. Although to be fair, other ex-military I know are true swashbucklers and have lived remarkable lives since their service days!

      1

45. “Despite all the patriotic blather, the American military is composed of mercenaries. They structure their pay to attract the types of people they need. The military does not restrict itself to citizens, as military service is one way to win citizenship. Due to the lack of white men joining the ranks, the military is now looking to recruit foreigners. The fact is the relationship between the institution and the soldier is purely transactional.”

    This is true at the upper reaches as well (colonel and above). When they retire they have a revolving door relationship with the military-industrial complex, which is anxious to capitalise on their connections. But on a side note, as a couple of retired senior officers have told me, the connections only last for a few years and then the MIC is no longer interested in you.

    With regard to retired military officers going into the dirty business of politics and having to pander to the rabble, I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s play, “Coriolanus”, itself based on Plutarch. A movie adaptation was made about a decade back with Ray Fiennes, and I can’t recommend it enough.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTkuvfdiXpU

    9

    • Eisenhower, whether you like him or not as a president, saw the dangers of the MIC coming, but didn’t seem to have any idea of how to stop it. There were a lot of problems with the top brass even then, but they hadn’t yet devolved to total prostitution. “Mad Dog” Mattis’ betrayal was the last straw for respect for military leaders for many on the right.

      27

      1

      • In retrospect, Trump appointing Mattis to be SECDEF was the first sign of his fundamental lack of understanding of how DC works. Trump saw in Mattis some maverick warfighter, but what he didn’t understand was that Mattis was first and foremost an organization man, because if he wasn’t, he would have never been in a position to be in a position of influence. Mattis was never going to buck the system that made him, nor would any other retired GOFO.

        19

        • Maybe Flynn…but the deep state deep sixed him

          3

        • The suspicion also is that the “warrior monk” AKA Mad Dog, was gay. He was a preck either way you look at it. Disobeyed Trump’s orders to leave Syria.

          3

      • I don’t think Ike was a visionary about the MIC (or the SIC). He was describing the state of affairs that had already come to exist. And since, has only grown and consolidated. Meanwhile, people who don’t know any better fear a takeover by his “prophesied” MIC which had already happened. At least Ike cared (I guess) and was willing to name it, once he no longer needed its support and was no longer in a position to do anything about it.

        7

        1

        • Yeah. Ike spent eight years putting it into place, and then he decided to warn us about it. Thanks a lot.

          8

          • Don’t do us any favors, Ike!

            4

46. I grok you Z Man.
    A Heinlein statement: “Democracy can survive anything except Democrats”.
    As a corollary I would also add… and more than a few Republicans (insert pics of Graham, McCain).

    11

    1

47. On the military, courtesy of Albert Nock:
    Another neighbor…kept a great stand of bees. I remember his incessant drumming on a tin pan to marshal them when they were swarming, and myself as idly wondering who first discovered that this was the thing to do, and why the bees should fall in with this. It struck me that if the bees were as intelligent as bees are cracked up to be, instead of mobilizing themselves for old man Reynolds’ benefit, they would sting him soundly and fly off about their business. I always think of this when I see a file of soldiers, wondering why the sound of a drum does not incite them to shoot their officers, throw away their rifles, go home, and go to work. Why, instead of producing this effect which seems natural and reasonable, does it produce one which seems exactly the opposite?

    14

    1

    • Nock and Mencken. We’ll ne’er see their like again, unfortunately.

      4

    • Basic Training is the reason.

      Western militaries use the old Europe Aristocrat (Officer Corps) and Serf (Enlisted Corps) model. Basic Training teaches the serfs to be more afraid of aristocrats than the enemy, so when it is time to charge a pike line of opposing serfs, they will do it on the basis of their conditioning to be more afraid of what is behind them than the weapons arrayed in front of them.

      It may sound a bit hyperbolic, but that is how it works.

      People like to wonder what happened to the European male population after World War II, with the common conclusion being that the best died in the war. That is not what actually happened.

      A part of the real answer is that the survivors of World War II reintegrated into the general population and therefore changed the makeup of the population to be significantly under the influence of Basic Training. Said training splits people into an Enlisted Corps mentality and then an Officer Corps mentality. Grillers and Grifters to oversimplify in a useful way.

      As others have pointed out, modern Western militaries do not select or produce the sort of people you want to vote in the main. They are not even structured to maintain the technical knowledge and skills necessary for complex hardware and other systems. The old model has been staggering on through the sheer quality of applicants for a long time, much to the detriment of everyone.

48. IMHO McCain was put out there to die by his fellow airmen, 2 weeks after he killed 100 sailors on his carrier by firing off a rocket accidentally and the brass wouldn’t punish him.

    22

    1

    • Good point, though he got back at them. A very reputable reporter (I think it was Sidney Schanberg; it’s referenced in one of Ron Unz’s columns in unz.com, “America’s Tokyo Rose”) accused McCain of colluding with the brass to conceal the POWs still being held in Viet Nam. Nixon did NOT want to pay the reparations Hanoi demanded to release them, so our government abandoned them to die.

      15

      • There’s good reason to believe there were still about 2,000 American POWs over there as late as the early 1980s. Hard to say what became of them. Deals were made, bargains struck, men sacrificed.

        10

        1

        • Recently, from the Democrats who call themselves leftists on the internet, there’s been a coordinated-seeming effort to educate their followers that the entire post-Vietnam POW/MIA “phenomenon” was a Republican psy-op.

          The lie isn’t the just usual Democrat line that bad thing = Republican voters. (Every POW/MIA flag guy I ever knew was, to put it mildly, anti-GOP.) The lie that they’re elevating to an axiom is that never in history has there been any such thing as a living soldier left stranded or captive anywhere on earth—ever. “The right” made that up. Why? To so enrich the fantasy life of the rustics, many of whom knew a “missing” (none are missing! ever!) soldier, that they’d forever vote for the party that sustains the fantasy.

          Really.

          What plan is *that* the groundwork for?

          2

      • I have read stories of McCain’s unfathomably rude treatment of POW families who came to Washington, D.C. to fight for the return of their dads, sons, husbands, and brothers. He continually put up roadbloacks to their efforts, when he should have been their biggest cheerleader. Hell just ain’t hot enough for that spoiled little bastard.

        6

49. I suppose that this leads to the ultimate question: What form of government is best (or can work long-term at all)?

    All systems have their flaws, and, in the end, it appears that no system works best since, if it did, we’d be using it. Governments reflect their people, and, particularly, the elite. As such, they change over time – for good or bad.

    I’d say that the Founders set up a pretty good and clever system. The vast majority of power went to the states and only land-owning me (people with long-term skin in the system) were allowed to vote. It definitely wasn’t a democracy, which they all hated and feared.

    And, yet, that system was chipped away at almost immediately, first with the Civil War, the 17th amendment, WWI, 19th amendment, the Depression, WWII and finally the Civil Rights era.

    It’s a good reminder that CivNats are retarded. I like to joke on Sailer’s blog that HBD-aware CivNats like to make fun of mainstream politicians and the media for believing in “magic dirt” while they themselves believe in “magic words.”

    In the end, there are certainly better forms of government than others, but, ultimately, the system will reflect the people and the elite.

    30

    • The vast majority of power went to the states and only land-owning me (people with long-term skin in the system) were allowed to vote.

      If only landowning YOU is allowed to vote, that would make the citizen of a very silly country indeed!

      (Sorry, it’s all in good fun. I probably type more clerical errors here than anyone else, but I just couldn’t resist that.)

      6

    • In order to have a chance it has to start with homogeneity. Races were not meant to intermingle. Even in today’s most tech advanced society, we see the proof that multi racial societies cannot get along. No matter the privileges granted to the minority group, it will never be enough and “racism” will be used to explain away any and all differences in life outcomes. It has never worked and will never work.

      As far as “democracy” goes, most people already know it doesn’t work, they have just been brainwashed to believe it does their entire lives. The same normie who insists you must vote for Trump will agree with you if you tell them that corporations would collapse instantly if Shanequa and Dontavious were allowed to vote on every major decision. If an entire football team voted to determine the starting lineup would result in disaster.

      It doesn’t ever work.

      10

    • Universal white male suffrage was in place by the 1820s and 30s. In truth, the founders’ vision barely outlasted their own lifetimes.

      8

50. Hear this from veterans who’ve never read S.T. “We should have mandatory conscription to get the kids to shape up, understand martial values, etc.”

    Are we talking about the 1920’s military, the 1940’s, or the 2020’s? Today’s recruits have “yellow cards” and “red cards” so they can get a “time out” when a drill sergeant makes them feel sad.

    We did this with universal collage and public school in general. To do it, the institutions were dumbed down so much they’re now uniformly ultra-left, foster a culture of dependency, and produce something almost worthless.
    —–
    The real unspeakable thing is this: the franchise needs to be dialed WAY back, which is where ST was going. Who and how though? High IQ’s would’ve given us communism in the 1930s along with forced sterilization and lobotomies.

    (Ready to start with repealing the 19th and a basic 8th grade civics test, but it’s never going to happen. Which is why democracy is a smokescreen anyway.)

    28

    • I think the initial concept of White, property-owning men was basically correct. I’d probably insist on married with some number of children as an additional criterion.

      The challenge is that a democratic system desires votes. And it will, therefore, have a great incentive to create votes by giving more people votes to cast. This is hardly a new problem as, for example, the NYC machine had been enthusiastically recruiting Irish immigrants and making them citizens *so that* they could vote for them at least since the 1850s.

      I mean, look: the entire system was complete crap almost since the very beginning – the Constitution, I mean. It’s a stinking piece of crap, and it’s always been a stinking piece of crap and there has never been any “real Constitution” to which we might return one fine day.

      12

      1

      • btp: The Covington books, as I recall, described a system where every citizen (who by definition had to be White and have put in 2 years of some sort of community service – military, farming, etc.) got one vote. Marriage meant another vote, women with multiple children got an extra vote, etc. Sounded okay in theory but would probably prove over wieldy in real life. Biggest indicator of success was that they started with a White ethno-nationalist electorate and only certain issues were eligible for voting. Anything seriously important was not decided by votes.

        8

        • “Anything seriously important was not decided by votes.”

          They aren’t now. It is just Not Our People ramming their destructive policies down our white throats.

          7

        • 3g4me – agree. I think the problem to be solved is straightforward:

          Rulers rule by getting votes. How to get votes?

          1. Appeal to this set of voters who have skin in the game

          2. Make new voters

          And the rulers have been importing lots of voters this entire time. One thing a monarchy with a small killer elite solves is that it creates a system where the incentive is to restrict the franchise. But, like with everything, scale is a problem.

          6

      • Property owning as a prerequisite for voting in the modern Era I think would exclude a lot of people who still have a good notion of daily sacrifice for the system. I would suggest that only tax paying citizens should be able to vote. That’s the modern day equivalent of “skin in the game”. If Tyrone and shaniqua live off the taxes we pay to support them so be it…but you don’t get to have a say in how we’re governed as a nation.

        If you’re working to pay taxes then you get to vote. If not, then you’re just a child in the parent’s house.

        3

51. One of the great benefits of the feudal system is simply the selection process for rulers. You want virtuous rulers, and a system where their entire role is to fight is going to select for those who are at least courageous. That’s not bad, given that democracies select for the most depraved.

    Of course, the even older idea was not that you select rulers from the fighting class, but that the fighting class came from those who had skin in the game. If you own land, you’re one of us and you’re expected to take your place in the formation, protecting the fighting arm of the man on your left with your shield.

    Obviously, neither of these structures works with mercenaries or with conscripted cannon fodder. Probably the idea of a killer elite is simultaneous – or emergent – with a social structure that expects that the men with skin in the game will themselves defend the city. You can’t graft it on to a democratic society.

    10

52. Seeing that bald-headed weird-looking dude Mast walking around on his two prosthetic rebar legs wearing an IDF top the other day was pretty much the last straw. All they needed was to have Lurch Fetterman standing behind him. Hall of Horrors.

    44

    • No exaggeration, seeing a representative proudly walk into the halls of congress wearing a foreign military’s uniform is the most psychotic thing I’ve ever seen come out of that building.

      43

      • I had the same thought. The fact that this is supposed to be the US House of Representatives (it’s right there in the name, y’all) is apparently lost on everyone.

        But it was only slightly worse than the clown Zelensky getting a standing ovation from a joint session of Congress.

        30

        • I was an aide in the Senate for most of the 1990s. I left DC after 9/11.

          The Senate was a good place to work until the Clinton impeachment. There were a lot of senators who still cared about their states and constituents — Mark Hatfield, Pete Domenici come to mind. They got along with one another and were generally respectful, decent men. It was a quiet place, too — decorum was still rigidly enforced — because the general idea was that the nation took its cues from the way its politicians acted.

          I can’t imagine what it’s like now. It’s devastating to me to watch this happen. There are very few institutions left with any credibility. We will have nothing to fall back on soon. We’re allowing our country to be destroyed and for the life of me, I cannot understand why no one cares. They really don’t.

          18

          • Out of curiosity, why did you leave?

          • “… I cannot understand why no one cares. They really don’t.”

            Our blood does not cry out for it. It’s not ours, and many people at least instinctively understand that it has never really been ours.

            Slovaks and Russians, for example, will sacrifice to save their countries, because they are real peoples. We have not been since at least the Civil War.

            Blood and soil nationalism works, and synthetic corporate civic nationalism does not. It all needs to burn, for the survival of the Heritage American people and the rest of Europeanity, and for the good of the rest of humanity.

            4

      • That he had to show off his missing legs was really the sickest part of his display. Just utterly shameless: “I got these from serving Israel.”

        9

53. Correct. The People Who Matter and Actually Run Things select veterans because they are trained to obey orders and implement policies regardless of their popularity or functionality. The Crenshaws are even bigger whores than the AOC’s as a direct result. As you have written before, the system selects for sociopaths precisely because they have no conscience. The military produces many of these types.

    Other notables in this regard are Sens. Cotton and Duckworth. They will do things even whores refuse. Military veterans who seek office need to be treated the same as pedophiles once were when they sought election.

    Granted, “Nikki” “Haley” who now wants to transfer the indigenous Palestinians to the United States as part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing is not a veteran and can hold her own with those sociopaths, but her types are rare specimens indeed.

    31

    • Getting drafted cured me of ever wanting to follow anybody’s orders.

      21

54. As a military vet I’ll make the counterpoint.

    In the military, particularly in a combat arms role, you develop what we called a “bullshit detector”. So when an asshole liar like Graham, McCain or Crenshaw comes around with instructions, we know everything he just said is wrong and probably a lie. We also typically hold a dim view of people who brag in public about their military exploits – particularly somebody like McCain who was a complete screw up / reverse ace (crashed 5 planes).

    So, if only Vets voted, little chance.of a Crenshaw or McCain having long political careers.

    35

    • “So, if only Vets voted, little chance.of a Crenshaw or McCain having long political careers.”

      Agreed. It doesn’t take long in the military to develop a good sense for detecting suckups.

      11

    • I really don’t think the Seals are trustworthy at all, tbqh. The other SOF guys, as well as many veterans, seem to hold them in no great regard.

      14

      • Sure – when you see the real thing versus the Hollywood superhero version, it’s less of a big deal. I trained with numerous guys who did Ranger, Recon, and SF schools. Good Soldiers and Marines, but not invincible killing machines.

        10

    • Agreed. The Starship Troopers model has a very high chance of being successful if it ever gets implemented. As a Vet, (hate that cringe phrase, “As a fill-in-the-blank”) I too can detect the waft of BS from politicians like Graham and Crenshaw. These cretins who wear their military service as a shield to criticism are an abomination. As Z Man writes, democracy itself self-selects these clowns due to them putting on the biggest show in front of the audience.

      11

    • The same can be said of lots of trades, when it comes to developing the “bullshit detector”. Spend time on a job site, a shop floor or a warehouse and you will see that this skill is near universal. This is the natural result of people forced to make the model work against observable reality. These people are overwhelmingly male. You would get the same effect by simply eliminating women from the voting pool.

      38

      • Eliminate women from the voting pool? B-b-b-but Bill Clinton!

        Caligula from Arkansas voted-in by women willing to get on their knees for a total bullshi**er

        8

        • Looking back, many women’s reaction to Bill Clinton was probably my first disillusionment with the image of women that I had been raised with.

          One woman activist said that she would get on her knees for him if he kept abortion legal. Many other women cheered for her.

          Until recently, I used to shake my head in sadness for all the poor women who were being misled by feminism because I thought what would really make them happy was motherhood and creating a lovely home.

          I now believe that feminism has revealed the true nature of (most) women. Their nature must be constrained by men, because, to my great surprise, female nature is even worse than male nature.

          23

          • “ Their nature must be constrained by men, because, to my great surprise, female nature is even worse than male nature.”

            No disagreement, but I tend to put it (female nature) in context. For example, the above could be interpreted as changing female nature toward that of men.

            Rather, I’d say female nature must be “contained/restricted” I have no problem of such within the environs of home and hearth—where it traditionally always was and as where Nature intended it.

            1

      • If I had more time, I would like to study the arguments for and against giving women the vote.

        As I recall, one of the main arguments against giving women the vote is that they too easily abandoned long term reason for short term emotion. That staged photo of the drowned baby a few years ago supports this view.

        When I was in my twenties, I looked up to Bertrand Russell, mostly for his work in mathematical logic and philosophy, but also for his liberal social activism. In Britain, he campaigned to give women the vote. I remember that he wrote in his autobiography that when rallies were held for granting women the right to vote, the opponents would release mice into the rally to make the women panic and call for the assistance of men.

        7

    • Maxda: At minimum would need to limit it to combat vets (truck drivers, cooks, data entry don’t count) of a certain age and/or time in combat. That’s genuine skin in the game, and even then doesn’t completely eliminate the BS brigade. And you’d have to start off with White men, who would all have to pass a class on real western history, not the lies we’ve been fed for the past 150 years.

      And others will undoubtedly have other good criteria . . . which is why ‘voting’ should never be used by anyone to decide anything of genuine importance. Consensus and talk is the female way of deciding . . . nothing.

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      1

      • As somebody above said – no flag officers. Making the jump to O-7 (and probably O-6 now) is a political process.

        4

        • No field-grades period. Any one who serves past O-3 doesn’t have much of a grasp on what a pile of chicken-shi* the military is, and how it selects for promotion. Not that there isn’t a vast amount of chicken-shi* in civilian life. But at least you can have keep your dignity, buy telling your boss “F.U.”

          I left as an O-3 over thirty years ago, and seeing what my coevals had to put up with over that time, I thank the Lord for my impetuous decision to get out.

          3

          • I knew some crazy Marine O-4 and 5’s in the Marine Reserves (pilots serving as Air Officers). Part of what I liked about them was they knew they had topped out and didn’t give a crap about getting another promotion. They’d call out nonsense wherever they saw it.

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      • “At minimum would need to limit it to combat vets (truck drivers, cooks, data entry don’t count)” Stick to things you know about. In Iraq and Afghanistan truck convoys were prime targets for IED and general ambush.

        4

        • This is a valid critique, at least in consideration of the very different nature of guerilla/insurgent warfare.

          1

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